In this overly litigious day and age, there aren’t many workplace acts left that are so over the line that they qualify as drop-dead, you’re-fired-on-the-spot, no-additional-proof-needed offenses.
In fact, there’s only one that readily comes to mind as I think back over a long career of managing far too many people who seemed hellbent on doing something stupid that would get them canned. You know what I’m talking about—it’s taking a punch at someone while on the job.
Generally speaking, people who get physical with other people in the workplace lose their job, and usually pretty quickly. And, that’s what is probably going to happen at The Washington Post, where a longtime editor recently blew his cool over a story and came to blows with a reporter who called him something incredibly vulgar that I can’t repeat here.
According to Washingtonian.com, “Details are sketchy, but numerous witnesses report that veteran [Washington Post] feature editor Henry Allen punched out feature writer Manuel Roig-Franzia on Friday. The fracas took place in sight of Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli’s office. Brauchli rushed to separate the two. It should be noted that Allen is nearly 70, but he served in the Marines in Vietnam. He also won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for criticism. Both apparently came into play when Allen jumped Roig-Franzia.”
Gentle readers will need to read the Washingtonian version (or this report from the Washington City Paper) to get the full flavor of what was said and the circumstances that led up to the comment and fistfight, but it’s safe to say that the altercation is a reflection of the pressures people are feeling in their jobs during these uncertain times.
“Hooray that there is still enough passion left somewhere in a newsroom in America for violence to break out between colorful characters in disagreement over the quality of a story. … Newsrooms used to be places filled with interesting eccentrics driven by unreasonable passions—a situation thought of as ‘creative tension’ and often encouraged by management in eras when profits were high and arrogance was seen not as a flaw but a perquisite of being smart and right. Sadly, over the years newsrooms have come to resemble insurance offices peopled by the blanched and the pinched and the beetle-browed; lately, with layoffs thought to be on the horizon, everyone also behaves extra nicely to please the boss.”
I’m old enough to remember the era that Weingarten writes about. I experienced it as a very junior editor at the old Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, a long-dead Hearst newspaper that was well-known for such eccentric and passionate newsroom behavior.
I saw fistfights in the newsroom and at the watering hole we called a bar that was just across the street, people falling-down drunk on the copy desk, and all sorts of other behavior that was casually ignored back then but that would get you quickly canned now.
It was colorful, it was fun, but mostly, it was all fueled by the intense passion people had for their work. This is what Gene Weingarten remembers, and it is an era that, for better or for worse, is long gone.
Today, passion in the workplace is defined as work that you find incredibly meaningful or challenging (known now as employee engagement), and managers are all for more of that, but they tend to draw the line at having so much passion for the job that it pushes you to punch someone in the nose.
Back in the days that Weingarten and I remember, passionately defending your work was viewed as a good thing, not something that you worried about losing your job over. Managers back then were more concerned about channeling that passion back into improving the work, and HR was only consulted when the situation got so out of hand that the line manager couldn’t control it anymore.
So, there’s almost something retro to reading about fisticuffs taking place in a major American business over part of the job that people are passionate about. Unfortunately, passion like this gets you fired today, and HR is involved at the first hint of trouble and to make sure all the legal bases are covered so no one, least of all the company, gets sued.
So it goes in the American workplace, circa 2009. You be the judge of whether that’s good or bad.
Dealing with bullies in the workplace is one of those management topics that never seems to grow old, mainly because bullying behavior is probably as old as the workplace itself.
According to the AP, “Moira Cameron—a veteran of long military service—was named a warder at the Tower two years ago. Hers was supposed to be a happy story about how a bastion of male supremacy could become a place where women, too, could serve queen and country. [But] on Monday, embarrassed Tower officials conceded that Cameron had apparently been subjected to a campaign of bullying and harassment conducted by some of her resentful male colleagues. They said two male warders have been suspended and a third is under investigation for suspected harassment of Cameron.”
