ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 8, 1996 TAG: 9612100062
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: WORKPLACE
DATELINE: KANSAS CITY, MO.
SOURCE: JENNIFER MANN FULLER KANSAS CITY STAR
Employees in America are spreading lies about co-workers, sabotaging assembly lines and - as at Texaco, Inc. - secretly recording the damaging dialogue of fellow executives. All in the name of revenge.
It's workplace revenge by the disenfranchised against those who control corporate America, to get even for real and perceived wrongs. Experts see no slowdown in this escalating tit-for-tat.
Workplace revenge has a million faces - from an act as seemingly innocuous as taking an extra 15 minutes at lunch to one as violent as murdering one's boss. Or, as ex-Texaco executive Richard Lundwall recently did, as overt as recording the words of other executives.
Or as overt as starting a successful business to compete against a former employer.
G. Keith Olson, who appears on the talk-show circuit as ``the change doctor,'' is often called to help companies deal with workplace violence.
He said revenge ``usually comes from a very genuine feeling of being misused or not being appreciated, not being cared about. Years ago, people would work for the company and the company would take care of them, but it just isn't that way anymore.''
It doesn't have to be this way, experts say. Companies and employees alike can work to resolve conflict long before it festers.
Blame the American worker's resentment on the popping of the post-World War II bubble of prosperity.
``We were the one industrial powerhouse in the world that had survived World War II unscathed, and, as a consequence, just about anything we made someone bought,'' said Don Blohowiak, an expert on change in the workplace. ``Everybody was frankly fat and happy.''
Millions of people entered the work force, enjoyed an annual raise, saw health care get better and hours get shorter.
Ten or 15 years ago, he said, experts predicted the advent of the 35-hour workweek, to be followed by the 30-hour workweek. But that failed to happen when the business boom stalled.
``So, what we end up with is a whole bunch of people who have a distorted view of employment - one where risk is foreign ... '' Blohowiak said. ``Living in a risk-free environment just wasn't the way it was before, and it's not that way now.''
Workers increasingly saw their lives change for the worse as management coped with foreign infringement, mergers and acquisitions, changing technology and the drive to ``rightsize.'' Pay raises slowed, health care benefits eroded, hours lengthened, job security disappeared.
Now, Blohowiak said, everybody knows the rules have changed - that you can do a great job, get a No.1 ranking on your annual merit review Tuesday and still get the pink slip Thursday.
``It's that feeling that we're all pawns in some huge chess game that we weren't even invited to play in,'' he said.
Revenge can be lifting a box of No. 2 lead pencils for the home office, designing a World Wide Web site trashing your former employer or starting a competing business.
Read the signatures of letter writers to the on-line magazine Disgruntled: The Business Magazine for People Who Work for a Living. One gets a sense of the anger and hopelessness among America's workers:
``In a Show Me State of Shock,'' ``Hapless Sap,'' ``Sick of the Hospital I Work In'' and ``Wanting to Get Credit Where Credit's Due'' are just a few.
Disgruntled publisher Daniel Levine said the response to the Web site http://www.disgruntled.com has been passionate.
``I've discovered that revenge is everything from blowing the whistle and selling trade secrets to sitting at your computer looking like you're working hard when you're really cruising the Internet,'' Levine said, the last with a chuckle.
That's why his Web site has a ``boss-escape'' icon so that users can quickly shift to something on the screen resembling real work.
Martin Sprouse, after getting fired from his mailroom post at a San Francisco business publication, spent two years seeking out the disenchanted workers of America.
What he came up with was Sabotage in the American Workplace: Anecdotes of Dissatisfaction, a compilation of 136 stories detailing workplace revenge.
Some stories were foolish, such as Susan's, a date pitter for Land of Plenty Dates. She slipped silly notes into jars of dates. The notes said things like, ``Hi, I'm your pitter. Do you want to pitter-patter with me?''
Some were more serious, such as the New Jersey Kmart employees who were stealing more than $1 million in merchandise each year.
One of the most compelling cases involved a fish-packing plant in Alaska. Work conditions were horrific, with mind-numbing, back-breaking repetitive motions in cold, dark conditions.
Although the unionized workers were under contract to receive 15-minute breaks every four hours, the production line went down every two hours, almost like clockwork. The workers were in a silent conspiracy to sabotage the line to get the extra breaks.
