“Beware of the leopard” would have worked for that person.
Snowflake strikes again. We were supposed to have a team outing tomorrow, nothing terribly exciting but we’d get to get out of the office for a little while then have lunch. Today Snowflake sends an email to the team saying [whiny little girl voice]"I hate to do this to everyone but I just can’t be away from my desk that long! I’m so far behind!!! [/whiny little girl voice] So the team leader cancels the outing. If it were up to me, the rest of the team would’ve gone and left Snowflake behind to catch up. There wouldn’t be anyone around for her to socialize with, maybe she could get some work done?
Oh and that months-old carton of milk is still in the fridge. I’m thinking of starting a pool as to when it finally gets tossed.
Dr G, I’m all :mad: at SS for you. Outings are always good, and that dumb bint ruined it for everyone.
I’ve been offering up suggestions about the wasps, E-Sabbath they thought your idea was brilliant.
It escalated today. My minion got stung. We iced his hand and I sent him home (with pay) for the afternoon, then went to the Prez of the company and showed him the bottle of wasps and pics of minion’s swollen hand.
There were guys with stethoscopes listening to the walls an hour later.
This is totally unacceptable, we are office workers and shouldn’t need to worry that we will get stung if we put our hands in the wrong places.
Not trying to offend people who do work in places where they might get stung by bugs or bit by snakes or eaten by wild pigs. Those jobs are dangerous, we are file room clerks, we didn’t sign up to get stung by wasps.
I would like to pit “the usual”.
New job, back then. “You’ll have to run HPLC” “what solvent and settings do you use on the HPLC?” “oh, the usual” “I doubt your usual is the same as the usual of the last place where I ran HPLC. Could you please give me the details?”
New job, now. “How do I connect from home?” “Use this VPN and this config file.” “Anything else I need to know, any manuals…?” “Nah, just use that.” VPN in place, config files in place, been going back and forth with one of the techies trying to connect for over one hour. But hey, it’s billable 
specially since part of the reason I’m so keen on connecting rather than going for a walk like I’d planned to is that the boss wants to have today, Friday, something which the person who needs it had requested for Tuesday.
Me (yesterday): Notices someone was given ‘temporary’ access without authorization. Has it revoked immediately.
DBA (today): Oh, can you leave that? Their access wasn’t being approved fast enough and they really needed it.
Me: Ok, so you completely violated security policy and ignored documentation saying “this is NEVER authorized, contact Chimera if you have any questions” in order to do this? (CC: a bunch of people who might be interested in that sort of thing)
Everyone involved is Out of the Office today. Next week should be interesting.
I detect bovine end product intersecting the air circulation device early Tuesday morning.
I recomend beverage of choice and poping popcorn. Always a fun show.
Also recomend removing access of moron who can’t read security rules also.
Know any domain administrators who can change their background to eye-strain inducing colors not found in nature and locking it down?
He’s one of the DBAs, so that’s not going to happen. His manager is pretty much a non-factor too. I have no idea what that person actually does at the company, because it doesn’t seem to involve any actual management of DBAs. But it will come down the pipeline to Knock That Shit Off and There’s A Reason You’re Not Allowed To Do That.
Oh, and even with most of the office out today, I managed to ‘emergency’ process the proper access within about a 2 hour window by contacting all the right people and asking them to do their steps RIGHT NOW. Which is why the written procedure says very clearly “Contact [Chimera] if you have any questions”.
I tried to tell her this numerous times during the conversation; she just didn’t want to hear it. Kind of like another customer service rep who didn’t want to hear it when I told her that a part couldn’t ship because of questionable material test results (“But what are you going to do about it?”*), or the customer service rep who doesn’t understand why any date in August is an unreasonable ship date for a large, complex assembly that hasn’t been ordered yet.
Awesome rant, Missy2U!
- We don’t exactly have a state-of-the-art lab on site; plus, all of our results have a slight margin of error. If the composition isn’t so far off from the specified standard, it’s possible to perform an engineering evaluation to determine that the material meets the specified standard. But if the composition doesn’t even come close to an expected standard, there’s not much I can do besides either rejecting the part or have a chat with the OEM to find out if their standards have changed.
“I could falsify the results for you, if you like, and let you take your chances on the part exploding while you’re installing it; would that be satisfactory?”
I wouldn’t ever offer something like that, even as a joke. What if the person you are talking to is a moron who is immune to sarcasm??
At best you lose face for backpedaling, at worst you get reported to some higher power and get in Big Trouble with TPTB.
One of my coworkers is getting married. “Right now”, sort of: the paperwork got shuffled last Saturday, but the celebration with friends and family will be next weekend. He’s going to be away for almost two months, so he’s had to push real hard with his part of the project, and he’s done a real good job of getting everything set so most of what needs to be done on his part is documented and we know who to ask if we get questions.
