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

Chapter 31. Silence Is Golden

Not every employee makes a good team player or is a good communicator. In fact, an inarticulate, hard-to-talk-to employee can sometimes be very effective and productive in the right setting. But in the wrong place, he or she can seem like the employee from hell. It’s all a matter of context, and the right kind of management can make the difference.

That’s what happened when Shauna was transferred into a public relations and information management office for a company that handled corporate communications and customer relations. She found that most of the employees, a half-dozen women in their 20s and 30s, had joined together into a tightly knit group that not only worked together well on the job, but also socialized ...