Some Mondays Are Better Than Others

I want to share something with you all, and I want to ask your opinion about it. We have a new employee working for us - we'll call him Bob. My boss is enamored with his resume, but has yet to really see him in action. I have no problems with Bob and he seemed to be doing okay. I cam into work this morning to this...

From: Bob
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2008 2:51 PM
To: Roger ; Jeff
Cc: Dale
Subject: 'New Guy Remarks' Harassment!

New Guy Remarks


After three weeks of putting up with ‘New Guy’ remarks I am about sick of them. For the first day or two they were funny. But after three weeks the humor is long gone. I will not buy four-dozen donuts and one being chocolate Boston cream, for the shop. I have not had a pay check in two years and cannot afford donuts. This remark has been made at least eight times by many people in the past three weeks.

Not to mention the many other new guy cracks that float around the shop. To me this is similar to hazing at a college or boot camp. You can pull that on the young kids fresh out of the service, they do not know any better.

The cracks about the XXX on-site are disrespectful to the customer. I do not mind going on-site to XXX. You cannot come up with an on-site worst then any I have seen. I have been on at least a thousand on-sites. Some places had dirt and or wood floors.

I have 25 years of experience in the field of metrology both repairing and calibrating instruments that most of these techs have no clue on how to calibrate, much less repair. So I am NOT a NEW GUY and stop the remarks! It will piss me off sooner then later.

If the remarks do not stop I will file a formal complaint with Human Resources.

**** Okay, I guess he isn't so happy, hmm.

Let me tell you the cast of characters here... Bob is Mr. Unhappy, Roger is me, Jeff is my boss, and Dale? Well she is HR. Oh and XXX is a customer, that is totally innocent in all of this. So it looks to me like he has already filed a formal complaint. Oh, and when I talked to Dale's boss, Michele, she already knew about this. Oh, and she wanted to see what my response would be, after I figured that out. For the record, she thinks Bob needs to get a sense of humor, okay I guess it was technically off the record, but you know what I mean.

So how does one respond to someone that feels he is greater than everyone else? Well, this is what I did...

From: Roger
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2008 10:53 AM
To: Bob; Jeffery
Cc: Dale ; Michele
Subject: RE: 'New Guy Remarks' Harassment!

Bob,

Thank you for expressing your concerns regarding the "new guy" comments. I have spoken to everyone in the lab regarding this and they will no longer use that phrase when addressing you. I will say that there was no intent for malice and it (the new guy comments) refers to you being the new guy to the laboratory, and not about your ability. We have some very talented technicians and a strong calibration team that works together to get things done, and in getting things done we like to break up the monotony with a little bit of joking around. Our technicians come from a varied background and most have had formal PMEL training, they also have experience ranging from six years to nearly fifty years, so technically no one is a "new guy" in this lab.

The donut remarks were said in jest and you know that as I even told you that myself, in person. When you mentioned the fact that you haven't had a paycheck in more than two years, I again reiterated that it's all in fun, and that we joke that the "new guy" has to bring donuts on Fridays. We do this, because you never know, someone might take it seriously and actually bring them in. I apologize if I didn't make myself clear on the fact that you did not have to bring donuts in, and since you didn't, I figured that you understood this.

The remarks about XXX are all internal and should not be repeated to the customer and are just complaints, almost like complaining about the weather - facts, and there is nothing you can do about it. We have had several different customers that we do onsites for that offer their own sets of challenges, and we all have ways of dealing with them; yet we still do the job as trained and experienced professionals, if we didn't we would not be working here.

Jeff should be back on Wednesday, and if you would like, we can set up an appointment to discuss this further, face to face.

Roger


*** There you have it. Too much? Not enough? I'm just curious what you all think.

As for the lab, well they are not exactly happy that this "new guy" has decided to go whining to HR about some general ribbing. Methinks that Bob is really not going to like it there anymore, and I would not be surprised if he was no longer there when I get back from Disney. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking. PITA rears it's ugly head once again, and soclose to vacation. Dammit!

Thanks for reading my "dirty laundry" and have a great evening.