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Let’s examine our past or present coworkers and supervisors. What would it be like to be trapped with them in a mine for a couple of months? I retired at 62 and started my adult work life at 18. I’ve thought about the various offices I’ve worked in and wondered which of those “teams” would have survived in a mine disaster. I think I would have been dead in two days.
In each of the offices I’ve worked in there have been disappointing coworkers. Some were discourteous and disingenuous on a regular basis and would stomp on the bodies of those in the mine to get the last drop of water. I know that sounds harsh but I had very few coworkers I would trust with my life if stuck in a survival shelter. In fact, Lord of the Flies comes to mind.
In an early job my desk was downstairs in a textile company. One day I went to lunch and when I returned my desk was gone. It had been moved upstairs next to the owner of the company in an isolated part of the factory. He made advances. There were only four women in the company (downstairs) and the rest were men. I left and never went back. With this man’s serious aggression issues I would have had a tough time trapped in a mine with him for two hours let alone two months.
How many TV shows, movies, and books are out there on the topic of working with horrible people? Countless studies have determined that work efficiency can be directly related to the cohesiveness (or lack there of) of a work group. Selecting the right employees is an art form. So many managers failed art class.
Countless times over the years my lunch/beverages disappeared from office refrigerators. Not just a few times but countless times. In one office it happened so often I brought a “surprise” lunch one day with questionable leftovers and wrapped it all up nicely and waited. I suppose it was risky and the thief could have gotten sick but I was so angry I didn’t care. Sure enough, the lunch disappeared. I checked to see if it turned up in any of the lunchroom trashcans, uneaten, but I never saw it again. I believe to this day someone ate that disgusting lunch.
Sometimes the thieves took my sandwich storage containers as well so I switched to foil. I tried using lunch boxes and that didn’t help. Thieves went inside the lunch boxes and took what they wanted and left me with an apple. In one office I started writing the department manager’s name on all my lunches. They were never taken again.
Then there are team “projects.” So many misguided managers think they can encourage minimal workers to come up to speed with a team project when all that happens is the overburdened workers end up with the work in the end. The level of efficiency per person varies tremendously. The expectation that a person can be motivated to complete a project on time when they can’t get to work on time and can’t come back from lunch on time is ludicrous. Yet they need employment, but employment that suits their work style, whatever it may be. Management fails all of us when not providing proper tasks for individual abilities. Everyone can do something. Some can’t do much but can do small tasks well. It’s a management issue.
How many team-building sessions conclude with a return to the office and resumption of our collective complacency as though the team had never gone through a team building session? The team building sessions are fun but I never learned a thing about anyone that I didn’t already know. The same people who griped about everything every day griped at the team building sessions—often about the team building sessions themselves.
This same process was observed at inclusivity training. If one hates a particular group (ethnic, gender, religion, orientation or whatever) and has from birth, it is unlikely they are going to suddenly embrace those coworkers after an inclusivity session. I’ve never witnessed changes of that nature take place. However, when proper behavior is demanded I have noticed people pull in and at least behave civilly but their inner core remains hateful and it’s always on the surface. In a mine shelter it could turn ugly.
I’ve spent some time the last couple of days remembering specific coworkers and tried to place them in the mine. It isn’t a pretty picture. I recall one incident years ago when a sniper appeared on the top of my office building. The building went into lock-down. Most people quietly visited or read. Some continued to work a little to keep their minds off the activities outside. It was a tremendous opportunity to observe people in a scary situation and all the people behaved exactly as I thought they would. Some immediately took charge and told everyone to move away from the windows. They weren’t supervisors, just coworkers who knew instinctively what to do. More than one supervisor closed themselves off in their offices. Later they said it was because they wanted to continue working since their windows were on the opposite side of the sniper location. So they left their subordinates alone to fend for themselves. Pity the miners with those leaders.
A couple of people got a bit too emotional right from the beginning long before we had news about the situation outside. It only takes one emotional person to turn others into jelly. It’s contagious. Some got their lunch out of the lunchroom (probably my lunch). Some griped. There are always those. Others tried to figure out a way to get out of the office through a back exit. We were not allowed to leave the area where we were locked down but some decided they were not going to listen to the experts and therefore possibly put us all in danger by opening a locked door with the potential to allow the gunman inside.
The sniper turned out to be a homeless man with a broom sweeping the roof. As the office returned to normal after we got the all-clear very few of us were able to return to our routine work day. We sat at our desks and pushed papers around but we all talked softly and excitedly about the experience and recalled similar situations we had heard about in the news. Some with tragic endings.
I felt we should have been given the remainder of the day off to go home and relax and take deep breaths and be thankful that it was a broom and not a rifle. But the powers that be wanted their pound of flesh and so we remained. They concluded it was best for us to return to our normal routine. I wanted to go home and hug my kids. Screw the normal routine. Were the miners instructed to mine copper while they were waiting for rescue? No, I don't think so.
