The Dehumanizing Treatment of Employees

 Tales from a Toxic Work Environment #1

 Now that we have reached the so-called Age of Enlightenment, wherein socially conscious managers would never dream of forcing arcane rules or personal whims on their underlings, it is considered by most people to be at the very least morally wrong for a supervisor to intentionally create a hostile work environment for personal or emotional pleasure.

 This is exactly the type of behavior I have witnessed on multiple occasions at the P&G Tabler Station plant however, regardless of plant, company or corporate policies. 

 Because to be blunt; Policies don't mean squat in the day-to-day, minute-by-minute operations of a manufacturing plant when people with little to no proper management training are making the little decisions that will affect the lives of their team members.

 In one recent example, a low-level (bottom rung) manager of only three team members with a reputation for constant sexual harassment of female employees set his sights on a newly hired young lady on his team.

 He asked her out repeatedly, and she was placed in the awkward position of needing to explain that she was not only engaged but also not really interested in him, while at the same time preserving his fragile ego so that her new career would not be jeopardized by making an enemy of her new boss.

 Being a friend of a friend, I was allowed to follow this drama through first hand sharing and second-hand followups. She was a sweet kid, and I have a grandfather vibe, so we talked on occasion. 

 Because she was an adult, I didn't presume to stick my two cents into another adult's story.

I never notified HR or anyone who maybe could help her because I tend my own garden.

  Anyway, she seemed to be taking it fairly well in the early stages, and showed a solid sense of humor about the whole thing in general. That is until a few weeks ago when she decided that he had gone too far.

 Because he was the first approval for requested vacation days, she had submitted a request to take her birthday off so she could spend it with her fiance.

 Her request for the day off was denied, despite it being a valid request in every sense. She was disappointed but mature about it, until her boss took that same day off himself. She was convinced that he was exhibiting a childishly spiteful abuse of power, and rubbing her nose in it to boot.
 {if she was nicer to him, he might be nicer to her...}

 She then requested a transfer to another line, any line, in the hope of starting fresh with a fair manager. This request too was denied. Her boss was also an excellent underling, and held in fine regard by all of his supervisors (middle management) because he tells them what they want to hear and appears eager to learn. 

 In my experience, this usually means an ambitious and hungry jackal has his eye on his next promotion, but that's not my problem. The point is, he had their collective ear and if he wanted autonomous control over a team member it was a simple matter of placating his own bosses with some well crafted bullshit.  

 So, feeling trapped with a childish and vindictive drama queen of a boss, this young girl with aspirations of a career with Proctor and Gamble simply quit her new job to seek greener and less painful pastures.

  Her friends suggested an exit interview, so that at the very least someone from HR would listen to her reasons for leaving, even if she chose not to pursue proper recourse.  I don't know if that meeting ever happened; We rotate shifts regularly, so I came in one day and she was just gone.

 It's a shame that stories like hers rarely get told, and maybe that's why I bothered to write it out here for you to peruse. Maybe her life is much better now. Maybe she is reading this with you and smiling at the wasted tears she allowed some saddle-sniffer to extract from her.

 Maybe you or a friend are in a similar situation, and shedding a few tears of your own, and hoping for encouragement. The best advice I can offer is to speak up and speak out.

 Don't allow dark intentions to remain in the dark.

 Drop by the HR office, or just drop an email asking for some advice on how best to correct any misunderstandings you may have with your boss.

 Shedding some light on small miscommunications or outright mistreatment has a wonderful way of bringing the sun out again. 

 And you deserve a bit more sunshine in your life, don't you?

Post Christmas Melancholy

First and foremost; We are good people, my wife and I.
Parents to six, and Grandparents to over 20 happy (and mildly spoiled) children, and Christmas for us is truly a celebration of love and generosity surrounded by family.
I freely admit that my wife of thirty three years deserves this happiness more than do I; She has nowhere near the level of childhood and adult sins to atone for.
I also deal with a deeply buried case of PTSD that develops zombie tendencies in the Winter months, peaking ( or in terms of the depression that follows it like a shadow, bottoming out) right around Christmas.
This puts me in that small group of freaks who genuinely dread the holiday, and must work particularly hard to find a spark or a light to focus on in order to crawl over that hump one more year.