The boss pointed it out this morning before leaving for the day (our boss covers several teams and we’re all on location, so he comes and goes), prompting several hours of the youngest coworkers occasionally saying “ooooh Roooooobb-biiiiie, you’ve done such a goooooood job! Oh Roooobb-bieeeeeee!” Several of the older folk (mind you, I’m talking mid-40s to early-30s, not 60s to teens) pointed out that Robbie really has done an impressively good job.
It didn’t stop until I said “you know, it’s actually pretty sad that we’re so unused to praise that when it comes we need to turn it into a joke. He has done a great job.” For some reason that finally drove it home, but really? Are these idiots so fast to envy that it’s their instinctive reaction when someone else gets deserved praise?
I’m usually too blunt on those.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. I’m going to wait for it to be done properly, and so are you.”
I’ve walked you through user setup over the phone. We’ve done go-to-meetings. I take screenshots. I document what I do. I send you manuals. I send you simplified and stripped down ‘just the basics’ how-tos. I don’t know what more I can do besides physically find you and press your fingers down on the appropriate keys. I learned how to do it so clearly it doesn’t take much brainpower, you know.
who was it that posted about putting up the Velociraptor free workplace sign? You are now a Facebook legend. one of my facebook friends has posted your sign. 
I am a frontline supervisor for a county government agency. I have been doing this for a relatively short period of time (2 years) and prior to this experience, probably would be ranting about obtuse bosses or incompetent peers. This job has really opened my eyes on a macro level. I have a few employees who are rock stars (do what is expected of them, and then some, while showing up every day and on time). And then I have the rest. People who feel that they shouldn’t be held accountable for the assigned work that they fail to do, or for the huge errors they make on what they do manage to complete. People who do not take one scrap of a tiny morsel of personal responsibility for their work (if they don’t know how to do it, it just doesn’t get done, until weeks or even months later when the client calls me to complain… Then, in the ‘no accountability’ zone, I am indignantly informed that they don’t know how to do it… Never seems to occur to anyone, ever, that it may be their responsibility to ask for help). People who burn through sick time the nano second that it is earned, and then expect to use last-minute vacation time when the sick time is gone (and file union grievances if not granted at 8:05 a.m. when scheduled start time was 8). People who complain, in or near tears, about the most petty issues imaginable, instead of trying to resolve disputes reasonably and with the bare minimum of proactive communication skills. People who think I’m blind or stupid to the fact that they never, ever seem to be on the phone (because they are riding their do not disturb buttons and since they never return calls until I receive the complaints and direct them to do so) or that I can’t see them hunched over their desks finger surfing their wireless devices. People who come to me seeking answers to the most basic of questions, then get indignant when I nicely suggest they research the issues FIRST, come up with possible solutions, and then ask for my advise, rather than for me to do their jobs for them. I do hold my staff accountable, to the extent that I am able, union issues and woefully lacking culture of accountability from the top down (though that is slowly changing for the better). When I call a staff member into my office for a difficult discussion, I have already done my homework and I am already aware of what the problem is (I do need to know the ‘why’ and what I can do to assist). I would be so pathetically grateful if just once an employee said “you know, you’re right - I am behind. I will correct that immediately.” Instead, what I usually hear are excuses, highlighting a lack of personal accountability… Buck passing… Angry tears and passive-aggressive hostility (how dare I expect work get done when Timmy fell down a well and mom died for the second time last Tuesday) or worse of all … An obtuse refusal to believe there is any problem at all. My world view is changing. I find myself reading many if these stories with a healthy degree of skepticism. Work exists, it must get done, and if Worker Bee can’t come in for the third time this month because Little Timmy (home from falling down that well) bit little Jimmy at daycare and can’t go back… The work STILL has to get done, and the rock stars who ARE at work are tired of doing their work and other people’s work. If they aren’t in my office complaining, they are looking elsewhere for another job (while thinking what an incompetent moron I am for not holding slackers accountable… They can’t know what goes on behind the scenes and I don’t blame them for their frustration). Everyone has strengths and development needs, myself included. I can work with people who behave with personal integrity and who hold themselves accountable for what they do… Even as they make mistakes (just as I do). But I don’t see this employee often enough. And yes, I do hear Absentee Annie griping about what an unmitigated bisnatch I am because I demanded a doctors note for little Timmy’s latest head cold. Of course, the whole story is never told… But, Fake FMLA Franny… Your coworkers may be too nice to openly tell you (they whine to me, though) but they already know the parts you aren’t telling. Anyone with a pair of eyeballs can see what is really going on.
If you allow this situation to continue, it won’t be only the bad employees who are slackers!
Re-read your first line: ‘I am the supervisor’. So supervise!
Put explicit, written expectations for employees, and hold them to meeting those. The ones who don’t, enact consequences. Put them on probation, with a written ‘improvement plan’ and regular meetings to review progress. And follow through, and fire them.
