What’s the best way to deal with a pernicious, dully clever, troublemaking asshole?
No, really. Any suggestions? Because “Ignore it,” doesn’t provide me with much personal satisfaction, but I’m skeptical anything will produce results and “Ignore it” might at least help me get the crap off my mind.
Edit: I was a little too explicit and I’ve edited my post down, for my own reasons.
Hey Gord, what’s up?
We have a guy or two like that here as well.
The place I work at is big enough that I can pretty much avoid these types.
But they like to start fires, step back and watch them smoulder. They love it.
Later,
FSHANNON
Well, I only wish I could avoid this person. I do have a feeling he’ll either never talk to me again, or some kind of big, harsh talk is coming sometime this semester.
What I hate is how it seems it’s always the biggest asshole who manages to curry the favour of Those Who Supervise.
I don’t have any useful advice.
I can tell you the situation sounds vaguely like a situation at a certain computer game company ages ago (like, in 1992?) where the problem child was a nepotist hire (actually the nephew of someone on the board, so the adjective is actually entirely accurate!) who was managing to get others fired one by one when he was the problem. Sigh. (I heard the story from the girlfriend of someone associated with the group but not carrying enough responsibility to get on the chopping block. He left as soon as he was able to….)
My last long-term job was at a small enough company that the president knew what was going on and ended up reluctantly firing the worst troublemaker after a series of warnings, etc. (And the part of the dress code dealing with bathing had to do with an incident involving said individual, IIRC.) I dealt with him by avoiding him when he was at his pissiest and not getting after him to do anything for me unless it had something directly to do with his paycheck (as in, get yer timesheet in on TIME, dude!). It was mostly everyone else’s problem. (There’s something to be said for telecommuting….)
Oh yeah I can get behind that thought. The biggest troublemakers are normally the apples of the boss’s eye. I walked out on a job once because of that. The bastard was a total alcoholic, bad teacher, but sucked up to the owners like no business. I had enough and said up front what most of the teaching staff had been saying in the teacher’s room for a while, and was told to either get with the programme or leave. Seeing as it was me and my team that formulated most of the programme, I felt that I was well with the programme and that they should think about their priorities as owners and adminstrators of the school. Nothing was done so I walked, which was a shame as I really enjoyed the school. I discovered that a little while after he was asked to resign because he’d come on to a student and she told her parents, who spoke to the owners/directors. Apparently he’s drinking and molesting students somewhere in Europe now.
My suggestion?If you like your work, keep your head down, get on with your work and avoid this person as much as possible. Let someone else make the waves. Or, most probably, this person shall be hoist on their own petard.