Sorry 'bout that. You can see now why I buried it.
Obviously, the grandchildren take turns representing that light at the end of the tunnel. Beautifully optimistic, eager little minds chomping at life's bit to start making a happy life as wild birds whose cage was just flung open. Their graceless simplicity is contagious, you know?   Play is Everything, and Everything is Play.
If that doesn't make you fall in love with life all over again, check your pulse.

Anyway; that's what pulls me through the annual holiday swamp, and by the 26th it's already starting to get better.
For me, that is. Remember that wife who deserves to happy?
Well, she swings to an alternate rhythm, and we pass each other going in opposite directions about this time.

Christmas is for her a joyous celebration of family and love. Money or no, she is tickled just to be near the little ones at Christmas. Simple pleasures, and all that jazz.
Then, she goes back to work.
Now, hating your job is quite normal for many blue collar folks, but how about being clinically depressed for the entire week after Christmas? That's not normal.
No; She's not a NICU nurse, or a dialysis attendant. She works at a major retailer.
The biggest one; the one people love to hate and half the country can't seem to live without.

Starting the day after Christmas, she is the person at this retailer who has to process the returns. Unwanted gifts, wrong sized sweaters, and all the usual post-Christmas reasons to stand in line at the returns counter.

Then there's the reason for her week-long depression; The welfare queens bringing in their children's toys and gifts to flip them for cash. Many with those same wailing, confused and emotionally tortured children in tow.
One after another, all day long, waddling along in slippers and PJs, flopping freshly-opened toys that just last week were delivered by Toys For Tots onto the counter and demanding cash for toys they didn't earn, while the broken-hearted toddler cries for a reason why Santa won't let her keep her new toy.
All the while, a sweet and kindly grandmother stands behind that same counter hard-swallowing the impulse to hop over and deliver the ass-kicking of a lifetime. With her nearly forgotten Baltimore street corner roots, and the fact that the liberal in front of her apparently lives on cheese curls and Pepsi, it wouldn't take that much effort.

But, what would be the point? You can't fix stupid.
And some folks couldn't learn new tricks no matter how hard you tried.
Sure, she could offer to pay for the toy. Seems simple, right? Nope. You would just delay the inevitable, and that sorry excuse for a human mother would be back the next day, in the same line, with the same crying child being tortured all over again. So you just stand there and deal with it, right?
After spending 24 hours bringing smiles and joy to the children in your own family, you just watch the cruelest parade of child torture go by; and even assist them when you can. Because that crying child isn't just looking at mommy for answers; she is also looking at you for any help you can offer. It's enough to tear the very heart from your body. Over, and over, and over, and over...

You starting to see the source of the melancholy?

Thankfully, a few smart folks (my wife being one of them) have put their heads together in an effort to beat this scam and it's heartless perpetrators at the source.
They are asking charities and churches who provide toys and gifts to needy children at Christmas to black-out or otherwise disable the barcode labels on the toys and it's packaging. It's illegal to remove the tags, but a little permanent marker will do the trick. In time, maybe the laws covering charities can be adjusted to allow the removal of all barcodes from the gifts without penalty, thus guaranteeing a much happier Christmas for countless children.

I'm sure this is not just a local problem. Christmas happens to fall in the third week of the month when folks on assistance also happen to be broke, and frankly I can't comprehend any charity not having the forethought to see this coming. To my way of thinking, that makes them just as liable as the human garbage standing in line ignoring her child's pain.
It's time to take responsibility for the whole picture and stop cherry-picking the aspects they choose to focus on. It's time to beat the scammers at their own game.

How about you? Any ideas to help beat this issue?

Thanks for bearing with this rant, and I wish you a wonderful New Year.

JB.

The Intentional Stress Secret aka: The WYGDA Factor

The Secret Reason for Fabricated Stress in Your Team: The WYGDA factor

   The Problem Child.   The Instigator.  Nearly every  team has one, and far too many managers have gone head-to-head with at least one at some point in his career.
 This employee seems to create conflict wherever he or she goes. Some actually appear to enjoy the dramas that are left in their wake. Whether your problem child is overtly hostile, attention seeking, or simply basking in the spotlight of infamy, the resulting stresses are all the same for you and your team.

 As a manager in Baltimore many years ago, this type of employee was more than just a minor nuisance, and on some teams they actually outnumbered the more mature workers who showed up every day to give a fair effort without rocking the boat. This type of imbalance can have a devastating effect on overall production, even if only because the fabricated dissention is contagious.
 These boat rockers could easily tie up the majority of your day with headache-inducing conflicts and needless personal dramas, and why not? You are going to pay them either way, and by forcing the WYGDA factor they are in fact being paid to complain, to waste your time, and to hold up production.
 They go home happy every day, while you and your team fall further behind schedule.

