Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 3, 1991 TAG: 9103010758
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: E-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SUSAN HARTE COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
So it is that, after a bit, those who manage other people in offices are acquainted with the pouters and the barracudas; they know the scent of the sloth and the insurgent. They've heard the malcontents, suffered the whiners, brooked the prima donnas and outmaneuvered the power-hungry.
Despite all that toughening up, bosses still wearily rattle off one or two dozen behaviors they find eternally trying.
For Dennis Farley, it's gossip, likened to the cacophony of a chicken yard at feeding time. "By the time the fifth person gets the story, it's blown all out of proportion," complained the manager of a Skeeter's restaurant in Kennesaw, Ga., with 60 full-time and part-time employees.
"There's gossip about the business and about fellow employees - who's not carrying the load, who was rude to a customer," he said. "Gossip doesn't instill the virtue of teamwork, and that's what makes a restaurant."
But isn't it sometimes useful to collect intelligence from employees?
Farley and other bosses are ambivalent. Done by one person with one motive, it's tattling. Done by another for a nobler reason, it's considered appropriate.
"It's difficult to know the right way to react sometimes," Farley said.
"I'm dealing with 20-odd people per day and 20 different personalities. A supervisor is expected to know the right cords to pull on each one of them," he said. "You're often dancing on eggshells. You could say something that's fine with one person and completely inappropriate for another."
Normer Adams, administrator of the Christian City Children's Home in Union City, Ga., said managing disparate personalities has to do with establishing and maintaining boundaries.
"Every employee wants to know how far the boss can be pushed," he said. "Usually, if you can set it down clearly at the first incident, you don't have problems in the future."
Still, Adams said, in non-profit organizations - especially those with a religious orientation - there tend to be exaggerated occurrences of certain attitudes and habits.
"They'll be the best people in the world - dedicated, loyal and giving," he said. "Yet sometimes the theology of grace doesn't work very well in a real world of work."
According to Charles Militana, director of Arthur Andersen's benefits consulting practice, some underlings are molded straight from Iago, the Shakespearean villain who orchestrated the downfall of Othello.
"I've seen employees actually give managers information they know is incorrect to see if the manager is astute enough to catch it," said Militana.
He's a great believer in using employee assistance programs to defuse various kinds of destructiveness in people. But subordinates can be a canny lot, and Militana perhaps has yet to stumble on this - a person who uses an employee assistance program to pummel the boss.
"Every time I have to straighten this individual up about her work habits, she runs into counseling," said a manager who declined to give her name. She works for a Fortune 500 company in Atlanta.
This boss is being masterfully manipulated.
"It's designed to make me feel guilty, and to make it appear that I'm the cause of her distress. Meanwhile, she keeps on with her bad habits and never has to change them. She's running this show."
Another supervisor is fed up with the Molly Martyr in her department.
"She has lots of problems. She's always being `put upon.' She comes in with a sad face, and there are a lot of baleful looks and deep sighs. Papers will be jerked up, or thrown down."
Subordinates who make co-workers suffer for their moods are not adored by managers.
"It's always something," says one boss, "why they can't get to work, stay at work or do the work. Well, if everything's going to be, `Oh, I can't do this or that,' what's the use of coming in?"
According to Militana, the concept of "progressive discipline" is made to order for such operators.
"Discuss the problem, and document it," he advised. "Say, `These are the standards for this job and this is how you're going to be measured.' "
And, Farley would add, adjust to the fact that, no matter what you do, words that will make one employee chuckle will make another burst into tears.
Adams would simply recommend keeping a firm hold on your own humanity.
"You see all these animals. But you see yourself in every one of them," he said. "I have to catch myself, or I'll act like the `benevolent tyrant.' "
That's the individual who, in Adams' lexicon, makes the big sacrifice but expects to get his own way in the end.
by CNB