Employees From The Upper To The Lowest Rungs of Hell, Part 1/2

People love to discuss managers, bosses, and superiors from hell. This seem to be quite a contentious subject these days with the constant downsizing of employees. Many people love to scapegoat the boss as a demon incarnate in the corporate world. If anything goes awry, the fingers point at the boss as the main instigator of all the malaise. After all, people reason they are the decision makers and shot callers of the corporate world.

Many employees love to play the innocent party in the corporate world. They contend that they are just observers, pawns, and cogs in this world. They further maintain that they have no part in the important process of the everyday corporate occurrences. They asserted that they are masses who just do as they are told until they can either get a promotion, start their own business and/or another career, and/or retire. They view their tenure in the corporate world as if it was a prison sentence.

There are many employees who consider their jobs the equivalent of latter day slavery. They just meander about their corporate business, being clockwatchers. To them, the idea of going to work each day fills them with utter dread. They see their coworkers and bosses as utter and total hemorrhoids that they have to coldly, cordially tolerate. To them, work is just a necessary evil to be endured until the weekends when they are free to be whatever and whoever they want to be.

There are employees who go beyond being just unhappy with their jobs. These employees view everyone and everything in the working environment as a contest of wills. According to them, it is them vs. everyone else. In other words, they are right and everyone else is the enemy and/or against them. It is their philosophy that if they do not get their way, they and everyone else will rue this. To say it succinctly, if they are not happy, then everyone else is going to be in utter misery or near it. There are many types of difficult or hellish employees as there are people. Here is my synopsis of the 10 types of such employees.

(1) The Prima Donna- this is the employee who believes that he/she is better than the job and the people he/she works with. This employee is often overqualified for the position that he/she holds. He/she may be a recent college graduate or better educated who has to settle for a job that is not commensurate with his/her particular educational level. So, instead of using this job as a stepping stone and learning experience, he/she shows displeasure regarding the job at every conceivable opportunity.

Since he/she detests the job at hand, he/she often does not perform the best work possible. Of course, why should he/she? He/she oftentimes feel this "nothing" job will not lead to any thing significant so he/she consider it to be an utter waste of time to perform the job well. He/she has no respect for the job and this is reflected in his/her job performance. He/she will do the very least possible in order to retain the job and no more.

(a) There is a first subtype of the Prima Donna. This person contends that he/she is infinitely more intelligent (not necessarily formally educated) than his/her supervisor/superior whether it is whether it is a supervisor, manager, and/or other superior. The concept of respecting authority and being cooperative is foreign with this person. In fact, he/she refuses to grasp this, believing that he/she is the superior one. He/she is not loathe to inform a superior how stupid and inane the latter is at every opportunity. He/she will proclaim to the superior how better he/she is at performing the latter's job than the latter can.

(b) There is the second subtype of the Prima Donna. This person believes that he/she is above job rules and regulations. In fact, he/she has contempt for the job rules and regulations and will do things to circumvent them. If lunch is supposed to be 45 minutes, he/she usually takes an hour. He/she is of the school that rules and regulations are for the hoi polloi, minions, and peons of the work world which he/she contends he/she is clearly above. He/she sees nothing wrong with openingly disregarding common work rules and regulations.

(c) There is the third subtype of the Prima Donna. This person who wants to do the assignments that he/she wants to do. If he/she does not like the assignment, he/she will doth protest too much. He/she will inform you that why he/she won't do a particular assignment. He/she believes that he/she should be able to choose the assignment at hand. If a superior ask him/her to do a mundane assignment, he/she will go into complete histrionics. Better yet, this employee has the knack of passing of the mundane and/or less desirable assignment to a coworker.

(2) The Pet- this is the employee is the corporate pet. In other words, he/she is protected by the higher powers that be. He/she is often treated with kid gloves and can do things that the average employee can be written up and/or disciplined for. He/she knows and uses this fact at every chance and/or opportunity.

Because of his/her status, he/she can often run slipshod over his/her immediate superiors and/or other coworkers. The immediate superior's hands are often tied with this particular employee because if the former tries to correct the situation at hand then his/her job could be in jeopardy. So this immediate superior has to learn to play the game with this pet being in the driver's seat so to speak.

(3) The Complainer-this is the employee who constantly finds something wrong and/or amiss with his/her job, coworkers, supervisors, superiors, and /or his/her corporate atmosphere. He/she seems to be unsatisfied with the situation at hand. However, instead of becoming proactive and intelligently discussing the situation with his/her supervisor/superior, he/she passively complains, oftentimes creating a toxic work atmosphere. In other words, he/she can always find what is wrong with his/her work situation but refuses to see something that is right about it.

(4) The Disgruntled-this employee has serious issues. He/she is not only unhappy about his/her work situation, he/she intends to do something drastic about it. This employee is the one to watch for oftentimes he/she is capable of doing things that can be highly detrimental to say the least. If a supervisor/superior has to interface with such an employee, document everything to cover yourself when there are occurrences.

This employee is not hesitant to sue you and/or the corporation if he/she believes that he/she has been dealt with unjustly. There have been instances of disgruntled employees who have harmed supervisors/superiors when they were written up, disciplined, and/or terminated. This employee can be highly dangerous and one has to be ever vigilant in dealing with such an employee.

(5) The Defier- to describe this employee as being insubordinate would be the understatement of the year. This employee believes that he/she does not and/or should not answer to anyone. He/she feels that the work world is his/her own oyster so to speak. He/she is of the school that since he/she is grown, he/she has the unmitigated prerogative to make his/her own decisions, even at work.

This employee believes that no supervisor/superior has the right to tell him/her what to do as he/she is not a baby. As some employees are aptly fond of saying to their supervisors that the latter are not their parents, adding that they are much as adults as the supervisors are. I had one such employee when I was a supervisor. Each time I told her to do something, she told me that I was not her mother.

The employee in question further informed me that since I loved to tell people what to do, maybe I should have children. Needless to say, I had her transferred from my unit to another supervisor. I could not terminate her because of the strong union presence.

I have discussed the first 5 types of problematic employees in Part I of this hub. I shall continue to discuss the second 5 types of difficult employees in Part II.