So, What You Gonna Do About it?

  This is a game of dares, first and foremost. Falling under the heading of the Get Over Game, the long term goal is to take effective control away from management and put it in the hands of a small group of bullies who will keep you dancing on your strings like a puppet.

 This is not nearly as far-fetched, nor as tough, as you may think. You will automatically deny being that easy to manipulate, and it's just that type of arrogance that the players will expect and use to gain control.

  The short-term goals are almost meaningless when viewed individually: Create a new complaint each day; Recruit more players to each create a new daily complaint; Divide lower management; Feed the local rumor mill negative stories that undermine the managers; Stall production at every opportunity; Bully any member who refuses to play along; and last but surely not least, Push and keep the tension levels to a breaking point.

 To the uninitiated, it is rather illuminating to discover how many vulnerabilities are created by a passively trusting management team.

 That Chain of Command that you have so much respect for doesn't even exist in the Get Over game. Prepare to have your back scarred by a dozen knives. The bully will go straight to the top with petty, and sometimes even fabricated, complaints about you and your performance.

 What You Gonna Do About it? Nothing. There's nothing you can do directly, and she knows it.

 There's nothing easy about being bullied at any point in your life, but it can be particularly frustrating when the bully is your employee. You offer respect on the daily, and in many cases you even care on a personal level, but there's always that one person who looks at you like you just asked for a kidney; or the one who makes you feel like you need a bath after they talk to you.

 So, What You Gonna Do About it?

First: Clear The Air.

  

The WYGDA bully will vary his tactical approach to suit the environment, so the ammo of choice may differ, but the bully's primary weapon is always the same: Threats. Lots of empty threats.

 She will threaten to call her attorney if you don't comply. He will threaten to call the NAACP if you don't give in. She will threaten to form a union if you refuse to promote her. He will go over your head repeatedly, thus keeping you under pressure by the trickle-down effect.

 Call the Bluff. The best way to deal with this smokescreen is to lay all the cards out on the table.

Hand her the phone from your desk, and offer to dial the number. Take back control of your position and at the same time you take the wind out of her sails.

 Bullying a manager works because he/she feels that they hold an ace up the sleeve. They know a trick, or a friend is teaching them about something that worked in the past. There is a bit of truth in every rumor, and these stories are no different.

 The key is to become fiercely proactive at the first signs of a power struggle, and cover your legal bases.

Notify your legal department of the possibility that a standoff may be imminent, and begin the paper trail with your first meeting. Witness accounts are golden, and if your meeting witness is also from HR or legal, you can consider your posterior adequately covered.

 Sadly enough, WYGDA bullying does work to a degree, and I have watched a few Baltimore companies become completely devoured by hired bullies to the point of eventual collapse.

  In the one that haunts me to this day, it was myself who had hired the ringleader. By the time the mistake was realized by the owners, he had already caused enough damage to create the snowball effect that would bring the company down.
 Twice I tried to fire him, because he was costing us customers directly, but he cried (and lied) to the owner and was re-hired, effectively placing himself on the "protected list" which meant even the slightest hint of future negativity from me could legally be construed as harassment...and I had to watch with my hands tied as he destroyed everything that we had built.
 We (the owner that I met with weekly and myself) knew that he was a DuKE, but we arrogantly believed that we could manage this small quirk. He wasn't the only one, after all.
 A DuKE is someone experiencing the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and this young man was the living definition of someone living with DKE syndrome.
 In this case, he was thoroughly convinced that he was a natural genius (because mom said so..?) who should be calling all the shots, and that we should essentially hand the company over to him.
 In truth, he had the people skills of a porcupine, and the business sense of grade school bully.
 I will try to expand on the topic of DuKEs in a future post, as it is a very interesting topic.

 In any event, you can take my word for this: The guilt that comes from installing a cancer into your work family, one that forces the people you love and respect to suffer, is not something that you can shake off easily. I've had to live with this every day since.
 So take the lead right from the start, thus making positive changes in your future.
 Every manager enjoys the belief that he is no pushover, and when an employee begins to push you have the opportunity to prove your character to everyone involved.

  2015   The Leader Coach   §   JB Stran