There is no reason that your good workers should have to carry the load for the slackers. I assure you, they know they are doing it, and resent it, and feel resentment (or contempt) toward you for allowing it.
You will be hated & reviled for this – by the slackers. Who cares? The good employees will approve, and will spread the word around the office. Often, the slackers will find ways transfer to other positions under other supervisors – good riddance. In this economy, there are plenty of hard-working people looking for jobs. You will also find workers from other departments who want to transfer into your group to replace them – and those will often be the best workers, the ‘rock-star’ ones. If the whole agency has this culture of non-accountability, there are many frustrated good workers under other supervisors. They will be glad to hear of a supervisor who makes every employee do their job, and will want to work for that supervisor. The slackers will drift away, the good ones will come to replace them, and eventually you will have a whole rock-star department!
Note that the slackers will resist as much as they can. They will file complaints, grievances, etc., so it is very important for you to study the HR rules and follow them closely, carefully, documented in writing. And be absolutely fair and equal in treating employees – when a rock-star employee asks for vacation time at the last minute, or calls in sick, treat them the exact same way.
A lot of this requires that you have objective data on employees – how many cases are they handling, how many calls are they returning, how long do they take to return calls, process cases, etc. You should be able to expect all workers to show similar productivity under such measures. Much of this data should be available to you now; you need it to supervise. (Though in an agency with a culture of non-accountability, they may not bother about such data much. Or even tell you it’s available.)
For example, the phone system should be able to give you statistics on how much time each worker spends with the do-no-disturb button sending calls to voicemail. Compare that time between your rock-star workers & the slackers. Then call meeting, state that there have been complaints from customers about being able to get through to workers, and announce that you are setting a performance metric of a maximum x hours per week of do-not-disturb time. (Or have the group discuss it, and they come up with that number.) Then enforce that.
This can be hard to do, especially in an agency with a culture of non-accountability. And government agencies are legendary for that. (Not that big business is much better.)
I was a ‘good’ employee in a department like this (also a county government agency, by the way). In much if the agency there was a pretty lackadaisical attitude toward getting work done. Then our group got a new supervisor, and she really changed things. We each met with her, discussed our projects, and set specific goals & expectations. Then she seriously followed up on those. (Most of us liked the idea that we now knew what specifically we should be working on, what the priorities were, and what was expected of us.) But the slackers didn’t.
Within a year, she had fired 5 of them (including one with 20+ years, at a government agency). Actually, only one was fired, the others resigned or transferred elsewhere. And they were replaced by great employees, really good ones from other departments transferred into our group. To the extent that other supervisors accused her of ‘cherry-picking’ their best people. Within a couple of years, it was a really happy, supportive place to work. And we were getting about twice as much work done as some other groups. Enough that several customers in the county were asking (demanding) that their critical projects be assigned to our group. That’s a very enjoyable feeling.
[P.S. Paragraphs would sure have made your OP much easier to follow.]
First, thanks for your very well-articulated response. Second, my apologies for no paragraph breaks. I was using my iphone and am woefully ignorant about many of its functions.
I was ranting for the general sake of ranting, as I am very frustrated by what I see as an overall general lack of accountability. That doesn’t mean that I cannot or do not hold my workers accountable – just that I cannot share with those who are carrying unequal burdens that I am utilizing progressive discipline, have put low performers on improvement plans (and then spent countless hours documenting, providing additional training - that, of course, the rock stars had to carry out, tweaking, meeting with the problem employees, etc). I review stats weekly, inform workers that I am doing so, and meet with those who are not meeting the standard. It matters to me, because we aren’t manufacturing widgets – my agency provides a service that can have a very real impact on people’s lives. It also matters because it’s just the right thing to do.
Government agencies are notoriously slow to act, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t. I get really good support from my management team. We want to change things. We are constricted by very traditionally and narrowly defined HR policies (fear threats of lawsuits to an irrational degree, in my opinion) and moreso by a strong worker union. Example: an employee who abuses sick time. I documented her Monday-Friday patterns of calling in. I met with her and explained the glaringly obvious problem, consequences for continued behavior, started requiring doctors notes for all absences (even for just a few hours), etc. She stopped calling in sick and started calling in with emergencies that wouldn’t require a trip to the doctor’s office (and a copay for good measure). One notorious reason was car breakdown. The second time she used this excuse, I asked for documentation from a car repair shop. Of course, her boyfriend fixed it for her. Of course. I told her that she needed a backup plan and that I would no longer allow “car broke down” as a reason for not coming to work. A few weeks later, she called in with … yep … car broke down. As a disciplinary tool, I refused to allow her to use vacation time. She grieved that, and will probably win (since the union contract stipulates that employees may use vacation time at their request). Aside from firing her, which is a cumbersome and risky process – since, of course, she has years of satisfactory performance reviews (another huge problem, supervisors who cannot or will not hold marginal to appallingly bad employees accountable for whatever reason – usually because they are marginal themselves) and terminating an employee for absenteeism is surprisingly difficult in a government agency, so long as it is not FLAGRANT absenteeism, such as catching a “sick” person at a second job/sporting event, etc.
