Give the wheel its grease? Or hammer the nail?

[8 Bit WWBG]

Do you, personally, give in to a squeaky wheel? Or do you make it a point to hammer down nails that stick up?

I see squeaky wheels like nags. Nobody WANTS to give in to nagging, because then the nagger learns that nagging works. But being nagged is annoying.

Its even worse when you are kind of at fault (late on something, perhaps) and the nagger kind of has the right to nag. Some people are so committed to not allowing nagging to work, that they are willing to be even later just to retain control.

I know a lot of it depends on the problem at hand, and who is involved. If the squeaky wheel is a higher up, yeah it probably gets its grease no matter who else has to wait.

But in general... do you give the most prompt attention to the entity that is making the most noise? Or do you put their requests at the bottom of the pile?

[Deleted]

It depends.....if it's a request from my boss it gets attended to right away. If it's from a co-worker it goes on the pile.

[milee]

I try to do the thing that will help me most in the long run. Don't care much about why someone's squeaky or trying to teach them a lesson, just focusing on what will get me the best result.

[busymom]

It depends. If it's a reasonable request, I try & get it done, even if the request is from a "squeaky wheel". If it's just plain whining, it goes in my "to do whenever" pile.

[midjd]

But in general... do you give the most prompt attention to the entity that is making the most noise? Or do you put their requests at the bottom of the pile?

It all depends on the tone

Most of the squeaky wheels with whom I deal are vendors. Our payroll process is incredibly convoluted (gotta keep those government employees from embezzling!) The two projects I manage have maybe 50-60 different vendors, most of whom submit invoices on a monthly basis. Typical turnaround time is a little over a month - every payment has to be approved/entered by half a dozen people.

Some of the vendors squeak a little - they'll email me after about 3 weeks (when I've repeatedly told them it takes 4-5 weeks). For those who are polite, I try to make an effort to get to their claims ASAP just to save myself the trouble of writing another "Your payment will arrive on X date" email. I don't give major priority to anyone based on their level of "squeaking," although I'm more likely to throw extra job opportunities at the vendors who are responsive, personable, and mostly leave me alone

But the ones who try to jump the ladder - email my boss to ask about payment, for instance - or who are abusive/bloviating get the kibosh pretty quickly. We blacklisted one vendor who angrily emailed the head of our agency over a $500 payment. Very pound-foolish, since she had a few projects lined up that would've earned her 100x that amount...

[Deleted]

I give the squeaky wheel the grease.

[hockeygrl]

It depends on the wheel. If it is a fire that needs to be put out now, I'll douse the flames. If it is low priority, I will inform the wheel that I will get to it when I can and then prioritize accordingly. I try to keep people in the loop as far as work progression as much as I can, because I know much I hate it when stuff I need falls into an abyss never to be heard from again.

[Deleted]

Jun 25, 2012 9:57:59 GMT -5 busymom said:

It depends. If it's a reasonable request, I try & get it done, even if the request is from a "squeaky wheel". If it's just plain whining, it goes in my "to do whenever" pile.

[8 Bit WWBG]

Sometimes for me it just depends on my mood, too. If I'm feeling helpful, I'll try to help. If I'm sick of being nagged, (assuming I have a choice) I might just wait until I feel like it.

Squeaky wheels often fail to realize that they are the cause of their own delays. We have cases where one person reports the same problem through three different channels. Each channel begins work and eventually discovers that two other channels are also working on the same problem. So the squeaky wheel disrupted the work of three people, and likely caused it to take much longer to get a response.

[hoops902]

If it's my fault, I'll give into the nagging and take it. It's my own damn fault for causing it in the first place.

If it's not my fault, you can nag, I probably won't hammer you, but I'll probably just ignore you. You'll probably get one notice of where in my workflow your request comes, after that I just hit delete on the email.

[Apple]

It depends on why they are squeaking. One guy whines whenever he doesn't get his way and the bosses have given in nearly every time. He whines about not working overtime, so they let him, and he screws up the job. Then he whines about not getting a "good" job, so they give him one, and he screws it up. This time he screwed it up so bad that the other crews started complaining and it blew up pretty big. After talking to the boss it looks like he won't get any grease anymore--he'll learn to shut up and do the job right, he won't be catered to anymore, or he'll get replaced. Our boss gives tons of chances, but he's about at the end of his patience too.

[Deleted]

I say it depends. There are people who do have legitimate "squeaks" so to speak. Some people become nagging and controlling because they are dealing with a passive aggressive person who uses 'forgetfulness' or subtle sabatoge to act like a 2 yr old and not live up to their responsibilities. I have seen some marriages where the husband simply just literally next to nothing but wipe his own butt and the wife becomes so overwhelmed with responsibilities and becomes a nagging shrew due the stress of carrying this dead weight of a spouse.
On the other hand, i also know some flaming boitches and whiners who complain, gripe and nothing ever suits them and nobody's efforts or abilities are enough to suit them. Those are the folks i ignore and i am not going to be manipulated by their controlling tactics. For those types, i find that being Passive aggressive towards them actually drives them absolutely bats.

[movingforward]

A lot of times I stand my ground, but just caved a minute ago. Without going into too much detail one of our long time vendors just called me to complain about something. It wasn't my fault but he just kept saying over and over again how he has been a long time supporter of ours and he can't believe that we changed this policy, etc. I decided to make an exception and let him slide on the new policy this year but made certain that he knew next year there would be no exceptions. He pays to be an exhibitor in all the trade shows we put on and I didn't want to lose his business.

Gotta do what you gotta do sometimes.

[Sam_2.0]

In my job, I only get the squeaky wheels (its my responsibility to deal with them). If they are out of line, I make sure they get "hammered" - within the appropriate rules & guidelines. If they are in the right, or even in a grey area, I do what I can to fix the situation & go on as quickly as possible.

[Sum Dum Gai]

I can't stand naggers. Other than my wife of course, cause I'm stuck with her. But I make her put out in exchange for putting up with it. I've suggest to a couple people that they have to pay the same price or quit nagging me. It hasn't worked yet... but you never know.

[zdaddy]

I'm in no position to drop the hammer (if things get bad enough I can go to my boss but there's little you can do with annoying customers). So my two choices are either fix the squeaky wheel or put in my Skullcandy earbuds and crank up my iPod.