28-The Story of Fred and Ethel

Never have anything stolen from you, money, your car, items in your house. What about a person? Ever have a person stolen from you? I have Welcome to the story of Fred and Ethel. I'm jimpoling and this is my View from the middle. Are stars of our show today are Fred, the manager who did the stealing, Ethel the employee who was stolen, Sally, an innocent bystander in all this, Desi and Lucy, the overseeing managers some might say Ivory Tower managers that allowed it all to happen, and of course me, your lowly podcast host, and the guy in the middle of all this nonsense. By the way, for more on Ivory Tower managers, you might want to listen to the episodes in this My View from the Middle series called of You from the Ivory Tower. In more than one sermon at our church, the pastor has talked about forgiveness, for giving people in the past who have done some sort of harm to you. In all instances, holding a grudge against someone is counterproductive and does more harm to you than the person you're mad at. But sometimes letting go of a grudge is easier said than done. Now, I'm not one who generally holds a grudge against someone, at least not for a long duration. But sometimes I look back on one particular situation that happened to me in the business world and I get a bit irritated. I'm irritated about what happened, but I'm also irritated that I'm irritated, and that's just irritating. Breathe, breathe. I need to let it go. So what in the wide wide world of sports am I talking about? Well, as I alluded to in the opening of this episode, I had something, or rather some one stolen from me in a rather underhanded way. Hand or not, it doesn't excuse holding a grudge, and I'm over it, well almost. I was a manager for the majority of my working life. Somehow I always seem to get promoted at any of the jobs I had, whether in retail or broadcasting. I've had a lot of people work for me, and for the most part, I think those folks would probably reflect on their time in my employee positively. I'd like to think the reason for that is I didn't always act like a quote boss, but rather a partner in achieving the task at hand. Sometimes being the boss can't be helped, though sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Being the boss isn't a popularity contest, and those managers who try to make it that way aren't very successful. But I'll admit that my flaw as a manager was becoming, for lack of a better description, too emotionally invested in an employee. Sometimes when I would hire an especially talented individual, they would, in my mind, become an extension of me. I would expect them to think like me, do the things I would do without me giving them specific instructions. I would also expect total loyalty from that person. Now, all of these things can be extremely dangerous and can lead to some really dicey situations. You also run the risk of blinding yourself to the employee's shortcomings. Without that emotional investment, mistakes or bad behavior by the employee would be much easier to deal with. It would also make it easier when the manager above you tells you that the employee has to be laid off, or if the employee resigns unexpectedly but instead getting wrapped up in a subordinate who runs a foul of things has to be terminated or quits can have painful repercussions. And cause you to lose your much needed beauty sleep. The reality is you can't expect total loyalty from anyone. You also can't expect people to be mind readers. The employee, no matter how loyal they are to you, still has to look out for themselves and as a manager. The sooner you come to grips with that reality, the better off you are. I've actually been lucky in my life and that I've never been in a situation where a girlfriend has cheated on me, at least not that I know of. I've also never cheated on my girlfriends in my formative years or my wife of thirty nine years, so that feeling of betrayal hasn't ever entered the picture. As an employee myself, I was usually pretty loyal, almost to a fault, which is probably where my problem started now that I think about it. I've had employees resigned before, but in almost all cases, they've quit with notice and with good reason. I'm proud that some people who have worked for me have moved onward and upward into bigger and better things. I've also had employees transfer to other departments to better their situations. In these latter cases, their a new manager, in concert with the employee, would communicate with me so we could work out the details and make for a smooth transition. The logistics of losing a person and bringing in a replacement can be challenging no matter what the situation, But these aren't the type of troublesome, betrayal ridden situation I'm talking about. In forty years of management, there's really only one situation that to this day gives me some monicum of indigestion when I think about it. It's when an employee was stolen out from under me in an underhanded way. This led to my resenting and mistrusting the manager who stole the employee, the overseeing managers who allowed it to happen, and, to some