Is a Good Employee Someone Who is Not a Bad Employee?

The Workplace Attitudes Test is designed to screen out people who have a propensity to be disruptive in the workplace. I refer to these people as “turkeys” or “jerks.” They are disruptive all out of proportion to their numbers. An assumption underlying the Workplace Attitudes Test is if you avoid hiring problem employees you will ipso facto hire good employees.

But we can turn this upside down and ask what constitutes a good employee? You say you demand a better definition than “A good employee is someone who is not a bad employee.” Well, I’ll take a shot.

A good employee is one who is not disruptive. Not good enough? You say you want something more proactive? How about this, a good employee is a person who is slow to judge, who sees the world in gray rather than black and white, and has genuine concern for one’s fellow man.

In sum, a good employee is a person who is decidedly disinclined to say, “I am doing this for your own good.” See www.workplaceattitudes.com

Religious Tolerance

Bill Maher stars in HBO’s Real Time and he brings us the movie “Religulous.” I like Bill Maher, he’s our best ambassador for the blue states. Half Jewish, half Catholic, his early quips about the confessional are hilarious, “Bless me father for I have sinned. I think you have met my lawyer, Mr. Cohen.”

I am sure that he regards the Catholic Church as the First Church of the Perpetual Second Chance, Mormons as purveyors of bullet-proof underwear, Protestants as snake charmers, and other forms of religion as delusional. Bill, in the name of rationality you are a bit extreme. It seems to me that this is a little like the Pyrrhic skeptic who says, “I can know nothing,” and when asked “How do you know?” he replies “I don’t.”

It is for the foregoing sentiments that I didn’t like “Religulous.” Too many straw men and it seemed too easy. Goldwater said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” I suspect Goldwater’s motives. Bill, I am sure you are pure of heart, but extremism in the defense of doubt is a vice because it is another form of intolerance.

I am reminded of the joke about the patient who goes to the doctor and is told that he is overweight. The patient says “I’d like a second opinion” and the doctor says ok, “You’re an idiot.”

I admit I may have my doubts about the talking snake, Jonah and the whale, and Noah and the flood. In fact I may be best described as an agnostic with foxhole reservations (there are no atheists in foxholes). Still I don’t think that agnosticism and certitude, even about doubt, make a good platform. It’s like saying, I am not sure and you can’t be sure so you’re wrong.

Shoot down the zealots to your heart’s content but give a little credit to Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer. You can call them self-deluded do-gooders but they still did a lot of good.

P.S. Bill, I still like you. For more on intolerance see http://www.workplaceattitudes.com/.

The Trickle-Down Theory

This morning on iGoogle I noticed an article referring to WikiHow entitled “9 ways to get by while living in your car.” This is depressingly relevant to more and more people. The situation stems from an abuse of trust and lack of regulation. I fear it was those at the top who proved James Madison’s admonition, “If men were angels, government wouldn’t be necessary.” Anderson Cooper on CNN has a feature called “10 despicable bastards considered responsible to for our present economic situation.” (I paraphrased that.) Even Anderson thinks that 10 are not enough. I am reminded of a comment by Barnie Frank, Congressman from Massachusetts, in response to the statement, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” He said, “yeah, but what if you don’t have a boat?”

I must admit that I feel a little guilty testing people at the lower levels for “good workplace attitudes.” How many people with good attitudes worked for Enron and Merrill Lynch? I bet it was plenty, in fact the vast majority. It only took those at the top to bring the others down. Sure there are jerks everywhere, but I’m not so sure that the crème rises to the top. What rises to the top seems to be more a matter of what a skimmer removes at a sewage treatment facility.

I know, in times such as these it is easy to be cynical. I wish it was as easy as the scenario in the movie “Network” where Peter Finch encourages us to go to the window and yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” What then? The movie doesn’t say.

The Workplace Attitudes Test suggests that about one in twenty workers is a jerk. But there is another phenomna going on here. Jerks tend to congregate together and at all levels there is a tendency to ignore the rules. A lower-level jerk can be a pain in the butt to those around them, and jerks at the highest levels can cause untold damage, but the lesson is to ferret out jerks at all levels and don’t hire them. Hey, corporate boards don’t tolerate them. Government regulators, regulate them. Legislators, remember what Madison said about men (and women) not being angels and pass the appropriate legislation. Rules and consideration for one’s fellow man should apply to everyone. Maybe, the Workplace Attitudes Test should be considered a candle in the darkness. See, www.workplaceattitudes.com.

Deep Do Do

Ah, irony of ironies. Here I have developed a pre-employment instrument that is designed to screen out the jerks in the workplace and at the highest level, the pigs have taken over the farm, the fox has been put in charge of the hen house and the engineers have been asleep at the switch. Is this too many clichés? Give me a break, how in hell can I describe the imbroglio called Wall Street and the sell out we call government.