What constitutes bullying in the ranks of the British Beefeaters? Britain’s Sun newspaper reported that “Cameron’s uniform had been defaced and … nasty notes had been left in her locker.” In addition, the newspaper said that Cameron’s entry in the online encyclopedia known as Wikipedia had been defaced as part of the campaign against her.
I’m sure that it was tough being the first woman to join an all-male group like the Beefeaters, but Moira Cameron seemed to be a great choice to break the gender barrier given that she had served in the British military for more than 20 years, with stints in both Cyprus and Northern Ireland, and, because she doesn’t seem willing to take too much crap from anyone.
“I’ve had some comments,” she said early in her tenure as a Beefeater. “ I had one chap at the gate one day who said he was completely and utterly against me doing the job … I said to him, ‘I would like to thank you for dismissing my 22 years’ service in her majesty’s armed forces.’ ”
It will be interesting to see how the British deal with this incident—who handles HR issues for the Beefeaters, anyhow?—especially since the decision to bring women into what had long been an all-male bastion like the Beefeaters must have been made at a very high level by people who knew the potential for something like this to happen.
Dealing with bullies is always tricky, as we noted here at Workforce.com in this article on “Tips for HR: Dealing With Workplace Bullies,” mainly because “the HR professional must be able to distinguish a bully from an earnest but perhaps difficult or even troubled supervisor.”
It’s hard to imagine anyone being earnest about the abuse being directed toward Beefeater Moira Cameron, but I suppose that’s possible. What is clear, however, is that every manager must be prepped and ready to handle bullies in the workplace because it is a problem that is never, ever really going away.
Bullying, unfortunately, seems to be one of those quirks of human nature that you can’t stamp out. And no matter how much you do to solve the problem in your own workplace, I guarantee that it will pop up again when you least expect it—even at the Tower of London.
According to The New York Times’ college sports blog, “The university announced Monday that Locksley had been reprimanded for punching Jonathan Gerald, the team’s wide receivers coach, before the Lobos’ 37-13 loss to Air Force on Sept. 19. Gerald, who is known as J.B., has been on leave and missed Saturday’s 20-17 loss to New Mexico State.”
No one knows exactly what caused the fisticuffs, but New Mexico’s terrible 0-4 start this season may have factored into it. Coach Locksley has apologized for his actions (To wit: “I apologized to Coach Gerald, the coaching staff and our team for my poor judgment. I would also like to apologize to Lobo fans. Like I remind our players, when mistakes are made, you acknowledge them and deal with the consequences.”), but it looks like he will remain on the job for the time being despite his actions.
As I’ve written before, violence has no place in the workplace, and getting physical with a boss or co-worker is usually a surefire way to get fired in any universe. That’s what I thought was true, but now I would amend that statement and add, “unless you are a head football coach at the collegiate or professional level.”
“Boeing’s main white-collar union said … that the company’s plan to cut a generous education perk can’t be applied to its members without negotiations,” the Seattle Times reported, although it looks like the aerospace giant is going to fight with the union about that.
“The [Boeing] company, while acknowledging that union members will retain the benefit for now, said it does want the new restrictions that it’s imposing on college-course subsidies for nonunion employees to apply equally to union members, too,” the Times story said. That’s because “the benefit is not written into most of Boeing’s labor contracts,” according a company spokeswoman, and “whether Boeing can impose the change against the union’s will appears to be a gray area.”
I’ve dealt with unions over items not in the actual labor contract, and it is a marvelous little thing called “past practice,” which generally refers to a labor practice “that has been recognized and accepted by the parties and used several times in the past.”
Boeing management asserts that most of the company’s union contracts “include no specific reference to the [educational reimbursement] program but only a general clause stating that Boeing cannot impose benefit changes ‘without at least sitting down with the union.’ ” Boeing management plans to do that, they say, but the fact that this was all announced before the big sit-down gives you a pretty good clue as to where this is all going.
