Comments on: Bad Employee Attitude. Really?

By: Bret L. Simmons

Bret L. Simmons — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:34:18 +0000

Welcome, Jason. It sounds like you gave a good faith effort for dealing with your employee in a manner reflecting professional dignity. You are responsible for your choices, not his response. Your employee is responsible for the response. It might be a personality issue with the employee, like narcissism, and if that is the case you should expect this patterned response to continue. At some point, after you have truly done all you can to try to help, you will have to make a tough choice. At that point, you can look in the mirror and know that you were fair. Thanks for sharing! Bret

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:30:35 +0000

Hey Bret,
I notice this is a rather old article but after doing some internet searching I found your site and was hoping you might have some more words of wisdom.

First, I totally agree with you but no matter what I try with one of my employees it seems he will not react in what me and other supervisors and managers consider to be a positive manner.

I asked him (privately) why it took him so long to finish a task and expressed my desire to help him overcome any problems he may have encountered. I told him he did a great job overall but with further training he could accomplish the task in a timelier fashion. I was completely calm. Had no major problem with his performance.

His response was loud and agitated. He began talking over my sentences. Accusing me of giving him a hard time. I stayed calm and tried to understand why he was taking the conversation in this direction. He began jumping to unrelated topics about people in other departments. Began accusing other workers of unrelated “problems”. I gently reminded him that I was not there to discuss those topics or those departments/workers but that we could absolutely discuss them later with the appropriate supervisor/manager involved.

He again reacted in a way I would describe as violent. He accused me of having a problem with him and said he wanted to talk to my boss about this. I said that I didn’t think we would need to for what I was there to discuss with him but if he really wanted to then we could of course go find my boss right now and at least set up a meeting with him. He exclaimed, “I am not afraid to talk to him!” I simply said, “OK, no one is saying you are, that is absolutely fine.” Not to my surprise, the meeting went terribly for him.

I could go on and on. Very sorry for such a long message. I hope I have given you some understanding of what this person seems like. I feel like I have run out of options/tactics/understanding and after some of the things he has said and done I am beginning to think he may be a bit genuinely emotionally unstable.

Any pointers/advice you can offer?

Again, my apologies for such a long post on such an old article.

By: Bret L. Simmons

Bret L. Simmons — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:43:38 +0000

Welcome, Robin. If you can still get good people then you are doing something right. If you get a reputation for being a bad place to work or a bad person to work for, then the flow of good people willing to work with you will decrease. Are you sure the retention problem you have is about pay? Get data, check your assumptions. Are you sure you can’t pay anymore? Sometimes it can be cost effective to pay more for someone very good that will stay with you. Thanks for the comment! Bret

By: Robin

Robin — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:29:40 +0000

I havebeen in business since 1998and the problem is the postions I have to hire for are minimum wage and the quality of workers I get for minimum wage. I can’t pay anymore, and I get good people, train them they do a good job, then they move on for higher paying positions. My job force is like a stepping stone to meet their finacial needs until something better comes along. The best way I have found to manage retention is to be lieient and thats not always good. Any suggestions?

By: Bret L. Simmons

Bret L. Simmons — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:01:20 +0000

Welcome, Zulma! I DO hear what you are saying. I hear stories like this all the time. But think about this – WHY do you go through front staff people like crazy? WHY do they eventually slack? WHY can’t you hire the right people to do the job you need them to do with distinction? I believe there is a reason why, and when you find that reason you will have found your leverage. There is no leverage – zero, zilch, none – in the bad attitude route.

Thanks for visiting my site and sharing!!! Bret

By: Zulma Villegas

Zulma Villegas — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:25:53 +0000

Not sure I agree. My husband and I opened our business with about $500k that took years to save and put into thousands of dollars every year. I go through front staff people like crazy. I give them loads of positive feedback when they do something well and I always let them know that I prefer not to micro-manage them becuase I’ve got to make sure I do what I do best and that is sell. Eventually, they slack, they abuse the computer usage for personal use and leave early but sign out for their regular shift. So I’m supposed to break my back building my dream while I give someone a “take advantage” of the boss ride? No. A bad attitiude is simply a bad attitude.

By: Bret L. Simmons

Bret L. Simmons — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:40:26 +0000

Thanks, Steve! Bret

By: Steven M. Smith

Steven M. Smith — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:27:39 +0000

Wow, Bret! Fabulous post. Agree with it. Love it. Steve

By: Bret L. Simmons

Bret L. Simmons — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:11:22 +0000

Ed, I really appreciate all the help!!! I am going to watch the video and continue to experiment given your tips. I can’t make a camera adjustment at this point because my camera is the Flip Mino HD and it does not have any settings! But I have played around with the formats for how I burn my movies (HC or two types of HD) and I have played with where I post them (Vimeo or Youtube). I am LOVING learning how to do this and sincerely appreciate your interest and help. Thanks!! Bret

By: Ed Batista

Ed Batista — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:30:39 +0000

I think this video will help you solve the problem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFPcAIM8fB0

The solution involves adding some short snippets of code to your videos’ tags which change the aspect ratio for viewers. I just tested it on a video of mine, and it was really easy. In the “Video Owner Options” box, click on “Edit Video,” and then scroll down to the “Tags” section. Add the code to that section and click “Save Changes”–I suspect you’ll want to use either “yt:stretch=4:3″ or “yt:stretch=16:9″ (without the quotes.)

There may still be a camera setting you can change so that you don’t have to fix your new videos, but hopefully this provides an easy fix for your old ones.