seething ball of rage

[seigus]

Some background, and then on to it. I'll TRY to be brief.
I am teaching a five day class on the essentials of management. It's day 4. My classes are very involved and interactive. There's a guy in class (let's call him "Lump") who has sat passively the entire time, not contributing, not commenting, nothing. Who knows what's going through his head, if anything (I strongly suspect it's completely void). We're in the section where we talk about managers managing conflict amongst their staff. It's role playing time. This involves three people, two to play employees in conflict, one to play the manager. One of the participants, Mr. Seething Ball of Rage (SBR), is due to be the manager. He is sitting next to Lump. I know I'll get nothing from Lump, so I choose a scenario that requires very little from him - it involves an employee complaining that the smokers get more breaks than the other employees (sound familiar?). This is important: I choose this scenario because of LUMP, and assign him the role that plays to his, um, strength.
So we begin. The complaining employee lays out his case. SBR remains silent, his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed, his face red. Finally he speaks.

SBR: Just get out of my office!

The class falls silent. They look at me. At SBR. Back at me.

Me: Um, is that how you'd handle this?
SBR: It's a stupid complaint! I'd kick the guy out!
Me: Well, you're not going solve this issue like that. It WILL come back to you in one form or another. You're going to have to give this a little more effort and try again, using the concepts and techniques we've been talking about.
SBR: NO! I won't do it! You just gave this to me because I'm a smoker!
He's shouting at this point. The others looked... concerned. All eyes are on me.
Me: I didn't know you were a smoker.
SBR: Liar!
Me: No, really, I had no idea.
SBR: Yeah, right!
Me: How would I know you were a smoker (*having never even met him before*)?
SBR: Well, I think you're just trying to make me look bad because you don't like smokers!
*Yeah, I think you're doing fine with that alll on your own*
Me: So, you're not going to do it?
SBR: No way! You just hate smokers!
Me: This is a common complaint in workplaces, and you need to do a better job of dealing with this and other conflicts if you want to be a successful manager who doesn't have to deal with lawsuits.
SBC: I do just fine when people aren't PICKING ON ME!
The class is aghast.
Me: Okay. I think it's time for a break.

Nothing would convince him that I had not targeted him. For the rest of that day and all the next he just sat and glowered at me, silent, arms crossed, red as the blood I wanted to see spurting from his carotid artery. Later I learned, in an unrelated conversation with someone else, that he was infamous for going out to smoke and not returning for 45 minutes. I have NOTHING against smokers, as many of my friends smoke, and I enjoy an occasional cigar or cigarillo (and perhaps other things). Jeez, though, you'd think you'd try to keep that guilt suppressed a little better. One of these days I expect to hear that he has spontaneously exploded.

Several of the other people in class later went to my supervisor and remarked on my amazing ability to avoid staving in SBR's face.

[Automan Empire]

I PRESUME that your actual client is the company that employs Mr. SBR?

If so, I would see to it that the company gets feedback about his behavior in class!

I know, in my younger days, even third party trainers would call in feedback (not s.o.p.) about me, though in my case it was to say, "He was the only one in the class who seemed to have a brain!"

[seigus]

There was feedback, I can assure you.

[Victoria J]

What an absolute idiot.

I remember way back when doing this course that's the very first thing you have to do to do my job. A 5 day course where you have to do some role play.

One of the people on the course was a complete idiot. Thought he new better than everyone. In a scenario where the person he was advising got emotional he just wouldn't respon, and when asked about it just said that emotions were nothing to do with him, he only helped with the practicalities. If you can't deal at leasdt a little bit with the emotions you can't get people to the stage where they'll even tell you their practical problems.

His other thing, which I'm afraid I found funny (it was an arsehole thing to do, but he did it with real style) was to run through a whole scenario pretending to be the Norman Bates. The person doing the interviewing obviously didn't know the film. I suspect if there'd been any recognition of the name he'd have smirked and left it there. As it was he just kept working all these subtle hints about his mother at home, etc.

it involves an employee complaining that the smokers get more breaks than the other employees (sound familiar?).

AT work we take smoke breaks when we don't smoke. We just stand outside and chat to the one person who does. Now she's quiting, but we've had a couple of ice lolly breaks this week.