I’m not complaining… I work for the government, and it is what it is. It is my job to find ways to work within the system, and as I mentioned, I am fortunate to have supportive management.
I wish I could make it transparently obvious to my good staff that I am trying to hold everyone accountable to the same standard. I have already lost a few good people (and fortunately, quite a number of marginal people who simply bid elsewhere as soon as it became obvious that I was paying attention). Just a few bad apples can make things incredibly difficult for all … including the amount of time and effort it takes for me to document performance issues and have those extremely unpleasant meetings (which is of course part of my job).
Anyway, my rant was more about how surprising it has been to me, sitting on the other side of the desk and realizing that there are so many people who just don’t care about doing so much as just an ADEQUATE job (and I’d be fine with just that much output), or who are shockingly unaware of their own performance deficiencies and extremely defensive about them. To me, if a worker is 30 days behind on processing paperwork, and a client isn’t getting a benefit he/she is entitled to, and my phone is ringing off the hook with angry clients who say that worker never calls back/never answers the freaking phone in the first place … HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM. I’d give huge, heaping kudos to a worker who would just acknowledge that and commit – with my assistance!! – to making improvements. Instead, most of the time, what I hear are excuses. And from my younger staff, many of those excuses revolve around their personal lives, and they don’t seem to get that while I may have all the empathy in the world for whatever traumatic events they’re sobbing to me about … there is STILL, at the end of the day, work that needs to get done.
I hope you aren’t spending all of your meeting time with “the bad apples.” You said that you wish you could make it perfectly transparent to everyone that you are trying to hold everyone to the same standards. Have you met with your rockstars to let them know how much you appreciate what they do, that you are happy with their work and that they are meeting and/or exceeding your expectations. Have you documented same in their employee evaluations?
If I’m told that I’m making a difference, that I’m doing a good job, and I know that what I do matters and is noticed I am more likely to continue to do so. I am also smart enough to know if the boss is noticing what I’m doing right, s/he’s also noticing what is not working with me or with others.
Do you have a culture of praise in public, scold in private? Do you acknowledge the things that go right in open meetings? I assume you do your corrections/interventions in private.
I know you are venting here ‘cause, you know, can’t at work. But do not be surprised if your rockstars and your slackers both already know that the times they are a-changin’.
Cheers,
-DF
I really try to be encouraging, and to offer freely what few incentives are available to me. I also praise them to my manager, and let them know that I am doing so. But realistically most of my time is dedicated to tracking and holding slackers accountable. In between never-ending committee meetings.
I was not a rock star employee and my saving grace, looking back, is that I knew it. Doing my work correctly was important to me. It weighed on my conscience if I failed to complete a task, if that meant someone would go without food or lose shelter. But I did only what was required of me, and very little else. I didn’t volunteer to help others, or join work groups, or do much at all to differentiate myself. I am honest with myself and others about my shortcomings (those that I am aware of) and looking back, realize that I had a good relationship with my supervisors - those who were enthusiastic about promoting me - in large part because I did not flinch away from development feedback. If I knew it was accurate, I accepted it, and made reasonable changes. I used to think that this was just normal, adult behavior. It’s not. It is rare, from what I see now. I’ve mentioned before how grateful I would be just to have a staff member acknowledge shortcomings and make an effort to address them. Seriously. My opinion of the employee would warm and I’d be more inclined to flexibility and extending benefit of the doubt.
I am a better supervisor than I was line staff, but I know that I make a lot of mistakes. I’ve jumped to conclusions, not always communicated in the most constructive ways. I still struggle with what I should let go of vs make an issue of. And I have a lot of difficulty with delegating. I am learning. When I’ve made a mistake that I’m aware of, I apologize and try not to make it again. I am far more empathetic than I probably appear here, even with my struggling employees. I know that what I see is only one aspect of who they are. And some of my worst employees are observably very nice people. But the work matters to me. That guides every decision that I make.
I swear to GOD if the bitch in the office next to me doesn’t get rid of that asinine whistling ringtone on her cell phone and will go insane and take her with me!
She knows it irritates the crap out of people, but she is under the delusion that people are just playfully giving her a hard time about it. No, you brain-dead moron, we can’t stand listening to it at post-scorch decibels! Or at this point, the first two notes, even softly, send me into a homicidal rage.
She is so painfully stupid that even after working her more than five years, she has no idea about some basic terminology of the place. And that’s just the launchpad of her ineptitude.
Help meeeeeeeeeeeeeee.