Yes, the Workplace Attitudes Test will help you keep jerks out of the workplace but short of a revolution, what do we do about psychopathic executives and irresponsible regulators? Frankly, I just don’t know. See www.workplaceattitudes.com if you would like to foster an island of sanity in a sea of deep do do.

Workplace Attitude Insurance and More

I think you should assume that the Workplace Attitudes Test is like an insurance policy. But it is more than that. You buy insurance because you want to be compensated when something bad happens; you buy the Workplace Attitudes Test to prevent something bad from happening.

Our statistics show that about one in twenty hires is a bad one. That’s about five percent. Now I know you may think that the following quote could apply to me: "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts, for support rather than illumination." Andrew Lang (1844-1912) But I say unto you, as Johnny Carson said to Ed McMahon, “Wrong moose breath!” It really is about five percent.

Plus I’m not saying this as a perception thing. Like George Carlin observed, “Have you ever wondered why everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac, and everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot?” It’s really is about five percent.

Yes, about one in twenty potential employees has an attitude problem. How many times have you had thoughts like this: "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." (Clarence Darrow) Or along the same line, consider this quote from Mark Twain, "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

Now, at least in the workplace, you don’t have to have these sentiments. You can screen out these people before nature does it for you. See: www.workplaceattitudes.com.

So What’s the Problem With Self-Help Books?

Alright I admit it, I like self-help books. They might be a bit self-delusional but I think that they do a lot of good. What’s wrong with someone deciding that they need improvement and to seek out the inspiration to go about the task? Hell, even Ben Franklin made a list of things to improve on. At the very least, self-help efforts are good antidotes to such smug assertions as “We’re all screwed” or “Life is like a chicken ladder covered with shit from top to bottom.”

Sure Einstein probably didn’t read self-help books, but he had the intellectual tools to begin with. The rest of us probably could use the boost. Now, you have probably noticed that I have ended several sentences with a preposition. That reminds me of the old joke about the tourist who visits Harvard and asks “Excuse me sir, but could you please tell me where the library is at?” The Harvard man replies, “We at Harvard do not end a sentence with a preposition.” The tourist says, “Oh, I’m sorry, could you tell me where the library is at, asshole?” Why do I think that people who don’t end sentences with a preposition tend not to read self-help books? For more on attitude see: www.workplaceattitudes.com

Ain’t Human Nature Funny?

One of my hobbies is personally proving that everyone is an idiot in all languages other than their own. Thus, in an inadvertent exercise in humility, I spend some time reading rudimentary Spanish.

I recently ran across a short story called “Carta a Dios” (1940) by the Mexican writer Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes (For those readers who are conversant in Spanish please place the missing accents where they belong.) This charming vignette illustrates a fundamental fact about human nature, i.e. if you know what someone takes for granted or what they accept to be true without question, you know that which is most important about them. Some of you cynics out there will note that this story also shows that “No good deed goes unpunished.”

But on with the story. Our protagonist is a dirt-poor peasant named “Lencho.” The scene: a small house on a hill near a river, a corral, and a small field of corn and beans soon ready for harvest but in need of rain. Lencho’s wife calls her husband, their two sons from the fields, and their youngest boy from nearby to a simple dinner.

Conversation turns to the weather and the clouds descending from the northeast that promise rain. Lencho asserts “Soon it is going to rain” and his wife adds, “God willing.” And so it rains, the harvest is good, and Lencho and his family live happily ever after. Not really!

Instead it hails, the leaves are stripped off the trees, the land is covered with salt-like crystals of ice, the crop is ruined and the family is devastated. No one can help Lencho and his family and they are destined to starve the following year. But Lencho is a man of faith and asserts, “Surely, God will not let us starve.”

Although Lencho has worked like a beast of burden all his life, somehow he has learned to write and so he decides to write a letter to God. He writes, “God, if you do not help, we will die of hunger this coming year. I need one hundred pesos to plant another crop and to live until the harvest comes in.”

Lencho puts his letter in an envelope, addresses it to “God,” goes to the post office, buys a stamp and puts it into the mailbox. Sometime later a postal employee sees the letter, opens it and chuckles. He shows it to his supervisor who shares the mirth and then becomes serious. He says, “Such simple faith is such a beautiful thing to see. We cannot disillusion a man of such faith.” And so the supervisor takes part of his paycheck and asks his fellow employees and their friends for contributions.

Although they cannot collect all of the one hundred pesos they are able to enclose sixty. They put the money in an envelope with Lencho’s name on it. Lencho arrives a few days later and asks if there is a letter for him. He exhibits not the least surprise when he is told yes. Ah, such faith.

Lencho opens the envelope, counts the money and becomes infuriated. He goes to the post office window, asks for paper and pen, and writes the following, “God, the money that I asked for arrived in my hands with only sixty pesos. Send the rest because it is much needed, but don’t send it to this post office because all of the employees who work here are crooks. Lencho.”

Should you want to learn more about human nature, see www.workplaceattitudes.com.