minor extent, the employee herself. So here's the story of Fred and Ethel. Of course I'm using fictitious names. My purpose here is to call anyone on the carpet for anything. So if you recognize this story, and some of you will because you were there when it happened, then don't go blasting out their real identities on social media or anything like that. That would defeat the purpose of the aliases. I was director of operations for the Florida News Network, and the task at hand was to start a new web based news service that radio stations along FNN could use for their websites. The newswriters and anchors on FNN, although very experienced in broadcast newswriting, had little or no experience in writing news copy for print or the Internet, a whole different style of writing. Iheard Media has a digital department, but at the time they weren't writing news per se. Their editors were mostly stuffing content into online templates and posting pictures of pop culture stars, so no journalism schooling or talent was needed. So I really needed an editor who could guide my newspeople in the proper way to present news for the eye as opposed to the ear, as we like to say. I had to sell the idea of creating the position to Desi and Lucy. If you lost your scorecard. Dese is my boss and Lucy is his boss. They'll let me go ahead, But I don't think they really understood why I needed someone with journalism experience that would eventually become a parent. Enter Ethyl now. Ethyl is a nineteen year old woman a few years out of college or She had a double major in journalism and international relations. Now I don't always hold fancy degrees in high regard, but you have to met These credentials were pretty impressive. Since college, she had a few years experience doing the exact thing we were looking for someone to do. I did a few interviews with people, but Ethel seemed to be the best choice. Somehow, on the first interview with her, I missed how young she was. Her demeanor and resume didn't really look like a girl of nineteen, so I decided to ignore the number and go with my first impression. Upon reflection, that may have been my first mistake. So Ethel was hired and things were going swimmingly For several months we launched the service. Ethel was training the newswriters on producing internet news and editing and proofing news copy. So, in my delusion, I was becoming more and more emotionally invested in her. She was an extension of me. We were partners in this project, and she was a loyal employee. Well, maybe not so much. Several months went by, Fred, the manager of the digital department, was looking for someone who could manage content on one of the station websites. It happened to be the news talk station, and so the content was pretty much a match with what Ethyl was doing. Anyway, in this day and age, people have to be multitaskers, and so when given extra duties, flexibility is a key element. I was very willing to let Ethyl take on the extra duty, since it made her position with the company that much more valuable, and since it was news related content, there was a lot of synergy with what she was already doing for the Internet news service. But then she started doing some things that I wasn't crazy about, such as doing social media for the teen oriented contemporary hit station, which by the way, was managed by Fred, the digital manager. I didn't really see the synergy in posting updates on teen celebrities and serious news articles, but Ethel insisted she could handle it without compromising her duties. But I was starting to get a little irritated. There's that word again. Then some strange things began to happen. Ethel would disappear for long stretches of time during the day. One day, I wandered over to the digital department, where I found Ethel sitting in Fred's office, laughing and joking. When they saw me, they stopped and acted all awkward like. I asked Ethel if she was going to finish the things she needed to do for the news service for the day. She said yes and headed back to her work area. Yes. I was irritated. About a week or so after that incident, I was called into Dezzy's office. Now does he is the manager that oversees both Fred and myself? Lucy is his boss. The conversation opened with you're losing Ethel. Huh. He went on to explain that Fred wanted to transfer her to his department to oversee his team based contemporary website. You can have Sally does? He says? Now, Sally is one of the digital department employees. She's a great person and does a fine job manipulating the web template and posting pop culture photos and such, But she has no journalism background or education and probably hasn't written an actual news story in her life. It was apparent that DESI still had no idea what the qualifications were for the job that Ethel was doing, but Fred had pulled the wool over his eyes and convinced him that posting pictures of Brittany and Bruno Mars and information about the latest teen craze was infinitely more important than running an internet news service, and Ethel should be doing it. Irritating, yes, I tried expluading my feelings on this to DESI. He