A Survival Guide to Managing Employees from Hell: Handling Idiots, Whiners, Slackers, and Other Workplace Demons

Chapter 27. A Favor Backfires

Using your position to help out a friend can sometimes be a risky business, especially when you place great trust in a friend’s referral and don’t institute the usual checks. Certainly, connections through friends and other personal acquaintances are one of the major sources of employment—and generally getting good employees through networking works out. But when it doesn’t, the results can be even worse because not only is the employee a problem, but the friendship can be threatened, too.

That was the situation that Frank, the owner of a small health club, faced when his good friend, Terrence, called to say he had a cousin who was recently downsized out of his administrative assistant position. He really needed something ...