I have to go with the consensus on this one. It doesn’t matter if it’s a civilian workplace. The person in charge has the authority to give orders as long as they’re reasonable and work related.
If, for example, I was working in a grocery store and my manager told me to close down my cash register and stock shelves and I refused, I would expect to be fired for insubordination.
The vast majority of people in this country are employed ‘at will’, meaning they can be fired for any reason or no reason at all, or if their employer says they are insubordinate for any definition of ‘insubordinate’ the employer wants to use. As I mentioned earlier, where cause is needed then insubordination must be defined by policy, but using the dictionary definition which you want to strain past the breaking point is sufficient. If your job includes following orders, or instructions, or requests, or demands, or anything else you want to call it, and you don’t do that, you have no grounds for dispute.
I think it’s your language that is imprecise here.
To use my previous example, let’s say I’m working in a grocery store. My manager can order me to work a cash register, stock shelves, bag groceries and carry them to a customer’s car, mop the floors, etc - any of the stuff that’s part of my job. These are orders and it’s insubordination if I refuse them.
My manager can also request that I drive his car to the car wash when the store is quiet. But that’s not job related. I might agree to do it but I can refuse his request without being insurbordinate.
In Spain there is a main Labor Law, the Estatuto General de los Trabajadores (very creative name: general regulation for workers). It defines insubordinación, how is it different from discussion or from being an argumentative git, and when is it reason for firing.
Different industry sectors or individual companies can have general agreements called convenios. These can further refine the definition, same as they can refine definitions linked to many other items in the EGT. Refusing to stop a machine has very different consequences when that machine is an espresso maker and when it’s a 60-ton reactor.
I once joined a company on the same date as another woman who like me was entering a just-created position and a guy who replaced a very recent hire. The guy he’d replaced had, upon finding out that the Production Manager was female, said “I’m not taking orders from any whores!” The official reason for firing was “did not pass trial period” (less paperwork to file), but both insubordination and insulting a coworker would have applied and would have been valid reasons for direct firing.
Yes, it’s spelled out in those exact words in our employee handbook. I am puzzled why you find this surprising. It’s been pretty standard usage of the word for decades.
I don’t think that’s insubordination; that’s limited to not following the order. Following the order while swearing at the person who gave it would be a separate issue of disrespect, which is also grounds for getting fired.
There are situations where that’s an important distinction. Generally if a police officer tells you to do something you’re allowed to be disrespectful but not insubordinate. If you’re walking down the street and a police officer says “There’s a crime scene on the next block. You have to turn around and go back.” you have to obey his order and he can arrest you if you try to walk past him and go look. But if you turn around and walk away he can’t arrest even if you call him a motherfucker while you’re doing it. (Although in the real world, he might find some other reason to arrest you.)
Your definitions are correct. I think ‘insubordination’ is often used instead of ‘disrespect’ to try to make the offended party seem more objective, and the two acts often accompany each other anyway. It’s may also be that termination is more about the disrespect perceived in the act of insubordination. However it comes about, I’ve been in the position of enforcing “do it or you’re fired” in the workplace. In any environment toleration of insubordination tends to lead to more of it. Anybody who has a legitimate reason to refuse a legitimate direction has better ways to go about it than saying “make me” in the manner of child.
To expand on this a bit - it’s not the level of authority that differs between a military officer and a civilian boss, it’s the scope. The military officer has authority over a subordinate’s life, pretty much. A civilian boss has authority over a subordinate’s work life.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a civilian boss say “…and that’s an order!” but I have had them say “…that’s the way it’s going to be done, now make it happen!”. Either way, I do what the boss says or I risk the consequences - including being fired. Whether it’s an order or request is a mighty fine hair to split.
‘To be sure I was!’ Humpty Dumpty said gaily as she turned it round for him. ‘I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right — though I haven’t time to look it over thoroughly just now — and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents —’
‘Certainly,’ said Alice.
‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t — till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
I suspect that in the military, a random officer or NCO can’t just walk up to any private and give them orders. And I also suspect that the military has plenty of soldiers who are uncooperative, lazy, a troublemaker, a PITA, even defiant almost to the point of requiring formal discipline.
Let me give you an example of civilian world insubordination. A few years ago, I, as a director in a consulting firm asked one of our junior consultants who was unstaffed on a project to take a package to a client across town (a client billable task mind you). He pouted, dragged his feet and made faces until I finally asked him what the fuck his problem was. He replied that he didn’t mind doing me “this favor” but that it wasn’t really “his job”.
That’s insubordination. Someone with management authority (me) gave him a legitimate task to perform and he opted to, while not outright refuse, passive aggressively convey such a negative attitude that it was clear he did not want to do it.
Now this isn’t the military so I couldn’t subject him to military justice or even fire him. But the consequences for this individuals career was that this episode became one more data point in a narrative of insubordination, poor attitude, and incompetence that ultimately led to his firing.
In the civilian world you can be bad at your job or have a bad attitude so long as you are awesome at the other thing. You can’t suck at both.
Good distinction.
Agreed. I think it’s common practice for there to be a written description of what the duties of a job are so there’s no grounds for dispute over whether something is part of your job or not.
There’s the cliche about secretaries being told to get some coffee for their boss. If there’s no formal job description, it’s going to be tough to determine if getting coffee is part of somebody’s job duties or not.
That kind of depends. If you work at KPMG or Accenture or any other consulting firm, the firm can send you traveling 4 or more days a week. They have a say in where you can stay or what you can eat while traveling (subject to the travel policies of the firm / client). Many companies can transfer you to another office in another state or country if they want. Investment banks routinely make their analysts pretty much live at work. I suppose the main difference between a civilian job and the military is you can always quit a civilian job. Of course, unless you are independently wealthy, you presumably need to find another job to replace it. And if the salary and benefits are good enough, that might be fairly difficult to find another job that supports the lifestyle you’ve become accustomed to. We call that “golden handcuffs”.
