Self-awareness is important.
I know this because I’m a judgmental person (hello – I write a blog judging people). IF you are going to be so bold as to judge a person, you better be gosh darn sure where you are crossing the line into your own personal flaws. After all, it’s perfectly OK to judge a person for the same problem you have as long as you are aware you have the same problem.
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You, gentle reader (yep – just got off a binge of the latest season), have surely grasped that we are now going to delve into judgement of a human being for a flaw that I also possess. Let’s do it, shall we?
Most of our contractors get terminated for one of three things:
Poor attendance
Poor performance
Poor attitude
I find the attitude problem to be the most offensive of the three. The offense comes because I trend toward a bit of an attitude problem myself. You know the type: belligerent, 'how dare you tell me what to do.' It isn’t pretty, and I’m not proud of it. As an adult, I do my level best to quash that into a little, tiny box and stash it on the highest, darkest closet shelf I can find. Sure, I’m human, so sometimes the attitude problem sneaks out of the closet, and I find myself snapping at my friends or co-workers for no good reason other than a need to hide my own insecurities. But then because I’m a grown-up, I apologize and resolve to do better.
I receive plenty of opportunities to review my own personal struggles as we come across attitude problems fairly regularly in my line of work. Interestingly, though, most of those people typically get ended for shoddy attendance because it’s easier to prove. Apparently a bad attitude and an inability to show up for work tend to go hand in hand. (I, personally, do NOT have an attendance problem, mind you. See earlier post about showing up for work in bad weather.)
Anyway, I got an email from one of my clients stating they wanted to end this guy for a bad attitude. Some of the reasons listed were along the lines of 'he tells the trainer how to do his job' and 'he doesn't do XXX because he says his way is better' and 'he lost his temper at another worker who asked him to properly document YYY.' You get the gist: the dude knows it all and woe be unto anyone who tries to tell him otherwise. This is, of course, amusing in and of itself seeing as how he has not yet been certified on any one process at the job.
I call the guy to inform him his assignment has been terminated. He loses his ever-loving mind.
"That trainer doesn't know what he's doing."
"The trainer is so rude and yells at me all the time."
"I don't know why they won't let me do XX when I already know how to do it."
And on and on until it morphed into: "You guys are always firing me for something." "This is f****** b***s***, and that trainer is a liar." "Why the hell is this always happening to me."
I eventually sent the guy to HR because I was tired of listening to him curse me and the rest of the world. He calls back no fewer than five times in two days, and each time curses out one of my coworkers because "it's b***s*** that we keep firing him over this stupid s***."
Did I forget to mention that he had been terminated at three separate assignments? A perusal of his file would show that all three assignments were ended based on the same “bad attitude” feedback. Curious. It’s as if there was a common denominator at play.
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