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Blacklisting

One of my colleagues did an evil thing last month: He encouraged me to give NBC’s The Blacklist a try. Clown Businessman

Ever since, I’ve been hooked on James Spader’s character, Raymond “Red” Reddington. Without spoiling anything for the uninitiated, Red is a fixture on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, a supremely enterprising international underworld mercenary, and a brilliant mind who surrenders himself to the FBI for reasons that still are unknown to viewers. All we do know is that Red has agreed to help the FBI apprehend a number of vile criminals, gangsters, thugs, and scrubbed-up lowlifes (many of whom the FBI had no reason to suspect of any criminal involvement). He feeds these names to a special FBI task force one at a time, and each episode’s title is named for the latest name Red pulls from his mental (wait for it…) “Blacklist.”

Hopefully all you personnel pros out there aren’t dealing with international criminals, thieves, killers, and gangsters, but you certainly have typecast employees whom we all can’t help thinking we’d do better without. I’ve described a few possible candidates below. I’d welcome any other types of employees you may want to add to the HR Blacklist in the comments.

  •  The Dime Store Lawyer: This individual has read the employee handbook cover-to-cover and really likes the Internet. He’s also the guy who shows up in his doctor’s office and the first words out of his mouth are, “So I was reading the CDC’s website and ….” This employee will bring his dog-eared copy of the canonical handbook to HR and haggle over the intricacies of your leave policies and vacation accrual records. He likes to share his scholarship with other employees and encourages them to take his advice to the bank.
  • The Line Dancer: This employee is well practiced in the ways of making herself a pain in the neck, but knows exactly where “the line” is and deviously refuses to cross it. If your disciplinary write-ups roll off her record after a certain period of time, she will mark off the days until she thinks her record is clear enough to spark another round of low-level mischief.
  • The Advocate: For some reason, this employee never complains for himself although he clearly has a bone to pick over something. Instead, he busies himself with spotting perceived injustices and slights visited upon other employees and rushing to their aid (even though they may be perfectly happy). He’s always indignant that you don’t do things the way they did them at his last company (which fired him, by the way).
  • The Consumer: This employee has never bought a stack of sticky notes, paper, pens, highlighters, paper clips, or single cans of soft drinks in her life. Oddly enough, though, her desk is stuffed to the gills and her home looks like an office supply warehouse. Really, who can blame her? Most American home offices these days have really, really impressive staplers–the temptation is too much.

5 thoughts on “Blacklisting”

  1. Great post, Matt. I too love the Blacklist and would add a couple more to your list of nefarious employees: The Martyr – The Martyr is generally a mediocre-to-poor performing employee who interprets every instance of direction, counseling, or constructive criticism as a personal attack that will undoubtedly require a leave of absence for “stress.” The Professional Plaintiff – The Professional Plaintiff spends his days filing charges of discrimination, internal grievances, and even lawsuits against his employer, while he is still employed. The Professional Plaintiff uses his litigiousness to insulate himself from any negative consequences whatsoever at work, no matter how meritorious.

  2. The Man with the Apple: This general mischief maker is the one who secretly steals from your lunch in the office fridge. He has taken a page out of The Consumer’s book and has upped the ante by stealing that delicious pudding cup that you were looking forward to enjoying in the break room while tapping away on your smartphone trying to find Blacklist spoilers.

  3. Sounds like an interesting show. Here’s one for the list: The Sickly Wonder. This individual seems to be out more than she’s in. Other employees roll their eyes when hearing she’s out “sick” yet again, increasing the workload of her fellow employees to cover her absence.

  4. The Know-it-all

    This guy knows how to do your job better then you do. He will always let you know how ‘he’ would handle a situation and that is the only correct way to do it. When it comes to company challenges, he knows exactly what is wrong and doesn’t hesitate to offer his solutions. Repeatedly. The one thing he never does is stop and listen to others. Since after all, if everyone would just shut up and take his advice, the whole company would be better off.

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