Work politics, do you CYA or intervene?

[dcmetrocrab]

A bit long, but interesting blog post by thepeoplestherapist, a columnist, author, and psychotherapist in NYC.

Perhaps I am cynical, especially since I see this all the time, but is this not considered a normal form of self-preservation/CYA when you work in a snake pit? I've witnessed some nasty layoffs where people with targets on their heads became work social lepers the week decisions were being made. People steered clear of them to avoid forming an association. In office politics, I've found people only help if it benefits themselves.

What would you do if you were in the client's position? Be the hero or watch them drown? Have you seen this sort of behavior where you work?

Excerpt below, for the rest, go to:
thepeoplestherapist.com/2011/01/26/call-of-the-wild/

Call of the Wild
January 26, 2011 by thepeoplestherapist


I’ll never forget a moment in a wildlife program about Antarctic penguins – I think it was a David Attenborough series.

There were two little penguin parents and a penguin chick.

Then, suddenly, there wasn’t. The chick fell into a crack in the ice.

The little guy squeaked for all he was worth, the parents circled, there was frantic waving of wings – and not a damn thing anyone could do.

Five minutes later – which seemed like several lifetimes – a member of the film crew tore away a chunk of snow and released the chick.

Profound relief for all involved, penguin and human.

But there was a wrinkle. The show’s non-intervention policy had been violated. A voice-over explained that an exception had been made because the film crew may have created the crack in the ice.

Uh, yeah.

I doubt David Attenborough was buying that story.

The truth? You try filming a baby penguin slowly perishing in front of its parents.

One of my clients, a biglaw senior associate, experienced something similar.

The situation: An 8th year associate – not my client – was up for partner. She worked at a branch office of a huge firm. My client was preparing a case for trial, and her team needed help. They sent word to the branch office, which sent the 8th year. She showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but the partner – an unstable sadist – decided on a whim after two weeks that this 8th year was no good. He didn’t tell her to her face. Instead, he mocked her behind her back to the entire team, proclaiming her work product worse than a second year’s, and bragging he’d send her packing to the branch office, where she belonged.

My client watched all this, and felt complicit. She wasn’t laughing, but she wasn’t saying anything either.

It was like watching the baby penguin.

This 8th year had no idea she was the object of ridicule. In fact, she was arrogant – confident she’d make partner. At the branch office she was their pride and joy, and they sent her to the big city to win support for her bid.

That bid was being derailed. One word from the partner to the branch office and Miss 8th year’s aspirations were toast.

There was nothing wrong with the 8th year’s abilities – she just wasn’t used to the level of aggression this partner demanded in his written work. That, and the partner wanted to hurt something small and helpless.

My client’s instinct was to step in and warn the 8th year.

She didn’t.

Maybe the penguin analogy isn’t quite right. This 8th year was hardly a helpless baby penguin – she was a cold-blooded litigator. If she were watching this happen to someone else, she wouldn’t intervene either.

[Deleted]

I enjoyed your penguin analogy, by the way.

I never intervene. For the most part, teachers simply shut the door and do their job. I really don't know what goes on in other teachers' classrooms although I hear some rumors.

For three years, they can fire us because they don't like our eye color. They don't have to disclose a reason and don't. After that, they have to either provide cause or follow a reduction-in-force policy.

I've seen people selected for the kill. It's usually self-selection . . . you know almost from day 1 that they won't make it.

Does anyone else try to avoid co-workers (that you aren't close to) because you KNEW it was going to happen but had no right to "warn" them? It's not like you are their supervisor, mentor, or anything. You just KNEW the behavior wasn't going to fly.

[dcmetrocrab]

I liked the penguin analogy too, although I agree with the author that it's not really apples to apples. And to be clear, I didn't write the blog post. I don't know how to do the colored block quote thingie.

I didn't think I was the type, but I found myself avoiding the walking-dead once they earned that distinction. Sometimes it's warranted, other times, the person was there at the wrong time and happened to say just the perfect wrong thing in front of the right people. The right (moral?) thing to do would be to say something, but I don't think a lot of people do. I certainly found myself incapable of it and was discomforted by the experience.

[cronewitch]

I have a coworker who will be fired in the next few months. We are advertising for her replacement and might hire a temp while we interview. I like the coworker but her work isn't satisfactory and she is doing the best she can. She is getting forgetful and unorganized, I am trying to let her know so she isn't shocked. I call her and want to know how she is doing and where she is on the project she is on then tell her she must get caught up. When I find errors I tell the boss so he can document her failures but I also tell her she is making too many mistakes. She is 64 with 14 years on the same job but seems to be getting dementia work is going down hill fast. I would like her to improve but really don't see it happening and we need the job done. She will be 65 in November so I am trying to get the company to give her COBRA as a retirement gift and call her firing a retirement to save her pride. The boss wants to send her for psychological evaluation to see if she is fit to work. I can't take her side and try to save her job and we will never talk again if we don't work together. I am pretty nice to her in some ways and need to work to learn her job better to train her replacement. Awkward but hope she isn't too shocked when asked to retire .