I’m all for educational benefits, and there’s no doubt that this is a great perk that has benefited a great many Boeing workers over the years, as I’ve seen firsthand. But, it may just be a perk that’s unsustainable in this severe and turbulent economic environment. Here’s hoping that Boeing and its unions can get together and discuss this in the context of how to help the company to succeed and get through this recession. That would be a win-win negotiation both sides could be proud of.
Hey, Management Guy! Given how tough the economy is these days, there’s lots of built-up tension in the workplace. Lots of tension frequently fuels lots of emotion, and sometimes it makes you want to just pound someone. That makes me wonder: Is there ever a circumstance where it is appropriate to take a punch at a co-worker?
This just goes to prove what the Management Guy has always said: Violence has no place in the workplace, and getting physical with a boss or co-worker is usually a surefire way to get fired in any universe.
That’s why it will be interesting to watch what happens with the National Football League’s Oakland Raiders, because just this week, there are reports that two coaches got into an altercation that ended up with one coach punching out the other.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “If you asked some other folks with knowledge of the incident, they’d tell you that it was [head coach Tom] Cable who clocked defensive assistant Randy Hanson earlier this month, a punch that sent him to the hospital.”
No one in Oakland is talking much about this incident—head coach Cable simply says, “It’s an internal issue that we are dealing with, and that’s all I’m going to say”—but the last time I checked, having one coach punch out another doesn’t make for a winning workplace culture, even in the NFL. In fact, the Chronicle points out that “any assault or battery by an NFL employee, including a head coach, could be deemed a violation of the league’s personal conduct policy and result in a fine and/or suspension.”
Yes, the NFL is a tough, violent place, and yes, the Oakland Raiders have a strange way of doing things, but having coaches resort to fisticuffs to settle their differences? That’s probably too much even for the Raiders.
It’s possible that no one will get fired over this incident, but that just speaks to the peculiar nature of the Raiders in particular and professional sports in general, because in most workplaces, putting your hands on another worker usually guarantees you a quick trip to the unemployment office, as the former CEO of Home Box Office found out.
So take it from the Management Guy, who knows a thing or two about these matters: Thumping the boss or jerk co-worker may be a workforce fantasy for many, but like most fantasies, it is one best left unfulfilled.
Are guns at work ever a good idea? Most sensible people would quickly say no, but good sense sometimes gets sidetracked, as it recently did in Florida.
Earlier this week, Gov. Charlie Christ signed a bill “that will allow Florida residents to keep guns locked in their cars at work.” The new law doesn’t take effect until July, and will likely be challenged in court, but according to a story in The Miami Herald, “Under the new law, businesses cannot prohibit employees or customers from keeping a legally owned gun locked inside their cars, as long as the owner has a permit to carry a concealed weapon.”
Businesses in Florida are worried—rightly, I think—that letting workers have easy access to firearms in the workplace is not a good idea. In fact, both the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Retail Federation have hired legal counsel to sue the state over the new law.
“In the past, deranged employees who wanted to mow down their boss and colleagues had to drive all the way home to fetch their guns. It was the waste of a perfectly good lunch hour, not to mention the gasoline,” he added. “Soon, however, any simmering paranoid with a concealed-weapons permit will legally be able to take his firearms to work. If a supervisor rebukes him for surfing porn sites, or a co-worker makes fun of his mismatched socks, he can simply stroll out to the parking lot and retrieve his Glock or AK-47 (or both) to settle the grievance.”
I can see Hiaasen’s point, and it hits home to me because I used to work with a guy who did a lot of hunting who just happened to carry his rifle in the trunk of his car—that he drove to work. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he could get angry and scary on occasion, and that’s not a good combination for someone packing heat in their car.
My guess is that Florida’s new gun legislation, dubbed the “Disgruntled Workers’ Speedy Revenge & Retaliation Law” by Hiaasen, will get held up for a few years, or more, as the courts work it out. Maybe more sensible heads will prevail in the end—at least I hope so. But I’m not holding my breath. After all, Florida is a state where many people still haven’t figured out how to vote. And that doesn’t give me confidence that they will figure out why guns in the workplace just makes no sense at all.
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