Chapter 9. Damaged Goods

What can you do about the kind of employee who is a problem for everyone, who gets passed on from manager to manager? This sometimes happens because no one wants to be the bad guy who lets the employee go, particularly if there is a fear of legal repercussions due to employee protection legislation. So the employee can go on continually disrupting office activities, and frustrating managers for quite some time until pressures build even more to take some action. What action can you take?

That’s the situation that Bethany, a bank manager, faced when Hilda, a problem sales employee in her early 40s, was transferred into her area. Ironically, Bethany had just arranged to have another difficult employee—who was constantly whining ...

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