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Sounds like everyone concerned deserve each other. She's arrogant and condescending towards others, and someone is stabbing her in the back. Match made in hell. I'd leave it alone, and keep my head down in that place as I quietly sent out resumes and/or packed a U-Haul and left in the middle of the night to go start a practice in a smaller, lower cost of living area somewhere I could actually be of service to people at a reasonable price, and still make a decent living.

[Opti]

The eight year law story was interesting. Depending on how I felt about her I might have told her she was being deep sixed by the partner.

[Deleted]

I know the head of the other department I work with is currently on the chopping block since his boss let it slip... but hey I am not the one that is going to run to let him know.

I don't know how he will use that information and might end up putting me on the spot : " Carl told me I might get fired"

I am trying my best to drop hints here and there to let him know he needs to improve his performance, or help him out (under the radar of course) with his assignments or point things out that he needs to do since I know he is a newlywed.

But I will never put myself out there where I could be the one losing my job instead since this information was given to me in total confidentiality.

[busymom]

IMHO once the decision is made to let someone go, even if they start "walking on water", nothing they do is going to be considered good enough to save them. Don't know why the big companies do this, (maybe to them it's sport, or maybe they naively think an unknown replacement is better than a known employee), but I've seen it done over & over again. Very hard to watch, if you know who's next to be fired.

[cronewitch]

I usually agree the sooner the better with firing. If the company doesn't respect your work the best you can hope for is not fired. No hope of promotion or earning respect so a new job might think you are great. My coworker that will be fired soon would benefit for each week she can drag it out. She doesn't have a clue we show her the mistakes and tell her she needs to improve but she feels good about her job. She will be 65 this year so the longer the job can drag out the closer to medicare. We are taking some of her work so we have 4 people helping her and hiring an administrative assistant who's first job will to be cross training into her job. If she can hold out until fall she will be much better off.

[Deleted]

Some people at my current company considered me the walking dead a couple of years ago. My boss wanted me gone and if I wasn't as good as I am I would have been. It wasn't personal, she just didn't want smart people close to her. If you have even the tiniest bit of awareness you know when you're on the hit list because the people that like you do start dropping hints and the ones that don't give you a wide berth. In my case my boss ended up resigning and I got her job. It is really funny to see the dynamics shift. It takes some people a while to catch on they can't treat you the same way any more.

[dcmetrocrab]

Reading the posts, Snerdley's responses brought me back to reality. I got caught up on the baby penguin (mis?)-analogy and feeling sorry for the 8th year who was seemingly picked for dead out of spite. I forgot that in real-life, 1) it's really none of your business, 2) 99% of the time, it won't do a damn bit of good, and 3) if caught, retribution is a b*tch.

I once watched someone who had been popular and well-respected get ostracized after they got tagged for dead. All it took was the VP literally ripping a new one into her proposal in front of all of management. After that, all her work-supporters vanished overnight and avoided her like the plague. 180 degree cold shouldered. She was laid off the very next week. It was incredibly difficult to watch and unbelievably frightening at the same time.

[Deleted]

I've postponed replying on this because it hits close to home. I was downsized 15 years ago (yes, even now it still stings) and I really wish my boss had leveled with me. I got along very well with Executives A, B and C. They ran good departments and the figures their people gave me to generate the numbers I had to do were always correct, on-time and reconciled to the proper sources. With D and E, I'd get crappy numbers, I'd try and work with them (big mistake, but I was raised in the 1950s and good girls didn't push back) and of course I'd end up having to redo them because they were wrong.

I really wish my boss, who was otherwise a good guy, had supported me and told me to refuse to work with numbers from Departments D and E, where they changed the basis of what they did from month to month. I also wish he'd warned me that I had zero credibility with D and E and maybe I ought to look elsewhere. Instead, I was the only one in my department who got thrown under the bus in a downsizing. I got 5 months of severance and had a new job in 6 weeks (with multiple offers) and was elected to the Board of my professional society shortly after I was canned.

I like cawiau's approach- my tactic with confidential information is to keep it confidential, but incorporate that knowledge into my own decision-making. He's doing what he can for the guy without breaking that confidence. I once spent a few days in our North American head office working with a guy 2 levels above me, whom I knew was a lame duck. His replacement had already been interviewed in the Head Office in Switzerland and had accepted the offer. In that case I did nothing. It was gonna happen whether I said anything or not. He wasn't co-operating with his boss, who was a "my way or the highway" guy. He'd been told that over and over and there was nothing I could do that would help.

