John at the phone company
Imagine that one morning at work you go to use the restroom and you witness an employee break one of the mirrors over the sink. What would you do? You should report it to someone right? That’s company property right? So you think to yourself maybe this was an accident. But what if you see this happen every week? This is apparently no accident. One would think that at some level in the organization somewhere someone might want to know about the destruction of the organizations resources?
I worked for many years as a contractor to the phone company in New York. One of the groups that I supported was Network Engineering. From casual discussion with employees I learned about John. John was a career ending manager. He had some really quirky behavior when dealing with people and terrible communications problems. He would send emails to people ten feet away. Any of the employees assigned to him would leave the company within six months. At one point they had to use contractors as employees had learned about John and refused to work for him.
Employees are the organizations greatest asset right? The mirror was a commodity. It can be replaced in an hour. Network engineers that specialize in telephone networks not so much.
So if you were willing to report the repeated destruction of physical assets why won’t you report the repeated pattern of managers damaging and losing their employees?
Okay. So you did not report that manager because you don’t want to be the one to start a fuss. No one wants to call in Human Resources. But what will you do if this happens to you? Are you going to go away quietly with out saying a word? Everybody knows that if you say bad things about your boss on the way out that you are obviously the problem and you will never get another job. Ever.
So as you suck it up as everybody tells you to and leave quietly with out making a fuss I ask you this: What if Human Resources already knows that there is an issue with this manager? What if you are the sixth person this year to file a grievance against this person and that your call will be the one that makes it no longer something that can be ignored? What if in reality you are more valuable to the organization than the manager as the manager is negligent with organizations most important assets, it’s employees?
If you don’t make the call then in the long run are you not negligent as well? If you made the call would you still have your job? Imagine that you don’t make the call and you leave and one day later someone else makes the call that turns the table. Do you think Human Resources is going to give you a call to make it all better?
I’m thinking that you should make the call.