Learn to Ignore

I chose the section of Whitaker’s, Shifting the Monkey, referred to as Learn to Ignore because I find that dealing with unreliable employees, coworkers, and peers, is an inevitable part of life. The fact of the matter is that everybody complains. However, it is important to refrain from making a habit out of it. In my opinion, knowing how to deal with people who habitually complain about anything and everything is an important skill to acquire, as it is a valuable skill the can be carried into any aspect of life. There are a great deal of people who will rely on others to take care of tasks for them, rather than taking responsibility for their own duties, and Whitaker gives excellent advice on how to do so—ignore them. 

Whitaker enforces this idea of ignoring employees who tend to constantly complain, because, by offering to help them, there will not only be a monkey on that employee, but there will also be a monkey placed on everyone who has to help him. Whitaker writes that, “anything you do to engage [the complaint employee] starts the monkey-shifting process” (37) meaning that sympathizing, arguing, or rolling your eyes at a bad employees complaints will only result in a worse situation. Whitaker suggests that in this scenario, employers or coworkers should simply telling the complainer to have a nice day, and move on. 

Upon presenting a scenario to five people of a coworker, Chad, whose hobby was to complain and manipulate people into completing tasks for him, the responses I received from the five people were somewhat varied, but, overall, consisted of similar techniques of how to handle the situation. The scenario I posed was as follows;

"Suppose you come to work one morning and approach your coworker, Chad, to ask him how he’s doing. Chad is the type of employee that gets his work done, but rarely in a timely manner, and never without complaint. He is undoubtedly an unreliable worker. 

When you ask Chad how he’s doing, he tells you that he has an overwhelming amount of tasks to complete throughout the day, and no time to do them. He further explains that he needs to meet his mother for dinner, he needs to pick up a gift for his friend for their birthday tomorrow, and he has two project deadlines at the end of the week. Complaining further, he expresses that he hasn't gotten enough sleep the past few days and was hoping he could get off of work early to take a nap before all of the other things he had to do. 

How do you handle this situation?"

 

A few responses to this scenario touched on the idea of having Chad construct a priority list, allowing for him to decide how to complete his tasks in an order that best makes sense. What I found interesting is that most of the responses did not include helping Chad. Upon presenting this scenario, I held the assumption that most people would feel inclined to jump in and help Chad with his work, possibly even taking on some of it, themselves, but it seems that a lot of people would be fed up with this behavior, and more inclined to give him some tough love. Overall, everybody agreed that Chad needed to work on his time management skills, and they would tell him to do so. These responses were very similar to how I would've handled the situation, however, slightly differed from Whitaker’s concept of completely ignoring the complaining employee. 

With all things considered, I believe that I would stay close to Whitaker’s advice, which is to simply ignore the complaining. This seems to be the most effective approach, as the employee would not have the opportunity to throw their issues—or, monkeys— onto the backs of their coworkers, and would have no choice but to stay silent and complete their work. With this being said, I do have to disagree with an aspect of Whitaker’s theory, in regards to his belief that one should not sympathize with a complainer. He asserts that “if you sympathize, you'll wind up reassigning or taking some of her work” (37). While I believe Whitaker has a strong point, I find fault in this argument, as I believe it is possible to sympathize with somebody, listen to their problems, then move on. In the situation, I would let the complainer know that I value their feelings, while ignoring their underlying requests to have me help them with their tasks. I would give the employee ideas on how to prioritize his tasks, but I would refrain from actually helping him do so. This is the strategy that I, alongside the majority of responders, believed to be most effective.

Click HERE for Scenario and Responses.