I’m really at a loss here. I’m working with a guy who’s ignorant and argumentative. To make matters worse, we’re in IT, where knowledge and sound judgement equate to the lingua franca (he lacks both). I’m in a senior position, but he’s been here for over five years, so there’s that to contend with.
I’d like to tar and feather him, but I’m not sure if that’s the best course of action.
Suggestions?
Start creating a paper trail to support having him fired.
Reprimands, write-ups, etc.
So, you’re saying the whole tarring & feathering thing is out, yeah?
Not if you can get away with it.
Try putting a tiny bit of gum in his mouse (assuming it is not optical). Thats always good for a laugh.
Exactly. Document, document, document. Every little goof and oops he makes needs to be recorded, along with every email you may (legitimately!) come across from anyone complaining about them.
Just don’t do anything unseemly like hacking in to read their email or mis-configuring something they just worked on.
Document. Document. Document. He’ll build his own scaffold and hang himself. Then you can bring in the nails for the coffin lid.
How about a person like him , and they sang nursery ryhmes all day. I had one like that. ahhhhhhhhgggg!!!
Gumball.
Assign him non-critical tasks within his realm of competence.
If you want his productivity to improve, is there some training you could sign him up for? If you want him gone then have him teach the course, at which time his disjointed, blazing incompetence will become plain to all.
Oh, lieu, that’s truly evil. I love it.
It’s not that he’s completely incompetent. It’s sort of difficult to explain, but here’s his schtick in brief: he can’t or won’t think outside the box, and if confronted with the challenge to do so, blocks with myriad defenses. It’s frustrating and bizarre. He’s a good guy, but it sucks having to deal with him and try to mentor him.
By “confronted with the challenge to do so” do you mean that (A) someone suggests to him a novel way that he might do something, or (B) someone tells him to come up with a creative approach on his own? I work with someone who frequently engages in (A) - he has ideas, but lacks the resources to execute them at his site, so he tries to get other people to implement his ideas at other sites. Unfortunately, his ideas are often inappropriate for the other sites.
“Blocks with various defenses” makes me wonder if (A) is going on. If that’s what’s happening, try (B). Assuming that “inside the box” simply isn’t an option, he’ll either be forced to come up with something novel or he won’t complete the task at all. If he comes up with something novel, great. If he doesn’t complete the task, document it and get rid of him.
Heh. It’s hard to cite specific examples in this forum because I’m a bit of a fan of brevity, and because it’s tech-oriented stuff, and I have a hard time guaging how much information needs to be passed to get the point across. I’ll attempt an example:
He is ‘in charge’ of backups, and when they fail, he just re-runs them. He doesn’t troubleshoot, he doesn’t make any attempt to learn what’s going on with the backus and try to fix them, etc. I try to counsel him, give him troubleshooting tips, light a fire under his a$$ to get things square in that department. He’ll have none of it. His typical first defense is to get argumentative and confrontational, failing that, he tries to sidetrack the conversation/argument by grasping on some related/unrelated detail, failing that, he says he’s just too busy. Like I said, kind of hard to really explain, but I think everyone’s dealt with someone like this.
We need to classify and name this annoying personality type, I think.
It sounds like a obsesive compulsive personality. He has a set way of doing things, and any questioning of his routine is automaticaly countered with a reason not to change it. He’ll preform his job nicely, until the routine changes. In his mind this will start a panic reaction. Does that fit well?
Well, yeah. There’s definitely something wrong with him, and that describes it as well as anything I could come up with. Problem is: you need to be slightly OCD to enjoy any measure of success in this field (at least IMHO), so that doesn’t let him off the hook. 
Are the backups eventually run okay? If so, my inclination would be to forget about it.
I, of course, have no idea how big a server farm you might have, and so how much this might be affecting your department. I never have to back up more than one server, so if a backup fails, I, er, run it again.
Well, no, actually the backups are a trainwreck. I’m with you: don’t sweat the small stuff. My role in this organization is to get them out of the ‘small company’ mind set and deliver the IT organization to a global mindset. That starts here at home while I cut my teeth - starting at square one and all that. So that’s the science and mathematics of it. I’ve got to fix backups, so, I’ve got to fix him.
The guy is probably going to be like that forever. The most you can expect is he’ll do his routine work fine, and changes are going to get a knee jerk reaction until he establishes a new routine. It isn’t that he won’t change, just that he will resist change until all is routine again. That’s the nature of this particular beast.
Easy for you to say. But how do I stare ignorance incarnate in the face day-in and day-out without losin’ my shit?
Seriously.
Meet with your personnel manager and employment lawyer to develop a plan to deal with and if necessary dispense with him.