looked stunned and confused. Fred had done such a snow job on him that I believe he actually had no clue about what the ramifications of making this change would be. He suggested that he, Fred and I get together for a meeting. But at that meeting, they suggested that Ethel simply do both jobs. I knew that wasn't going to last. It didn't. I suggested we post the position in higher replacement, but I was promptly told there was no budget for it. I was budgeted for one Internet person, and that was Ethel. Oh I could have Sally, as if that would do any good. Keep in mind that Ethel was a nineteen year old girl, just a few years out of college. I think she secretly liked the attention Fred was giving her, so she wasn't going to be the one to complain about all this. Much to my dismay, her youth seemed to make her more susceptible to Fred's manipulation. When she first came to me. She didn't drink or smoke and had just gotten married when all this stuff started to happen. She got a divorce and one day I saw on Facebook where she was bragging about doing shots with Fred at a local bar. Anyway, I knew the arrangement to have Ethel worked for both of us would be short lived. That became painfully apparent when the Casey Anthony trial happened in Orlando. Now Casey Anthony was the mother of toddler Cayley Anthony. Casey was on trial for murder and the death of Cayley and was eventually acquitted of the charges, but it was a major trial for Orlando and probably the news story of that year. Ethel would be needed to post trial updates and manage the page that contained the live stream of the trial proceeding. However, Fred had other ideas. He sent Ethel to California for the MTV Awards or some such thing. I really don't remember what the event was all that clearly, since I was so irritated about it at the time, but it was definitely a national event that didn't require a local person to be there. But Fred had his way about him with DESI and Lucy and was able to convince them that having Ethel at the MTV Awards was more important than covering the news story of the year. Ethel tried to calm me down by assuring me that she would keep up with the trial and do her job remotely from California. I knew that wouldn't happen, and it didn't. The majority of the updates were not done, the stream was broken most of the time, and it was a total embarrassment for our organization. However, Fred got his way. The irritation the bounds, so when Ethel returned, I told her that I no longer needed her services for the news department and she could focus on the Teenybop website. So now let me paint the picture for In Fred's departmental budget, he's paying Sally. In my departmental budget, I'm paying Ethel now since I can't use Sally. He has both Sally and Ethel and his department. He can't transfer Ethel into his budget because that would put him over, so I'm still paying Ethel. That means the position is technically filled, so I can't hire a replacement. Fred, in essence, now has a free employee that I'm paying for, which I believe was his plan all along. I never said he was stupid. He had to know I couldn't use Sally for what Ethel was doing, so he knew I would turn down that option and then eventually release Ethel from her responsibilities to me, especially after the Casey Anthony trial disaster. Desi and Lucy were always firmly in Fred's corner on all this and never saw the importance of Ethel's journalism experience and background and the value it had to our internet news service. The most disappointing part of all this for me was Desi, someone who I had respect for, who let all this happen. He had full knowledge of my displeasure with the situation and did nothing to stop it. Lucy was tucked away in her ivory tower that also had full knowledge of what was happening. I brought it up to her at a later date and she did a little dance and tried to justify the whole thing and the internet news service that Ethel was managing well. I managed it myself for a while, but I eventually shut it down since it just wasn't working without the proper people in place. Irritating. So there I was in the middle an internet news service to run, and the point person in doing that is being co opted by an unscrupulous manager who managed to pull the wool over the eyes of Ivory Tower Management, an employee that I'm paying four out of my budget but can't use for the purpose for which she was hired. But do I still hold a grudge? No. I ran into Fred at a party a year or so ago, and I smiled and was pleasant to him. My relationship with Desi and Lucy was a bit tarnished after the incident, but I had to compartment analyze it and move on. I may have forgiven all those involved, but when I look back on it, I must admit the story of freda Ethel, as irritating as it was, is still irritating. I'm Jim Polding and that's my view from the Middle. In the next episode, ever have a confectionery try to do you in the pumpkin pie that tried to kill me? Next on My View from the Middle, have a story to tell about being in the middle. Let us know. Email Jim at my View from the Middle dot com. That's Jim at My View from the Middle. Dot com