All Aboard the Failcopter!

A cube mate on a recent project just pulled a classic stunt that is worthy of its own Dilbert strip. Instead of sending his boss his weekly status report, he sent copy of the welcome letter from the new company with which he’d soon be starting.

Pros to such a stunt:

• You finally get to stick it to your pointy haired boss.
• Your become hero to other downtrodden employees.
• Will live long in company folklore.
• The more “evil” the company, the better you feel after doing it.
• If your antics put your boss on tilt, you win.
• You embolden other coworkers who might also feel shat on.
• People like me will blog about you.

Cons against such a stunt:

• Possible fallout with coworkers who have to pick up your slack.
• Coworkers might have to now be careful about saying that they associate with you.
• Others who hear of your antics might not understand (or care to understand) context.
• Severe business interruption if what you do is important.
• Even more business interruption if others take your lead
• Unnecessarily escalating a situation

I’ll have to admit being somewhat amused by this antic. Sticking it to someone always feels good, but in the end, this sort of action carries way more liability than it is probably worth. Also, people who are incorrigible in one context might not be so bad in another (and vise versa). So, your pointy haired boss today might actually be a good trench mate at your next company, so why rock the boat unnecessarily? In fact, some of my best friends and associates today are peope who I butted heads with in the past.

From my experience, the best thing to do is just find a better opportunity, leave on good terms, and then resell services back to the company. If you play your cards right, you can sell services back to the company and make almost the entire amount you made before at a tiny fraction of the effort you had to expel before.

If you’re the boss, it’s important to remain un-phased by these antics. If I were the recipient of such a stunt, I’d probably just reply with the following pic, along with a note saying that things wouldn’t be the same without him or her!