A Survival Guide to Managing Employees from Hell: Handling Idiots, Whiners, Slackers, and Other Workplace Demons

Chapter 1. One Tough Babe

An especially difficult employee is the one who is extremely obnoxious with everyone—always acting tough and coming on like gang-busters. Such behavior can be even more of a problem when he or she isn’t directly your employee, but does work for you. You need the employee to do a good job to support your own work and your staff’s work, but you aren’t directly in charge of the person. So with a mixture of bluster and manipulative charm, the employee can literally end up controlling you.

That’s the situation which Alice faced when she became a manager for a loan brokerage company. Her job was to manage the work of a half dozen loan brokers who spent much of the time out in the field, as well as coordinate everyday office ...