Recently, a Kansas City area computer technician who'd been fired from Gateway 2000 built a Web site he dubbed ``Gateway 2000 Sucks.'' Gateway was not amused.
At first, the computer maker ignored the ex-employee. Then its management got mad, calling in lawyers who successfully forced a change in the site's name.
Then there's the now-famous case of ex-Texaco executive Richard Lundwall, who produced a tape that implicated fellow executives in a conspiracy to destroy documents related to a discrimination lawsuit that had been dragging on for years.
No one knows for sure why Lundwall produced the tapes when he did. But what is known is that his job was eliminated last year, and he left the company shortly thereafter.
If Lundwall's actions were wrought from revenge, the plan likely backfired. He became the first and, thus far, only person to be indicted because of the evidence revealed on the tapes.
Other infamous revenge cases include that of Yolanda Saldivar, who shot and killed Tejano pop star Selena after she fired Saldivar. Or Aldrich Ames, the embittered CIA agent who sold U.S. secrets to the Soviets, in part because of his lackluster career at the agency
There is, alternatively, what experts say is the most constructive way to vent anger - go it alone, using the free enterprise system.
Take the example of John Valentine, Scott McCormick and Craig Ligibel in Kansas City, three former employees and board members of Valentine Radford Advertising.
The three and two others were ousted from the firm after they tried to get agency Chairman Chuck Curtis fired. Instead, Curtis saw to it that the five left.
Valentine, McCormick and Ligibel have since founded advertising agency VML, which counts Northwest Airlines among its clients. For the record, Ligibel said the three weren't seeking revenge. Their mission was simply to create a successful company.
Olson is convinced that perpetrators of revenge almost always feel an immediate sense of vindication, sometimes followed by remorse. But Sprouse said he found something different.
Without exception, he said, of the hundreds of people who told their tales for his book, none was sorry for their actions.
``It was amazing,'' Sprouse said. ``These are the same people who said they would never shoplift but yet felt no compunction whatsoever at taking revenge on their employer by stealing office supplies or padding their time slips.''
The best way to curtail workplace revenge is to create a fulfilling and stable work environment for all employees, said Mitchell Marks, a workplace consultant and author. But that's somewhat Pollyannaish, he said.
Employers also can screen potential employees carefully. But that, too, can prove difficult, said Barry Lawrence, spokesman for the Society for Human Resource Management.
In the past couple of years, states have started passing laws to protect employers who want to give honest references about an employee - warts and all - without fear of being sued.
But withholding information to avoid lawsuits can backfire, too. Take the case of a man let go from an insurance company after waving a gun around. In that case, his former employer provided only a brief reference - basically name, rank and serial number.
Not knowing his background, another insurance company hired him. Shortly thereafter, he shot and killed a couple of people in the office. The families of the victims successfully sued the first insurance company for not warning the second one that he was dangerous.
``It's easy to say, `Let's not hire kooks in the first place,' but that's real hard - figuring out who's kooky and who's not,'' Lawrence said.
Beyond screenings, employers also can use employee evaluations to keep employees on track and, with luck, happy. But again, that's not as simple as it sounds.
``Nine out of 10 companies don't feel that they have very good performance appraisal systems,'' Lawrence said. ``That means employees don't get good information, and then they're surprised when they get fired - and revenge often times comes from surprise.''
A technique that Mitchell employs is ``venting meetings.''
``I let people vent and work through their anger,'' Marks said. ``If it's done well, people come to realize their anger isn't getting them anywhere.''
Companies also take security measures, said Don Schempp, vice president of clinical services for Heart of America Family Services in Kansas City.
``That includes a well-versed security force that's able to deal with unpleasant situations. You need to have a plan for when people have to be let go,'' Schempp said.
And then there are the in-betweens, Schempp said, the people who are troublesome and potentially revengeful but whom management doesn't deem dangerous enough to be let go.
``In seven out of 10 businesses, you'll find people that are being dealt with in that kid-glove fashion.''
What does that mean for those who go to work, do their jobs well and don't take advantage of the company? It's not good news.
``Revenge in the workplace is aimed squarely at management,'' Blohowiak said. ``Unfortunately, it's often those who give it their all that get caught in the crossfire between the disgruntled workers of America and those who may or may not have created them - bad management.''
LENGTH: Long : 178 linesby CNB