Whine at work considered cheezy

The names used in this article have been altered to protect the guilty individuals perpetrating the acts of immaturity herein described and any similarity to you or any persons you may know is coincidental.

I clearly remember those days I felt there must be a the 10-foot flashing neon sign hanging over my door reading "All complaining, whining and finger pointing welcome here."

I have personally utilized the sarcastic remark to someone whining; "Would you like some cheese with your whine?" It was an okay statement, but I preferred using, "Whining usually invokes negative responses from management, so please return to work."

The latter statement may not lacked the pizzazz of the former, but people usually returned to work.

It would instantly send me ballistic if the first thing I faced as I walked through the door in the morning was someone rushing up to me to complain, whine or tattle on or about someone or something. I would restrain myself with every ounce of patience I had - an ounce was usually all that I had for this type of behavior - not to throttle this person or tell them to get out of my face now or feel the wrath.

Alas, being a good manager, I would listen to them patiently, give them reassurance that I would look into the issue and then retreat to my office allowing me some private time to bang my head against the wall. Yes, I would investigate the issue to determine if there was any validity to the claim. A few times I even discovered legitimate issues that required corrective action.

The problem with whiners is they are usually too lazy or brain dead to just take care of the problem themselves without saying anything. There are occasionally situations where the whiner cannot legitimately take care of the problem. However, the manner they utilize to convey the problem still is a dinosaur-dimensioned whine.

It usually wastes more time to complain or whine than it would have taken to resolve the subject of the whine. For instance, one day I walked onto the production floor and Mary, my chief whiner, almost broke the sound barrier reaching me to tell me that Joe had spilled some resin on the floor and had not yet cleaned it up, even though she had told him twice to do so.

Mary couched her complaint in the guise of a safety concern that if the mess wasn't cleaned up, someone would slip and get hurt. Mentally I was saying, "Okay, why didn't you just sweep it up and put it in the scrap barrel? You could let Joe, me and the whole plant know later."

Beware! Troublemakers utilize whiners to cause problems for other employees, managers or just keep other employees stirred up.

Changing the behavior of whiners in the workplace is difficult as they most likely exhibit this trait 24/7. My usual approach was to continually reinforce that I appreciated the input, but they should first approach a supervisor and be sure that what they were bringing to our attention was positive in nature.

Otherwise, it only created friction with their co-workers.

During performance reviews, I would reiterate that they needed to be cognizant of their constant complaining and how it created disruption in the workplace, caused conflict with co-workers and was counter productive.

Be straightforward, but not overly harsh. Then stock up on cheese and crackers to go with that whine.