I think we can all identify the toxic employees Seth describes here. Mainly because we have often faced them in our day-to-day retail and service intereactions. Even worse, some of us may have even been these toxic exployees at some point in our career. I know I had some times when I was leaning in that direction.

I will second his opinon that toxic employees are often the result of the company and management. If you accept toxic employees and/or continue to create them, you have no one to blame but yourself when customers never come back.

Toxic employees

Toxic employees are the ones that have difficulty with their co-workers, or worse, far worse, with your customers.

They make two big confusions:

1. They confuse "How can I help this prospect/customer?" with "How can I get rid of this person and get back to work?"

2. They confuse, "How can I have a better day by treating this person with a great deal of respect?" with "Why isn't this person treating me with the respect I deserve?"

Toxic employees are usually afraid, poorly managed and underappreciated. They can rarely be bullied into changing their behavior, often because they themselves are bullies. Managers can hire the non-toxic, re-assign the toxic and be really clear with themselves that they're willing to pay almost any price to keep toxic employees away from everyone else. And if toxic employees appears to be a pattern, my bet is that it's your fault, not the employees.

From the customer standpoint, if you face toxic employees at a company, you have to take a stand by complaining and/or never patronizing them again. It is the only way that companies will realize that having employees such as this is simply unacceptable. Are you ready to take responsibility for your own satisfaction?

(Via Seth's Blog.)

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