Today in my alter-ego role as mild mannered and caring supervisor, I received an important invite to a one day seminar, entitled

How to Deal with Unacceptable Employee Behaviour

Curious to find out what Unacceptable Employee Behaviour was (in my experience this is actually a much more common failure among supervisors and I know lots about that), I read on.

Apparently Unacceptable Employee Behaviour falls into categories of clearly recognizable types. You have to love that, it’s always great to find new stereotypes and label people by them, it makes this crazy world so much easier to understand and deal with unaided by medication. I offer these labels to you as a gift of hope, to classify your Unacceptable Employees or perhaps even yourself as the first step in overcoming denial and finding help before you get fired. They are:

1. The Excuse Artist
2. The Short-Changer
3. The Intimidator
4. The Gossip
5. The Clod
6. The Downer
7. The Minimalist (a nice artsy ring to that one!)
8. The Soap Star
9. The Itch
10. The Smarty-Pants

Am I definitely a Short-Changer? I suppose Soap Star is not quite the same as porn star so that’s not right, I am an artist but without excuses, I prefer speed to Downers, and love getting my back scratched but haven’t much in common with the Itch. I have been known to kick both Clods and Gossips, with cleats on. While wishing for my ego’s sake I were the Intimidator or the Minimalist, alas, I have found myself to be the proverbial Smarty-Pants – though i’ve been desperately trying to avoid that title since grade school where it generally meant getting pounded. Of course, even though I have frighteningly become what might be termed management, I still believe in “challenging management authority openly and forcefully” which has led to some interesting conversations with myself. I don’t believe an “undercurrent of anti-management chatter” to be too harmful, so maybe as a bonafide grown-up being a Smarty-Pants is not so bad, though I might not fit in so well at the local dive bar if it should become public. Luckily no one there can read as far as I can tell. If you tell, that makes you a Gossip, and you know what happens to them…