[This is story one of my friends who waited tables at a national chain related to me about another employee who had decided to quit.]

WAITER: Good evening, sir. What can we get for you?

ROTUND CUSTOMER: I’d like the 16 oz. steak with fries, a soda, and a baked potato.

WAITER: No. I won’t do that. You’re too fat already. I can’t imagine what it would do to your cholesterol.

ROTUND CUSTOMER: What!?

WAITER: Yeah, actually, the only thing I’d be willing to serve you is a salad and some ice water.

ROTUND CUSTOMER: Well, I have never -

WAITER: It’s for your own good, sir.

The morals of the story?

1. Unhappy employees can cause serious damage.

No doubt, this customer was offended. And rightfully so. Given  the speed with which news can travel, the restaurant proved lucky that this didn’t end up as a chain e-mail. Or, worse yet, a viral video produced by the employee.

2. Someone has to clean up the messes unhappy employees make. That someone is you.

Can you imagine trying to deal with this customer having just witnessed this interaction and knowing that you aren’t wearing kevlar?

3.  Either of two things could have prevented this from happening:

a. Keeping this employee happy.

Whether it was through bonuses, better scheduling, personal attention, or whatever it was this employee needed but wasn’t getting (asking is a good way to find out if you’re unsure), someone could have kept him happy enough that he would, at the bare minimum, quit in the traditional way.

b. Firing his happy ass.

After realizing just how checked out he was, someone should have gotten rid of this particular employee. Employees throw off all kinds of signals that they no longer care. In my next post, I’ll be looking at some of those behaviors.

Yesterday, I called in sick. I’ll spare you the graphic details, but I woke up feeling like fifty bucks worth of devalued currency. In honor of my brief day off, I decided that I would look at some of the ways I’ve had friends decide quite suddenly that they wouldn’t go to work. After all, it’s quite a drag when it happens, and we could all use more solutions.

1. Call in sick - Actually sick.

“Hey, boss, it’s TJ. I’m not feeling so… hang on one second… [retching noises]… Sorry, I won’t be in today.”

This is a rare one. Reason being, we’re young and spry, so our immune systems take care of this one for employers. Aside from encouraging employees to get plenty of fluids and rest, there isn’t much an employer can do to prevent these types of call-offs. I will note that allowing people who are sick to stay home and not get everyone else sick helps, too.

2. Call in sick - Not actually sick.

“I will not be coming to work today, I was in a terrible plane crash. My entire family was killed and I am a vegetable.” [From the TV show "Family Guy"]

This is the kind of call that ruins it for those of us who are actually sick. Now, when we call in, we have to get the third degree, “Are you actually sick? Or is it like last week when Carson called in with Smallpox?” The same really goes for fake family emergencies, alien abductions, etc. They all fall into the broad category best described as “lies.”

I’ve seen a couple different ways to combat this one.

Some employers have demanded doctor’s notes. To be honest, though, when I’ve got whatever it is I get, I know that a day of rest, a couple long nights of sleep, and plenty of orange juice will normally do the trick. As a result, I have no interest in seeing the doctor. Especially when he’s going to tell me to get a day of rest, a couple long nights of sleep, and plenty of orange juice. So, to be honest, I think demanding a note for a sick day is only going to irritate people.

Another way I see this handled is with a cap. Salaried employees get a certain number of sick days per a given time period as part of a PTO package. That’s pretty standard. However, that doesn’t mean a thing to an hourly employee. One company I worked for used a point system: you got a certain number of points for calling in, and if you managed to accumulate a certain number of points, you got canned. From what I can see, it works pretty well, so long as an employee isn’t completely checked out (in which case you want them gone anyway).

3. Call in sick - Hungover

“Hey, boss, it’s TJ. I’m not feeling so… hang on one second… [retching noises]… Sorry, I won’t be in today.”

In ways, this call is indistinguishable from the actually sick call-in, but there are notable differences, including a tendency to occur on weekend mornings or after holidays.

