Or, the tales of two inexplicably problematic employees.
Tale the first:
I ot a promotion a short while ago that among other things means that I’m manaing 200 people rather than 20, and that I get to decide the dress code for the center. One thing I decided to do was to disregard my personal preferences and loosen up on the dress code. Under my predecessor, jeans and shorts were verboten, but I’m allowing them as long as they’re clean, neat, and whole; that means no strategic fashion rips. Short sleeves are allowed as long as there are no visible tattoos and piercings; midriffs may not be bared and skirts must reach the knee. We had a center-wide meeting in which I came to the lectern and said, “Okay, look. I’m wearing a suit and tie because I like them; this is how I feel comfortable. I want y’all to be comfortable too, so here’s the new rules” – and then rattled off the above.
Seems reasonable, right? Well, not to everyone. Because the very next morning, one of the younger account execs who’s been here about a year showed up in a stretch pants so tight that no detail of sub-waistular topography was left uncertain, along with a top that was basically a 9-inch ribbon wrapped around her bosom, a ribbon that did jack-diggly to conceal the level of erectness of her nipples. I don’t know how many tattoos this outfit revealed (because I am not an idiot), but it was certainly several. When confronted, she said she thought that I had completely repealed the dress code, not simply relaxed it.
So we sent her home to change. She came back dressed more modestly–and a few days later came to work wearing a micro-mini and a top sheer enough that no one needed X-ray vision to see that freckles were not confined to her face. Again she was sent home, this time told not to return until the next day, and given a written warning.
And TODAY she came to work wearing a football jersey as a dress. And she affected to be genuinely surprised when she got in trouble again.
Tale the second:
Today, as I was coming back from lunch, I heard a loud and profane voice in the bullpen. (The people who work there are inside sales account execs, which mean they do their work over the phone.) The voice was audible even in the elevator, which means it could certainly be heard by customers on the phone. The person was dropping fucks, shits, pisses, bitches, motherfuckers, and other such inappropriate verbiage. His team manager is on vacation, and the covering manager was, I knew, away for the afternoon, so I went to the myself and told him to cut it out immediately.
He responded with more vitriol, this time directed at me. “Who the fuck are you to tell me how to talk?” he snapped. “You’re not my boss! Who the fuck are you, anyway?”
I agreed with him that I wasn’t his boss. Since he clearly didn’t recognize me, I introduced myself as his boss’s boss. This would, I thought, get him to at least pretend to calm down. But I was wrong. He raised his voice again, saying that he didn’t care whose boss I was; he had personal business to conduct, he was on his break, and nobody could tell him how to conduct himself. At that, I told him to extend his break to the rest of the day, and further to be ready to give me a really good reason not to fire him when he comes in tomorrow.
In sum: what a pair of idiots.