And as I mentioned, I’m pretty sure that the military is not a hierarchical “free for all” where every captain can just walk around base having subordinates perform any random tasks on a whim. Like in the movies where some character infiltrating a base as a colonel “orders” the guards to just ignore the fact that he or she doesn’t have proper credentials and identification. I have no doubt in my mind that the guards would at the very least escalate it up to their commanding officer. And it seems totally unprofessional to go around making soldiers “drop and give me 50” like they are pledging a fraternity.
Humpty Dumpty is kind of a dick.
Refusal to perform a job would definitely count as insubordination in my book. I had a friend, however, who (according to her account) was written up for insubordination for her behavior at a staff meeting. The principal said she understood some people were unhappy with a recent decision and that she wanted to clear the air and hear the criticisms; apparently when my friend offered those criticisms in public, it turned out not to be what the principal wanted after all, thus the write-up.
I wasn’t there, and this was about a decade ago so I don’t remember the exact details; still, I think sometimes discipline for insubordination can be deleterious to an organization, when it’s used to stifle dissent.
It’s been a while since the training, but from what I remember, insubordination requires three elements.
The first one is the ‘order’. This actually doesn’t have to be an actual order, but can be something in your job description.
The second is the acknowledgement of the ‘order’.
And the third part is the blatant or implied refusal.
I remember the implied specifically because that is what gives a manager the latitude to move forward with an insubordination claim, even if the employee didn’t blatantly say they weren’t going to do something.
One of the examples they used was someone is hired and in their job description, it says they must wash all of the dishes in the break room before going home for the day. In most places, you sign off on your job description stating you will do what it says. which constitutes an acknowledgement of the order.
The supervisor notices that the dishes weren’t cleaned and speaks to the employee. The employee looks at the supervisor with a blank stare, turns around and continues working.
The end of the day arrives and the supervisor notices that the employee has left and the dishes are still in the sink.
The supervisor has grounds to discipline for insubordination because the employee signed off on the job description that said they would do the dishes before leaving for the day and didn’t do it. They are covered even more because they reminded the employee about it. Even though the employee didn’t say anything, it would still be implied that they heard them because the employee was looking at the supervisor when the supervisor told them.
The fact that they didn’t do the dishes even after being reminded would be the third element.
As stated, I may not have all the nuances correct and am not in a position to go look up my training notes, but that is what I remember. They did say that insubordination was one of the hardest things to prove if the case goes to court or something and it was easier to just say that the employee failed to do what was listed in their job description, even after signing the page, acknowledging that they were aware and able to do all things listed.
This is close to what I know of my friend’s sitch. The new CEO has already fired several people for “insubordination,” but he’s really stifling dissent. My friend has worked there for 40 years. He knows his job.
Yes, in any functioning company insubordination is a legitimate reason for firing someone. If you have a company where people can just show up and not actually do the tasks that the person or board running the company wants them to, it’s not going to stay in business very long outside of some really weird situation. The specifics are generally “if you don’t do what your boss tells you to, and HR and his boss don’t have a reason to object to what he told you to do, you can get canned.”
The vast majority of people working in the US are at will, so ‘you’ don’t actually have to prove anything to fire them, you just need to cover yourself well enough against any a claim that you fired them for being part of a protected class or another narrow legal reason. If you’re contesting unemployment, you document “I told Sam to do task X, and Sam refused to do task X. I repeated that I was instructing him to do task X, and he still refused.” I’m not sure what you think ‘you’ would need to do beyond that for proof, or who you’d prove it to.
It’s common practice for the written description to include ‘other duties as assigned’ because a company would have to be idiots not to. In highly negotiated contracts at a union shop you probably have detailed and narrow job descriptions, but that’s not most people’s situation.
How you talk to yourself is up to you- but the difference between a “request” and an “order” is the consequences of saying no. It’s not necessarily the words used - an “order” doesn’t have to start out " I’m ordering you to___".
If someone requests something of me ( for example, covering for them while they take time off ), I am free to say “no”. If my supervisor tells me to do something that’s part of my job ( cover for my coworker who is unexpectedly out sick for a week), I’m not free to say “no”. Depending on the exact circumstances, I may be able to persuade him that my workload doesn’t allow it , but if I can’t , I’m not free to just refuse to do it. And it doesn’t matter if he says “I’m ordering you to”* or “I need you to” - he has directed me to do something and I am required to comply with his directions. And if I don’t, I can face disciplinary action up to an including being fired, depending on the specifics.
Understand, though, “insubordination” isn’t simply not doing your job properly and in a timely fashion. If I tell you I need your TPS report by close of business Wed, and it’s not done on time, chances are it’s not insubordination. “Insubordination” is when something isn’t done and the employee makes it clear through words or actions that it’s a refusal rather than incompetence or forgetfulness or a lack of time. What I think Shodan might have been getting out earlier is an example of this - “that’s a dumb idea you stupid asshole” in itself is not insubordination. But change it to " “that’s a dumb idea you stupid asshole, and I’m not doing it” and then it doesn’t get done- it’s now pretty clear that it was refusal and not something else.
There’s still room for an honest charge of “insubordination” in the cracks of the scenario you (incompletely) describe. If “dissent” means that “I know my job, the boss is trying to change my job is but I disagree”, then that’s actually insubordination. If it’s just “I’m doing my job but I don’t like where this is headed and I’m not afraid to say so”, than “insubordination” is an inaccurate word to use in this context. (But perhaps useful in an HR sense.)