WORK RELATIONSHIPS: BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END

Work relationships usually begin when you start a job and meet everyone.

And you’re the new guy, the FNG.

Then you settle in and do the work. Until one day someone doesn’t show up.

They don’t show up the next day either. Then it happens.

You’re no longer the new guy once a replacement for the missing one gets introduced around.

It’s sad, even if you don’t know what happened. What probably happened?

The night foreman at Hallmarks Fishery in Charleston, Oregon greeted all of the summer workers, high school and college kids putting money away for big things.

“Welcome aboard,” he said, then added his own salty message.

The job was standing at a table with four people on each side while one person at the end, the Head Chopper, chopped the heads off salmon and slid them down the table.

The table crew caught the salmon slider, and with crusty gloves, scraped sea lice off their skin. Sea lice? Who knew.

One night a new guy showed up for introductions. He lasted three days. When he didn’t show up for the fourth day, the night man said, “He is now a former slimer on this dock.”

The foreman knew the sea, the docks, and Red’s Tavern. And he knew what made for good work relationships. Since it was a graveyard shift, lunch was 2 A.M., the same time as last call. More than once the night crew sent someone to Red’s for beer at lunch.

After one too many, the foreman drove a forklift off the dock one night. On the way over, his leg got pinched off. He took some time off then came back as his usually sassy self, just a little lighter on one side.

Work Relations In The Middle

Office people develop odd work relationships because who they are changes in the office environment. They have to be nice, even if it grates on them.

A tough guy can’t prove how tough when he’s at a desk pushing a pencil, even if they look like Hell’s Angels, Brooklyn Chapter.

Hey, Rocky.

In Wall Street bond houses like E.F. Hutton, where everyone listened, the tough guys talked about bond trades, idiot trades, killing trades. Their vocabulary was littered with violence. On paper.

The new guys came in with no idea of who they were replacing, or if there was an expansion, or anything.

“This is the job description, this is the desk, this is the stack of bond trade changes to fix. Any questions?”

The Purchase And Sales Department on the seventh floor of One Battery Park Plaza had an answer man, an oracle, and he occupied the third stall toilet in the men’s bathroom.

Anyone with a question asked his opinion, his advice. He was a Wall Street back office veteran by day, but also worked a shift in the post office at night. The bathroom stall was his rest station where he took questions.

After the first week, where co-workers pretended not to know anything and sent the new guy to the can, reality set in: learn the job to avoid ever waking Barry up.

That’s one of many work relationships to avoid.

Lasting Work Relationships

Career-path work relations, long term in the same company, eventually change with people aging out and retiring.

Or being forced out by a new board of directors.

A Great Man bit the dirt after thirty-five years building an iconic institution, replaced by a confused academic lacking the experience in dealing with a seasoned staff.

The new top man was the FNG, and it was awkward.

He was officially introduced at an evening event billed as a roast for the outgoing king. Except the king, showing who was who, turned the tables and roasted the new guy.

In a show of appropriate manners, the FNG took the slings and arrows in stride, but his face showed his true feelings. He was humiliated and angry in a ‘How dare they’ look.

The new leader divided the staff, brought in new people to back him who didn’t have any notion of local history and administration, who didn’t worship the ground the former top stood on.

The whole company took a dive. The smart set brought in one retread after another to fix their screw up, finally settling on the best hack available, before it all turned around.

Over a short span the best and worst of work relationships were on full display.

Former allies showed their true colors and became enemies; out of state replacements used the company as a personal stepping stone; money was dispersed for contract work that was once in-house.

Then the questions, accountability, and law suits followed.

Over time, work relationships, not the work, is what lasts.

Hey Matt. Hi Michelle.