I suggest two different ways to attack this:

First, make it very clear that calling in hungover is unacceptable and make the consequences very painful, very clear, and strictly enforced. Whatever you do, never do it yourself, as at the very least it will make you a hypocrite and at the very worst it will make the hangover call-off an acceptable behaviors.

Second, write your schedule intelligently. If you know someone goes out every Friday night, think twice about scheduling him for Saturday morning shifts. Doubtless, you’re treading the fine line between enabling stupid behaviors and running your business efficiently, but this is no time to be naïve. Your employees will be going out, and you need to plan accordingly.

4. Call in - “I don’t want to work”

“I refuse to work that night. This is totally unfair.”

You often see this one around holidays, prom, and other events when time off is a resource too scarce to be given to all.

Again, I’ve seen two strong ways to fight it.

a. Incentivize attendance. If you throw out an extra $20 bucks per person for working during prom, you’re bound to find a couple kids who decide that it’s worth working. As the dollar amount increases, so will willingness to ditch the date and do some dishes.

b. Again provide clear, painful consequences for not showing up. I had one manager who had a number of employees tell her that they would refuse to work on Christmas Eve. She looked at them and said, “If you want to have a job on Christmas morning, you’ll be here.” Problem solved.

Before I ever started working, I learned about work. I had two main sources: my parents and popular culture. I can’t introduce you to my parents. But with the help of Netflix, I can show you some of the lessons I learned about work before ever getting there.

Now, these lessons didn’t really come in the form of lessons. In fact, I’d say they came more in the form of nightmares. I would watch a movie about having a job and then wake up in a cold sweat when I realized that some day I would have to enter the workforce. Between movies and TV, I saw some of the worst bosses in the history of the world.

As inarticulate, inept, evil, or unprofessional as they may be, they can still teach great lessons about managing young employees. When you understand our fears, which are a subset of our expectations, you can lead us more effectively. All you have to do is watch these charactes and form a mangement philosophy based on the exact opposite of what they are doing. As an added bonus, each of these movies or shows is worth watching on merit alone, so throw them in your Netflix queue and spend a guilt-free night of slacking while you learn these four lessons:

1. Communicate Clearly
Bill Lumberg in Office Space

Outside of movies with mob bosses, there is hardly a more loathsome boss than Lumberg . Whether it’s his frequent requests for employees to work weekends or his insistence on the correct cover pages for TPS reports, the man is simply unbearable. But what makes him a truly terrible boss is the way he asks his employees to do their work. The man can’t speak a single sentence without an awkward pause or a “gee” thrown in for effect. I think I may have been happier to learn that my boss could cut to the chase and ask for things than I was to know that he didn’t care about cover sheets.

2. Be competent
David Brent in The Office (Or Michael Scott in the American version of The Office)

Imagine knowing everyday that you are better at your job than someone else is at his job. Now, imagine that he makes more money than you do, has the authority to tell you what to do, plays favorites, and doesn’t tell jokes that are even remotely as good as yours are. Welcome to working for David Brent. Competence translates into authority because when I start to question if you know how to do your job, I will inevitably begin to question why you think you know how to do my job. This is especially true if you like terrible jokes.

3. Remember my name
Mr. Burns on The Simpsons

The Simpsons may well be the TV show that defines my generation. Thus, it should say a thing or two about the relationship my generation expects an evil boss to have with his employees. Burns frequently refers to his employees as “drones,” his idea of a good note on which to end a meeting is releasing the hounds, and he can never remember Homer Simpson’s name. Remembering my name is an easy way to show that you don’t think of me as an expendable, forgettable, unimportant cog in a large machine. (Not releasing the hounds is good for morale, too.)

4. Be my boss, not my friend
The manager in Waiting

Total creepiness of the mid-40s boss hitting on his barely legal staff aside, the problem with this guy is that he’s trying to be friends with his staff. Even if he was cool enough to hang out with them (and he’s not), there would still be the problem that he would occasionally have to ask them to do really uncool tasks, like cleaning toilets. Bosses and employees can’t be friends. The work thing gets in the way. As long as I’m asking you for a pay check, stop trying to befriend me and lead me where I need to go.