I Sat Through A 45-minute Rant About How Much Of A “lazy Rich Kid” I Am. The Employee Had No Idea I Actually Own The Company. Should I Have Fired Him On The Spot?
I also learned that sometimes the harshest critics have the weakest performance records and that people who spend all their time complaining often do so to avoid looking at their own shortcomings. Dennis had been so convinced of his own excellence and my incompetence that he’d never stopped to question whether his perceptions matched reality.
Six months later I was back in that same breakroom having lunch and happened to sit with some of the workers from the B-line, the team Dennis had been on. They were chatting about normal stuff when one of them mentioned they’d gotten a new team member who was working out much better than the last guy they’d had.
Another worker laughed and said:
“Yeah, at least this one doesn’t spend half his break complaining about everything.”
They didn’t mention Dennis by name, but I knew who they meant. I asked how the new person was working out and they said:
“Great, really positive attitude and solid production numbers.”
It was a reminder that sometimes addition by subtraction is the best move for a team and that removing one negative voice can improve morale for everyone else. I finished my lunch and headed back to my office, passing through the production floor where machines hummed and workers focused on their tasks.
The place wasn’t perfect and never would be, but it was running well and most people seemed reasonably content with their jobs. That was all I could realistically hope for as an owner.
The Dennis incident became something of a legend at the plant, one of those stories that got told to new hires as a cautionary tale about assumptions and professionalism. I heard various versions of it over the following years, some accurate and some wildly embellished.
In one version I’d supposedly fired Dennis on the spot in the breakroom in front of everyone, which wasn’t remotely true but made for a more dramatic story. I didn’t bother correcting the exaggerations because the core message was sound regardless of the specific details.
Be careful what you say about people you don’t know because you never know who might be listening. Focus on your own performance before criticizing others.
Treat everyone with basic respect even if you think they’re beneath your notice. These weren’t complicated lessons but apparently they needed to be learned through experience for some people.
Dennis had provided that experience in spectacular fashion, and while I doubted he’d thanked me for it, I hoped he’d grown from it nonetheless. As for me, I continued my quiet observations and regular check-ins, always learning and always trying to improve both the business and myself as a leader.