[kansasflower]

I'll give the "walking dead" the contact information of a headhunter under the guise of: Headhunter A is looking for folks working in your field. Do you know of anyone looking for a new position... My method is indirect, but even if they don't take the hint, at least they have information for a headhunter to find a new job after they are let go.

[cronewitch]

Jan 30, 2011 5:36:55 GMT -5 Lady Gaga Gaga Snerd said:

She will be 65 this year

Has this been a long term employee? If so, I do find it distressful that there is a lack of respect on the part of many employers for the YEARS of service to the company and that if someone is aging and having some difficulties that there is often no consideration for that anymore. And, the notion of allowing someone to wind down their career is not thought of. When I first started working, I do recall some older workers in their final years who were respected for their years of work, but were also given the time to retire and to allow for changes in their work duties, etc.

14 year and we did respect her worth ethic. She for all that time seldom made an error and when she did could quickly fix it. Now she is making lots of errors, doesn't seem to understand what is wrong and asking questions she won't have asked before. She works with invoices and asked me what the sales tax code was, she has known that for decades. Work she gave me on Thursdays doesn't get to me until afternoon on Friday and she only processes what needs to be paid not all the invoices. She keeps files that she needs to finish and bring to us so we can bill customers. Some we finished in September and haven't billed yet. I have called and told her which jobs to work on and sent her emailed list then when I call and ask about the jobs she will ask which jobs. She is turning in work that doesn't reconcile, double posting cost to the jobs while not posting other cost. We have someone going over the files to compare to what is in the computer. She is also totally lost on purchase orders adding lines when they send a invoice for part so the PO ends up nearly double. She made negative POs for a deleted PO but had never done that before. She ended a job with over 70K in negative PO and about the same in excess untrue POs. Figuring out the total cost on the job means going over everything again. The boss is doing it sense she can't see the problem or any clue how to untangle it.

She is a very nice woman but can't do the job and the job needs done. Our boss, me, payroll clerk and receptionist are helping her. I suggested making her receptionist since the job is much simpler but she doesn't have communication skills.

It isn't a matter of lack of respect we just need the job done so will hire another person. We will let her attempt to train but she is so bad at explaining things and now doesn't understand enough. I am writing a manual on how to do her job and trying to extract information but it is like pulling teeth.

[thyme4change]

If I were an outside client, I wouldn't interfere with internal company workings. Why do I need to play politics for your organization? Your internal problems are your internal problems. I would have held it against the partner for being a bad manager and would be concerned about his professionalism.

As far as it happening - I have seen this all over - but I believe at the end of the day that people are responsible for themselves. If they aren't cutting the mustard, they should go somewhere else - either on their own or forcedly. I have done all of the above - kept out of it, warned the employee who was being clotheslined, given advice to them, tried to bridge the gap and spoken to manager who was doing the berating. It depends on the situation. Sometimes I've had management bashing my employees, sometimes I have a unique perspective, sometimes I have been a lower level employee, sometimes I feel I have a duty, sometimes I have a personal relationship with one of the parties. I react appropriately to the situation.

[Artemis Windsong]

Cronewitch: Have the employee in question write the SOP manual and you can review it. The bugs can be worked out in the cross training.

[8 Bit WWBG]

This is why I hate knowing stuff -- especially regarding people I care about. Withholding information can really hurt somebody. But blurting it out can put you in the hotseat, not to mention force someone else's hand out of panic. You can't win because both outcomes hurt someone. Unless you can get the person who told you to do right and tell the other person, you are going to seem like a jerk to someone.

...:::"I don't know how he will use that information and might end up putting me on the spot : " Carl told me I might get fired"":::...

Exactly. With such emotionally charged information, the recipient is bound to explode on the spot and panic, and do something that hurts everyone. Maybe they stay late and copy confidential files.

[cronewitch]

Jan 30, 2011 21:07:30 GMT -5 Artemis Windsong said:

Cronewitch: Have the employee in question write the SOP manual and you can review it. The bugs can be worked out in the cross training.

I asked her to write notes but she won't even look at what I wrote. I took a batch of invoices from her today and tried to enter it in the computer. Trying to tell what on the PO matched the invoice was very hard, the PO doesn't print out he prices. She had put them together and coded them to the jobs but I found major errors in what she had done. I processed most of them but she was closing a PO that was less than half billed to us and the bill had nothing to do with the PO but she is saying it is closed.

