Paperwork And Meaningless Comments

Grrr....nothing makes me madder than organizations that self inflict paperwork on themselves for unimportant reasons, but don't communicate on the important stuff except for meaningless comments about how much someone "means to an organization." Again and again, I hear "thank you for being here. We're excited to have you," but again and again it just aint so.

You can see it in the hallways of the people you work with in your organization I bet.

"Thanks for showing up to work (on time)," but no effort is in place to deal with those who don't.  Managers who dilute their own comments by not acting on what they say is important just gives incentives to those performers who see that doing just enough is considered great, so why put forth great effort, when "just enough" is all you need?

To the first part, why do organizations go out of there way to make sure you document things that have zero to do with anything? It isn't billing, it isn't patient care, it isn't anything. Meanwhile you have to constantly guess whether or not you even know your current protocols because major changes occur without anyone informing anybody. Excuse me, when did this drug get added and why didn't we get a basic e-mail? Is our communication really that bad?

On the other, I hate to be needy, but when you say I will get back to you, gosh darn it, I expect you to. This is not complicated, nor should it be. I know you expect me to get back with you, but really is it a two way street or not because I am a little offended. Pick up the phone or type out an e-mail. You know how to do it when you need a shift covered.  We talk about being adults, but when people can not handle their own schedule because it rotates or they have another job or they can't focus or...whatever, you lose the ability to complain about anyone else.

I remember a lecture on Critical Incident Stress Management by Vickey Taylor who was talking about this business and how we wanted big incidents and they may be the cause of significant stress, but how the day to day grind and the goofiness would get to you every time if you let it. I guess it is getting to me. Glad I have downtime coming.  Grrr...

Here We Go...Again

I know, I know...I'm being judgmental.  Does DC Fire EMS even do background checks?

The most recent situation involves an unhappy firefighter, who is stationed down the street and is supposed to be on standby for flights of Marine One, making a threatening call into The White House switchboard.

I get that this isn't DC Fire's fault per se, but it is one more brick on the scale showing the absolute ineptitude of the DC Fire administration.  This is incredible to me and I am also a little shocked the US Secret Service hasn't been checking who is and who isn't coming through the gates of the residence.

Look, I love blaming Obama for all kinds of problems he is creating, but this one isn't on him.  While I would assume USSS would be more involved in double checking who is showing up via DC Fire, but I really don't blame them either.  This is an issue of knowing what is going on with your employees and DC Fire is clearly sailing without rudder or sail.  Not good.

Sometime's They Don't Learn...

Sometime we just don't learn.  Usually we don't learn chasing a dollar or some other victory while compromising the foundation of our organization.

I am speaking right now of course about Penn State and their decision to hire James Franklin to be their next football coach. While they claimed to leave "no stone unturned" and conducted a "thorough" background check, it only takes a few milliseconds to find alarming allegations about his role in possibly covering up a rape while he was at Vanderbilt University.

I hate to be the one to tell you Penn State, but you all just had a sexual assault scandal of epic proportions a very few years ago and now you want to go in this direction?  Are you sure THIS is the direction you want to run in?  To hire a coach who is allegedly involved with the cover up of a rape less than a year ago?

It would seem self evident that this might be a bad choice on the direction to go, but Penn State marches on.  It apparently did not even bother them about comments he made on a local radio show about not hiring assistant coaches until looking their wives over.  This is 2014, right?

In the meantime, a petition was started by a university professor to not consider Franklin.  Obviously, it was ignored.  Perhaps it was ignored because according to one report it had gathered less than three hundred signatures, but does it really need more than one?

I know I have had bosses who remarked regularly about other employees wives and nothing was done about it.  Again and again the organization would protect them because they were a supervisor and would relocate the offended party to another shift or another location rather than fix the problem.  It would seem to be a pattern when a supervisor makes comments about one of his employees wives regularly and then has one of his employees relocated to another location because his urges would seem uncontrollable and the organizational management chooses to do nothing about it.

Similarly, what is the use in HR policies that frown upon interoffice relationships when HR does not follow through when they are complained about?  While these issues do not raise themselves to issues of rape or sexual assault, they do show an unfortunate pattern of groups repeating the same behavior and then surprised when their work environments are not as productive as they could be.  How do we expect employees - be it at our local worksites or in college football - to win championships and do great things for their company when they have these distractions going on?

It reminds me of the old saying: "you only make a mistake once, after that it is a choice."