Be Not Afraid
By Brian Friel bfriel@nationaljournal.com
June 6, 2007
A problem federal employee became even more of a problem when he decided to start intimidating two co-workers. He was a big guy who had gotten into trouble at work in the past.
He started staring at two female colleagues in a threatening way because they had complained about him.
It wasn't a good situation. But what could his supervisors do? This was the federal government after all. How could they take disciplinary action against someone for looking at his co-workers the wrong way?
Luckily for the two women, upper management didn't agree. Instead of doing nothing, they proposed a bold move -- fire the employee -- even though they weren't sure of the outcome in the notoriously bureaucratic federal appeals process. It turned out that the bully wasn't so tough. Surprised by the strong management response, the employee begged for his job and promised to stop staring. Management eventually gave him a temporary job at another office.
Former federal manager Stewart Liff includes this tale, along with many other battle stories from the trenches of the civil service, in his new book, Managing Government Employees: How to Motivate Your People, Deal With Difficult Issues and Achieve Tangible Results (Amacom, 2007).
more at http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?filepath=/dailyfed/0607/060607mm.htm