Doing it myself is the only way to figure out how it should be done. I roughed out a list of steps and am filling it in. I send her copies for review but she doesn't review them. Tomorrow she will find I accidentally closed POs that needed left open. I don't know what I am doing but I am doing it anyhow. When she whines I will tell her the instructions weren't clear. She has no communication skills I don't think she can write and know she can't explain why she does what she does. Jumping in and trying even with errors will teach more than she could.

[sil]

I've intervened a few times, and Im usually one of the few people who talks with the "walking dead" once the term date is announced (we rarely fire, everything is a planned "lay off" so we'll have office zombies around here for months)

First off, I'd hate to be shunned like that myself. But Im also pretty sure I will someday have the same fate, so being a good friend to the "walking dead" now and keeping them in my network after they have started a new job could help me get a foot in the door for an interview once it's my turn to walk the plank.

My industry is kind of small, and people have big memories. That baby penguin could grow up to be the biggest Emperor on the ice.

[Urban Chicago]

I've had this situation come up, and I agree with those who said there's rarely anything you can do.

Of course, in my industry, you practically have to kill a VP or higher to get fired, so yes, in every case the person being fired did deserve it, and no amount of increased efficiency would have changed that.

[lurkyloo]

At my current job, there was someone fired a couple of years ago but he was warned by the department manager every six months for 2-3 years that he was in danger, and given several months' notice that he was going to be fired and needed to find a new job. Not a surprise to anyone; his output was at least an order of magnitude lower than the minimum acceptable. It's sort of one of the great mysteries of the world what he did all day...certainly wasn't work.

Grad school was another story entirely. I suppose you could argue that not everyone ought to make it through grad school, but towards the end of my tenure there were two cases that really stuck in my craw. First case: one of the other PI's accepted too many grad students into his research group, realized he didn't have enough funding for all of them, and picked one to fail at her second-year orals. I guess she knew going in that it was going to happen (I didn't know her personally, but got the inside scoop from one of her labmates). Second case: my own PI actually recruited a student away from another research group that she'd planned to join, then decided he just didn't like her and also decided to fail her at orals. The group knew it was coming and tried to warn her/advise her...she talked to the PI directly about it, who was too chicken to own up, so she thought she had a chance if she worked really hard. She didn't.

There's something really demoralizing about watching people prepare for a test that a higher-up has already decreed that they will fail.

[Nazgul Girl]

I'm in the opposite boat at my present job. We have about four people who badly need to be fired, but management won't do it due to feeling sorry for the workers being released into the bad economy. I'm sympathetic too, but seeing these yahoos working a little harder would go a long way to making me be more impressed with their plights. I get either the extra burden of the work they can't do, or keep getting their stupid questions over and over. It's great to know that there is a reorganization that will happen in a few months and I will be able to get away from some of them. Or, so I hope.

At my last job, I was the walking dead from the first day I walked in to the office ( thankfully a status I have seldom been in my life ), and I knew it. I hate small, bitchy two-women offices, and only took the job because it was at a nursing home that my unfortunately Alzheimers-ridden mother was going to have to be admitted to. I was going to leave the minute she passed away, and I did. Due to the snide comments and the name-calling, I did only the work that I chose to for the seven months I was there, and because they would not give me a decent typewriter to type the wonderful 3-layer UB92 forms on, plus called me many names(including a dumb c---, which I couldn't believe), I left them with a "happy" pile of crappola to bill and clean up. Usually I leave an extremely clean desk and make a respectful exit, but for the one time in my fifty-two years of life that I was called a dumb c--- (the day after my mother's memorial service ! ), I didn't feel that I was interested in giving them my "best". I may be one thing or another, but I'm not a dumb c--- ! Actually, they're lucky that I didn't call the state on them for some violations that I knew about.

[Deleted]

Actually, they're lucky that I didn't call the state on them for some violations that I knew about.

I'm sorry, NG, that they called you names. But I'm not sure you should be so proud of not calling the state about some of their violations. I know you are thinking you took the high road here, but someone else was paying the price here . . . either the residents in terms of quality of care or their relatives or the state if these were billing violations.

[LlamaLlamaDuck]

I was in a bitchy two-woman office. The General Manager was blindsided by divorce papers-but she absolutely had NO ability to compartmentalize. Envision a drowning person with their arms around your neck - she wanted to "go out for coffee" every day for hours, to relax. The office was a disaster.
Top Dog told me what was coming. When GM saw her replacement coming in for an interview (Top Dog was not subtle at all) she called my home and talked to my BF about what a turncoat I was. So, in addition to doing all her work, I had to defend myself against my BF's emotional accusations. (BF is long gone too.)
What a relief to see her gone.
She was definately in the wrong field. At the wrong time. For the wrong reasons. Last I heard she was back in her field at a level commensurate with her education and training - a definate improvementfor her.