Things You Don't Do at Work

  I was in the radio station GM’s office one day waiting on the arrival of an employee facing disciplinary action.  He walked in with a big ol’ Bowie knife on his side.  The GM asked the guy about the knife.

  “I’m an American and I have the right to bear arms,” said the guy.

  “Not in my office, asshole,” said the GM.  “That’s the first time I’ve seen you wear that thing in the station.  Take it out to your car and leave it or we can take care of your crap by me firing your ass right now.”

  The dude left for a minute or two and came back in without the knife.

  
  Once upon a time I hungered to be a radio station manager, and in the best of all my dreams, to own and operate my own radio station.

  That was before I got years of life experience under my belt.

  And…

  That was before the Internet.

  Now I am content to do my job and go home.

  I learned that, as a manager, you take crap from above and crap comes up from below. That’s one reason of many I can list as to why top or middle management doesn’t interest me now.

  Another reason is you seem to spend a significant portion of your time trying to explain common sense to subordinates who seem to lack it.

  There are some things in life I didn’t catch (OK, maybe a lot), but among the things I did come to understand were rules on how to behave at work. To be sure, I’m not perfect, but I do have a general idea what to do and what not to do on the job.

  I have encountered those who have stretched those rules beyond the bounds of common sense…like a radio station bookkeeper who got drunk every work day, keeping her booze in the tank of the toilet of the women’s room.  She kept the books with a system that made no sense, that required a pro to come in and untangle the mess after she got fired.

  There was a fellow named Tom Flowers* I worked with at radio station once upon a time. Tom liked to send bouquets of flowers to some of his favorite female listeners, it was part of his “mystique” he told me...a fellow named Flowers who sent flowers.  Thing was, the bill from the florist was then sent to where he worked.

  That would be the radio station.

  Where I was his supervisor.

  After this happened, Tom and I came to an understanding that he would not do this anymore, things were peaceful for a while.

  Then we received the bill for $500 worth of stereo equipment for his home. I have forgotten how it all happened, but someone overheard my rantings over the situation and suggested that I call a certain probation officer two counties away about Tom.  It turned out Tom had done something similar in that county. He had been tried, convicted and put on probation for it.

  Not long after that Tom Flowers didn’t work at our radio station anymore.

  I didn’t run into any other workplace weirdos for quite a number of years after that.

  Then I moved out to The Golden West.

  In a small town in the Grand Canyon State, I was appointed to a middle management position. My first week on the job, I was called into the general manager’s office along with Elmo Smith*, a guy who worked evenings at the radio station.

  Elmo was being called on the carpet because the boss had just found out that Elmo was operating “The Elmo Smith School of Broadcasting”….

…at the radio station after hours unbeknownst to anyone else.

  Elmo’s operation was discovered when a young man came in to apply for a job. On the application where it asked for education and experience, the kid wrote “Graduate of the Elmo Smith School of Broadcasting.” Upon seeing this, the boss asked the kid to come in his office and tell him about his experience at the “school.”

  “Elmo charged me $300 to come in nights and watch him work from 8 p.m. till midnight,” said the kid.  “At the end of the first month I got to sit in the air chair, play the CDs and run commercials while Elmo sat on the other side of the counter and did the talking. After two months, I graduated.”

  The kid was part of a “class” of three.

  Elmo was unapologetic.

  Elmo saw the whole situation as…what did he say?  “My American entrepreneurial right to free enterprise.”

  At the time I thought Elmo had listened to too much talk radio.

  “There’s nothing going on at night,” said Elmo.  “I was basically just babysitting the place so I figured I’d put my time to good use.”

  “So,” said the boss, “Why didn’t you check with me first before you started your ‘school’?”

  Elmo turned red and shrugged his shoulders.

  “You’re using station equipment,” the boss went on.  “Station facilities, why didn’t you arrange for the station to get a ‘cut’ of your business?”

  Elmo shrugged his shoulders again.

  Elmo kept his job but had to give the money back to his three “students.”

 Then there was the teenager who replaced Elmo on nights who thought long distance calls were free to employees of the radio station. Examining the long distance bills, it was obvious this kid was doing nothing but talking on the phone to his friends in Utah, California and Virginia while he was on the clock. He had to pay back $800 for his calls.

  Then there was the radio station engineer who lost his job when we discovered the reason the station’s brand-new computer system that ran everything couldn’t function because it was full of mass quantities of porn.

  Porn the engineer had downloaded into the system.

  There was the time the boss assigned me the task of finding out who was tossing toilet paper used for rear-end wiping into the trash can of the men’s room.

  It seems the cleaning crew told him if it wasn’t stopped they would not work at the station again.

  Turns out it was the same kid who thought long distance calls came free to station employees.  The story was was that’s what his family did at their house so that only “pure” sewage went into their septic tank, no paper products.  He thought the whole world handled their used toilet paper the same way as his family.

  Yeah, I’ve run into things done by folks at radio stations that just made me want to stay home.

  Then I remembered a quote attributed to American educator John Dewey: “To think you can be totally self-sufficient with no need to rely on others is a form of insanity.”

-30-

* Names changed to protect me.