The manager looks at us if he walks past but he doesn't object. The 3 of us involved are hard workers, work extra hours when needed, are paid to do the work more than for the time spent. Plus the other big waste of time, very much including the manager, is tea breaks - and we very rarely stop for random cups of tea.

I recommend adopting ice lolly breaks in hot weather though.

Victoria J

[Hanzoku]

I don't know if you're allowed to make recommendations that affect their chance to be promoted... but Mr. SBR is completely unsuited to manage if he can turn a simple, common issue into a personal affront and stop acting rationally.

[crashhelmet]

This is probably my biggest complaint where I work, but it's moved from being towards the lazy people that don't want to work to the managers that continually allow them to do it. The SBR sounds like he'd be one of those managers.

Regardless of the situation, it doesn't sound to me like he's going to be a successful manager. Not unless you start measuring success by the number of HR complaints or employee turnover.

CH

[BlaqueKatt]

I recommend adopting ice lolly breaks in hot weather though.

I recommend "fresh air breaks"

No good breathing in all that stale store air all day.........

[jjllbb]

oh jeez. with my luck SBR will be my manager one day. How do these people BECOME managers!!?? Why aren't they weeded out sooner??

[NightWatch]

Thanks guys, now I want an ice lolly.

[Andara Bledin]

My company will sometimes have root beer float days, or ice cream days during the summer, where the company provides tasty cold treats for the employees.

^-.-^

[Horsetuna]

Surprisingly, my boss does not allow smoke breaks. You can go out to smoke on the lunch Break but that's it. We're allowed to if we have to, use the toilet, grab a quick swig of water, and I'm sure he'd turn a blind eye if you go out and come back in say, 2 minutes or less. But he explains this to every new person we hire that 15 minute smoke breaks 1 an hour will not happen.

[BookstoreEscapee]

People in my stores never took smoke breaks other than their regular scheduled breaks (30 min unpaid meal and two 15 minute paid breaks per 8-hour shift).

I sometimes go outside after lunch with a couple of the guys from my old department. One of them smokes, they go down, get coffee and go outside for about 10 minutes. They are hourly employees, so they get the same break schedule as the folks in the stores, but they don't actually bother to take the 15-minute breaks...they just tack one of them onto their lunch.

[infinitemonkies]

When you work in a restaurant it's almost impossible to get any kind of break at all unless you're smoking. Also, in my experience, about 90% of restaurant workers smoked. That's not a coincidence. However, I worked with one non-smoker (7 years of working kitchens and he was the only cook I ever met who didn't smoke) who came up with an inventive solution: Everyday before work he'd buy a cheap-ish cigar, but one that smelled kinda nice instead of stinking. When he needed a break, he'd light it up, and just let it sit in the ashtray for 10 minutes while he read a magazine.

[Stressball]

Where I work, smoke breaks are frequent, and considered normal. That being said, I think management's leniency toward it pays off more than they would get otherwise.

In my job, I do the same tasks day in, day out. I repair parts from poker machines; usually the note acceptors. Since I started working there, I have done over 5,000 of them. By this point the work is so tedious, but so routine, that I work slower if I'm doing nothing else. I get bored and slow down. As a result, my manager is perfectly happy for me to read things like the Bastard Operator from Hell, bash.org and other such things, while I work. The work is so routine that I can do it absent-mindedly, and still reach and surpass successful repair expectations.

The same goes for the smokers around here. They are all given leniency by management, and it is very much appreciated. Although they do take more breaks than corporate policy technically allows, since they are given them anyway, they work particularly well during the rest of their shifts.

We have two types of management; carrot management, and stick management. It would appear that carrot management is far more productive

[BookstoreEscapee]

My company will sometimes have root beer float days, or ice cream days during the summer, where the company provides tasty cold treats for the employees.

^-.-^

Where I work they do a monthly birthday celebration. The treat varies, but it's always a can of soda and something - cookies, a slice of cake, ice cream or fruit bars, cupcakes, donuts...usually I get my treat when I go down for lunch, so at least I get a free drink (since most of the time I don't take the food part).