It's Not Always a Kindness to Be 'Nice'

Suzanne Lucas comments on what sounds like an astounding failure of mentoring.

An intern at a major law firm ended up being fired for biting five of its employees over a period of time, leaving marks at least once.

Relevantly, toddlers get written up for biting at daycare on the first offense, and put on the kiddie equivalent of a PIP.

Lucas does an admirable job of speculating on how something like this happened, and probably correctly calls out the intern's supervisors for a share of the blame:

I don't know why the powers that be ignored the intern's bad behavior for so long, but I suspect it had to do with the misplaced desire to be nice. But what would have been nicer is if the very first person she bit had responded sharply with, "What on earth did you just do? I cannot believe you bit me! I'm reporting this right now."

And then, if her boss and HR had very firmly informed her that this was unacceptable behavior and this was her final warning, and she would be terminated if she did it again, there is a good chance that she wouldn't have bitten again.

And then, she'd finish up her summer internship and move on with life. Instead, it escalated until she was fired. While I don't know her name (and made zero effort to find who it was), finding that information would not take long for a dedicated internet sleuth.

Being nice may well have flipped this from "oh my word, I can't believe I was so dumb to think biting at work was funny" to "I'm never going to get a job at a good law firm." [bold added]

I say probably correctly here only because, as Lucas acknowledges, we're not privy to what actually went on.

But in today's rapidly-disintegrating culture, it is far from inconceivable that someone could reach adulthood without knowing that biting other people is unacceptable workplace behavior.

Mentoring -- or even simply being a good coworker -- can indeed more closely resemble parenting these days.

-- CAV