Some workers may not be the strongest or most clever or most organized but perhaps they are the strongest in character. People who would eat a tiny bite of cracker and be happy with it so that everyone would have a bite of cracker. (These would not be people who would steal someone’s lunch from a lunchroom.) Quite often it’s the quiet thinkers that get people through the danger, people who assess and think quickly but with common sense. Common sense is a gift. I know very few who have been gifted.
Years ago in a group of social friends, all married couples, we met for cocktails one evening to discuss where to go to dinner. Everyone had a favorite restaurant so I suggested we put all our choices in a bowl then pick one and that would be the place. We did that and a restaurant was selected and everyone griped and complained. I grabbed my purse and was ready to go to dinner but instead an argument ensued and another round of bowl picking began.
Another restaurant came out of the bowl and again an argument commenced. They were about to do this again when I said “forget it” and left with my husband. In the end, everyone left and went to their own restaurant of choice. I liked this group. We had fun together. I was tremendously disappointed that they behaved this way. Initially I blamed it on alcohol but I don't think that was it. I think it was their individual core values and I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a mine with them.
In addition to the sniper event the same building also experienced a bomb threat. It was years after the sniper incident but we all remembered the homeless man with a broom. We were inclined to think it was another hoax. We’d heard a pickup truck had a bomb under it in our parking lot and we were to vacate the building via the opposite exit. Naturally we could not head to the parking lot for our cars so we all took off far away from the scene. There wasn’t too much in the way of assistance for us because the concentration was in the parking lot. We ended up across the street but there were so many fire engines and trucks and police cars we couldn’t see a thing.
Not everyone had cell phones in those days but some borrowed phones from those who did and made calls and had loved ones pick them up. They left for the day. Others without alternate transportation left the area and went to lunch. We didn’t believe there was a bomb. After a comfortable two-hour lunch we went back to the bombsite and most of the fire engines and trucks and cars were gone but a few police officers were standing outside. They said we could go back to our offices and that the bomb had been located and removed. The bomb had been located and removed. There really was a bomb!
For those of us returning to the office it was an uncomfortable afternoon. Much worse than the sniper incident. After the sniper/broom incident we all relaxed and spent the day chatting nervously about the exciting adventure. Because the bomb was real we did not have the same casual carefree attitude. We were serious and concerned. At this point we didn’t know the origin of the bomb or the reason it was planted. None of us were eager to go home that night without inspecting our cars.
About an hour before we left that day word spread that the bomb was planted as the result of a personal dispute between spouses. With that knowledge we all felt relieved it wasn’t an act of terrorism but some of us worried that the spouse could have left other bombs just because he was deranged. The police assured everyone all cars had been checked and it was safe to leave.
The next day those who had left the event and gone home when we vacated the building earlier the previous day were in trouble. They had no authority to leave and they would have to take a vacation day for leaving without permission. So here’s my point: we had zero leadership that day and it was a real bomb. If we find ourselves in trouble without leadership it’s up to us to fend for ourselves in the most reasonable way possible. I probably would have gone home as well but my kids were too young to drive therefore I had no one to pick me up. Those who had rides went home.
This issue was hotly debated for quite some time and it’s my understanding that the employees eventually received regular pay for that day since we didn’t have a bomb threat pay policy. We in fact didn’t have any emergency policy related to pay. We had some safety policies for fire and earthquakes but that was the extent of it. There was also a lot of contentious bickering about the pay the workers received who did stay. The debate was they should have received extra pay because they remained at work in harm’s way. It was all so disgusting. We could have all been killed and the nastiness about pay lingered far longer than it should have. Longer than the memory of the real bomb. Wonder if the Chilean miners have to take vacation pay for their two-month stay in their shelter?
Another romantic disaster incident took place where a boyfriend brought a gun to work to shoot a woman’s boss and/or boyfriend. This happened in another building (same organization) and I’ve never gotten all the details. However, just hearing someone brought a gun to work sent a lot of us into a tailspin. Shooting people in the work place is somewhat commonplace and we all know innocent people are shot all the time when the shooter only meant to shoot one person. Work is scary, copper mine or otherwise.
I’m glad I’m retired. If I have an emergency now it will be just my dogs, my cat, and me. I trust them completely. (There could be cat nibbling I suppose, but no endless childish contentious sniveling money mongering bickering.)
[Here’s a list of fun items on the topic of coworkers, supervisors, and office dynamics. These are my favorites.]
9 to 5 (movie)
The Office (U.K. version and U.S. version, TV series)
Office Space (movie)
Ikiru (movie, Akira Kurosawa)
Mary Tyler Moore (TV series)
The Peter Principle (book, Laurence J. Peter & Raymond Hull)
Dilbert (comic strip)
Desk Set (movie, Spencer and Tracy)
The Firm (novel and movie, John Grisham)
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
[No part of this content may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. Blog series began in March 2009.]
