Saturday, December 27, 2008

If I Were King........

Y'know, I'm not a manager -- I've always been a worker bee, and I 'supervise' technicians to the extent that we work together, and I'm the pharmacist. I try not to get sucked into petty bickering and workplace politics. I'll lend a sympathetic ear to whoever wants to talk to me. But I find the one thing that comes up over and over (and I'm sure this is true for other businesses) is this: If you're a manager, and you've decided to impose a rule or a standard that you expect your staff to follow, then EVERYONE has to follow it. There can be NO EXCEPTIONS. NONE. And the staff members who decide to blow you off while others attempt to obey the rules, need to be DEALT with. Not doing so creates unhappiness, morale problems, bickering, bad blood and outright hostility.

I'm just talking about simple standard stuff -- if you have imposed a dress code, for example. Or decided that employees are to answer the phone in a certain way. Rules about calling in sick, coming in late, or leaving early. I have seen over and over in my pharmacy career how certain employees are allowed to walk all over the rules, and I will never understand it, NEVER. You've got to treat everyone the same, and if there are extenuating circumstances, just explain it to everybody. This seems so simple to me -- am I missing something?

As you may have guessed, this issue has raised its ugly head again in my place of work. What a distraction....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What is infuriating as a worker bee pharmacist is that other worker bee pharmacists with similar responsibilities to be on duty and pick up their fair share of the load, may sometime shirk or leave them for others, then they get promoted because they know how to 'delegate' their responsibilities. What is even more infuriating is when a worker bee that is not a pharmacist, buddies up to the manager and gets put into some 'power' position, and not only gets away with not pulling their end of their responsibilities with no consequences i.e. others have to cover their job, but in addition, refuses to do what is in at least their job description that the pharmacist has not not been trained to do, and has come to expect that this ancillary position will provide, and then the pharmacist worker bee will be 'punished' for if job not accomplished.