Considering it’s an issue that caused you to lose an employee before you even recovered your training investment, I’d say it is your fucking business.
I think most people don’t rant about their fellow employees when they start a new job. But I can probably picture the scene pretty well. I’m learned never to underestimate “salt of the earth rural types” ability to arrogantly act like they know everything about fucking everything even though they have rarely been more than 25 miles from their home. Especially when they meet someone more educated. It’s called “you think you better than me?!”-itis.
True. If I had a manager working for me who was too weak or indifferent to even try to address issues of interpersonal conflict, I’d be taking a close look at what to do with that manager.
My wife believes people are mirrors, and if everyone is shunning you at work, its probably not them, but you. I agree in part, but some people are just dicks- its not fair to blame someone getting bullied at work by saying theyre bringing it upon themselves…but maybe they are?
My wife had a similar situation friend’s wife had at her job…for about a week. She engaged her co workers and adapted to her workplace culture. She theorizes that friends wife wasnt adapting- she didn’t like going out to bars and stuff but felt hurt they werent interested in going to ren fairs or doing trivia night. This was her first job out of college that didn’t involve working from home, and we wonder if shes just not used to interacting with people who aren’t some carbon copy of her.
I have a positive relationship with my coworkers, but then again I also have the advantage of having a job where you can be a total loner if you want. I find this optimal- I can scmooze if I’m feeling bored, or be antisocial if I’m grumpy/tired.
I’m going with the “I go to work to work” bunch. If I got shunned, I’d probably never notice it. I see none of my co workers outside of work and I go to lunch alone. I speak to my co workers and even small talk occasionally, but I do my job and leave them do theirs. I’ve had co workers that didn’t like me, but that’s never bothered me.
Sounds to me like it was good to cut his losses. Maybe I’m reading the situation wrong, but it doesn’t sou d like she was much of a loss, and encouraging her to stay might have created less productivity inhis cliquey employees. And if one of them goes, he risks them all, not a good spot for a small business
I have a group of friends who has known each other a long time. Trust me, when we don’t invite you along, it’s a kindness, not a shunning. Unless you like to here gossip about people you don’t know, hear old stories we are rehashing for the hundredth time, but enjoy telling and feel like you are uncomfortable intruding when we confide in each other.
My lunch hour is my lunch hour, and my after work hours are my after work hours, to spend with the people I enjoy doing things I enjoy. I treat everyone I work with with respect and civility…but I don’t see any reason to invite you out with my friends simply because you work with me.
Bolding mine. Thing is, my employees were/are not “cliquey”. Everyone got along wonderfully; indeed the outcast’s replacement fit in well and is here today.
I think that nobody interacted with her because they, rightfully so, did not enjoy her company.
In which case, you still seem to have done fine. She was looking for a work environment that wasn’t yours. She expected a level of “nice” that was higher than your corporate culture. And apparently your corporate culture is fairly functional, or you would have said this is a common complaint.
In my experience people who get shunned are normally socially awkward in some way that makes you not want to spend time talking to them. I don’t think I have ever come across someone who did not bring on themselves in some way. A couple of examples that spring to mind are someone who would always try and dominate every conversation and make it about them and another who was always coming out with stupidly controversial statements and then asking people if they had offended them then followed up by apologising (this got old very quickly as the routine was repeated about once every 5 minutes).
People just naturally avoided hanging out with both of these people whenever possible. You could not say either was a genuinely unpleasant person but they were both hard work to be around.
I am not shunning a coworker, but I am not as sociable as I used to be with her. I am friendly and professional with her, but I don’t go out of my way to have non-work-related chats with her. And I keep my door closed in part to discourage her from coming in to talk my head off, as she is wont to do.
She rubs other coworkers the wrong way too. So she probably goes home and tells her boyfriend people hate her. She once told me that she had called him up right after I had yelled at her this one time when she was killing me with some craziness. I just gave her a wan smile. I wanted to yell at her again but I didn’t.
Hate is a strong word, but no, I don’t really like being around her more than necessary. And this is not due to a major crime on either of our parts. She just drives me up the wall. I’m sure I do the same to someone else and I am too clueless to know about it. I can put up with just about anything when it comes to work stuff, but my personal time is mine. My social energy is mine, as well.
So while it would be nice if everything could be happy-happy-joy-joy at every workplace, that’s just not how it is. A person is better off adopting a laid-back approach to their workplace social scene rather than trying to be accepted by everyone. That’s just as “high school” as the cliquey stuff.
I’m not in a position to critique her actual performance. But a good boss or manager invests some time in making sure their employees are successful (within reason). A shitty manager tends to take a “sink or swim” / “not my problem” attitude. You can get away with being that sort of manager in a big Accenture-like firm where they just bring in a new crop of goons every few months. When you are in a small company where every employee needs to carry their weight and it’s hard to replace them, it’s much more important.
And really, a manager should try to break up cliques as much as possible. Cliques are not the same thing as a highly functional team. In fact, they are often the exact opposite, fostering favoritism and creating insular, self-reinforcing “groupthink”.
Nor am I, but she sounds like a whiner. And whiners are never positive additions to the team. I’d rather have a productive clique than a set of whiners. A whiney clique would, of course, be worse.
As a manager, I want my employees to ideally be civil with each other, even when they dont like each other, but honestly, I perfer not too friendly. Friendly creates drama where they get involved in each others personal lives at the expense of doing a job. The question is, was the employee complaining because they werent being civil, in which case, it is the managers job to step in and make sure everyone is being treated with respect, or was she complaining because they weren’t being friendly. And the implied question in this story, was she being civil, because I get the feeling she might have been one of those people who is quick to point out when her own feelings are hurt, but may not have spent a lot of time being considerate of her coworkers, and if called on it, then everyone else is mean.
To me, a bad hire decision is like a bad marriage… It probably isn’t going to work out and it’s better to cut your losses before you end up with a bunch of difficult dependencies. But both happen. And in both cases, it’s generally better for both parties that it ends, even if it it’s going to cause a lot of short term pain.
I have to agree with those who say there’s not enough information. In this case “everyone” is an established tightly-knit group. We don’t know if she has had problems with other groups, if this group has had problems with other newcomers, or it could be one of those “There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy. It’s only you and me and we just disagree.” moments.
In 2006 I took a job as a service representative with a manufacturing company.
There were two other woman in my department and I was very much their senior in age.
I didn’t want to hang-out with them after work or even necessarily go to lunch with them but I did expect basic civility. More importantly, I certainly did not expect them to make doing my job more difficult by refusing to answer basic questions or help me assist customers when I was the newbie. That behavor was not acceptable in my book because it affected the level of service I could provide and reflected poorly on the company overall.
One woman got pregnant during my duration there and became even more of a bitch than she was before the hormones kicked in.
I was resposonsible for answering most of the phone calls and would either help the client myself or transferr the calls to one of them.
Amy reached a point where she would either argue with me or even refuse to take calls when the customer specifically requested her.
I’d have to get almost belligerent to get her to pick up the fucking phone.
I later discovered that the manager was fully aware the situation (he apologized during my exit interview) but just felt we should somehow work it out.
How do you work things out in a professional environment with someone that had the maturity of an 8th grader and a mean 8th grader at that?