Fidel Castro - Not Supervisory Excellence

The news picked up the story showing Cubans celebrating and marching in parades when it was broadcast Fidel Castro might be dying. Not to make light of the horrible things he accomplished during his reign, but the man has not been a poster boy for supervisory excellence. It brought to my mind the supervisory "failures" I have known during my working career. None could ever begin to hold a candle to the lows’ old Fidel (or other countries’ dictators) have slid but they have had their share of examples of what not to do. In the interest of reverse instruction, I’ll share a few examples.

Being the butt of a rather harmless practical joke, one supervisor jumped on top of his desk and jumped up and down screaming. Sadly, this man died of a heart attack at an early age. A mandatory class in anger management might have saved his life.

When a female office worker’s child had chicken pox, she stayed home with him until her husband got home then came in at night and got all her work done. The man who hired her had told her this was permitted. The new supervisor, just arrived, decided for every daytime hour she missed, he would deduct that much time from her vacation. The fact she had all her work done and came in at nights, with a sick child at home, meant nothing. When questioned, he said, "My wife said this is how I should handle the situation." A call to Human Resources or the previous supervisor might have been a better source for personnel decisions.

Or the following "Dilbert" type comments taken from real work quotes:

"As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday, and employees will receive their cards in two weeks."

"What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter."

"E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business."

"This project is so important we can't let things that are more important interfere with it."

"Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule."

"No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them."

Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say."

A woman’s sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When she told her Boss, he said, "She died on purpose so that you would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year." He then asked her if they could change her burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me (the supervisor)."

"We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees."

When the corporation was going through a buy out and organizational changes, many "Dilbert" cartoons started making appearances on the walls of cubes. The company issued a memo, "As of immediately, employees will not post any Dilbert cartoons on office walls or dividers." Oh, yeah, that made the problems go away.

I sometimes wonder at the grand industrial and commercial work environments that can still turn out the best products, with exceptional quality, while dealing with supervisors in the clueless stage of their careers. It speaks well of the average American worker. Cuban citizens celebrated a hopeful end of Castro’s suppression and persecution of human rights. Likewise, I have seen American workers celebrate when a boss has been transferred or fired. Celebrating the death of a dictator or the leaving of a supervisor is certainly a sad legacy to a career.