I would’t even begin to know how to go about finding statistics to back my assertions. It’s all personal observation, but I have at least one former supervisor who agrees with me.
It seems to me that someone who is a consistently good worker who commits the occasional on the job infraction is generally dealt with as harshly, if not more harshly than someone who is flat out a consistently bad worker.
Scenario- an employee consistently berates, insults and generally makes life miserable for co-workers as well as talking back to supervisors, to the point that it becomes difficult for people to do their jobs if they’re working with him. He is also frequently late for work, and commits major violations of company policy on an almost weekly basis. This situation is reported to management. The situation is dealt with by a supervisor having a series of informal chats with the offender. Employee contines to make life miserable for coworkers, who make repeated reports, more informal chats, etc. until, finally, somebody snaps back at the offender. Both employees are written up, and threatened with their jobs for “Bickering” on the job. The supervisor does not take into account the repeated reports of deliberate provokation of the one employee by the other. (I’ve actually been in this situation).
Scenario ( happened to a former supervisor of mine- great guy, but occasionally a little impatient). Employee is cross trained for a different, much more highly skilled, high pressure job in a company. She shows no aptitude for the job, but is still left in the position. After a year and a half, she shows zero improvement, and does not seem to even be making an effort to improve- she’s been with the company for years, so she knows her job is secure. Her inability to do the job is creating major problems in the workplace. Finally, the supervisor lays it out for her. “You don’t have the ability to do this job, you need to be in a position where you’re performing repetitive tasks. You’re not focussed on the job, and you can’t function under pressure.”
She goes crying to a higher-level manager, and gets the supervisor written up. A bit of background- this girl is known as a troublemaker. Anytime she has an interpersonal conflict with a co-worker, she goes running to a supervisor and tries to have formal disciplinary action taken against them. If any disciplinary action is taken against her- she has been known to get smart with a supervisor from time to time, she tries to make a political issue over it (this is America, we’re supposed to have freedom of speech). The supervisor, on the other hand, as I said, is a great guy. He does sometimes lose patience, (he opened up on me once, but we patched it up pretty quickly) but it takes a lot to push him over the edge. He’s very easy to work with, and doesn’t mind training people who show an interest and an aptitude. But he does expect to see improvement. But he was disciplined for talking straight to an employee who did not have the ability to perform the job, after a year and a half of fruitless efforts to help her to improve.
I’ve seen situations like this again and again. An employee who is a poor worker and/or a known troublemaker is let off lightly until he/she provokes a reaction in a co-worker who simply becomes fed up with the situation, of which management is aware, and then when disciplinary action is taken, there is no accounting for the fact that one person is a consistently good worker, who has never, up until this moment, had a conflict with a coworker that caused a disruption in the workplace. I’ve seen people suspended when they finally cracked after literally months of ongoing harassment, while the person doing the harassing was let off with a verbal warning. This even with other employees who witnessed the event telling the supervisor that the person was doing their job and minding their own business, when the other employee started in with a barrage of personal insults, and false accusations that the person wasn’t doing his/her job.
I’ve also seen heavy-duty slackers get bonuses for quantity of work done, because they took over the easier tasks, and did them sloppily, thus giving themselves extra screw-off time, while coworkers who did the more difficult work, and did it well, got left with their straight hourly.
I’ve arrived at the conclusion that employers take disciplinary action on employees based on the type of behavior that has come to be expected from that employee, rather than on an objective standard of whether that employee is complying with company policy and doing their job well. In other words, we all know Eddie is a smart-mouth punk kid, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Jimmy, on the other hand, we expect more/better out of you, hope getting written up/suspended teaches you a lesson.
Has anybody else out there noticed this sort of thing going on in the workplace? And if so, do you have any alternative theories as to why these sorts of workplace situations exist?