A Survival Guide to Managing Employees from Hell: Handling Idiots, Whiners, Slackers, and Other Workplace Demons

by Gini Graham Scott

From whiners and wastrels to the needy and nefarious, this helpful and humorous guide gives you the tools you need to handle any type of difficult employee. All managers get saddled with "problem" employees from time to time, but what sets great managers apart is how they deal with them. Drawing from real-life stories, A Survival Guide to Managing Employees from Hell provides you with practical advice for handling a wide range of difficult types, including: Author Gini Graham Scott’s advice springs largely from common sense, acknowledging there isn’t just one way to handle a difficult worker. For any manger or supervisor looking for tips on effectively managing troublesome workers, look no further than A Survival Guide to Managing Employees from Hell.

Genres: Management, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2006

About the author

Gini has published over 50 books with major publishers, including books on work relationships, professional and personal development, creativity, law, criminal justice, popular culture, and social trends. She has published over 200 books through her company Changemakers Publishing, and has recently written a series of books on self-publishing.
She has been a guest on 100s of radio and TV talk shows including Oprah, Good Morning America, and CNN.

She helps clients write, publish, market, and promote any type of book through her company Changemakers Publishing and Writing at www.changemakerspublishingandwriting.com She also helps clients find publishers and agents.

In addition, she writes scripts and produces films through her company Changemakers Productions. She has written and produced 14 feature films, TV pilots, and documentaries, with 8 of them in distribution, the others in post production. Details are on her website for films at www.changemakersproductionsfilms.com. She helps clients turn their books into scripts and she reviews books for their film potential.

She also has written and produced over 60 short films. Examples are featured on her YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/changemakersprod.

She speaks and does workshops and seminars on the topics of her books and on self-publishing, writing and promoting books.

She has written over 200 songs featured at Changemakers Music (www.changemakersmusic.com). Her latest songs are on her Changemakers Music YouTube Channel.

She is a game designer who has published over two dozen games, featured at Changemakers Games (www.changemakersgames.com) .

Reviews

[Corinne · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I'm not currently managing a staff, I was compelled to read this because I figured it could help me in the future. I learn best when examples are provided, and this book was chock-full of examples of bad employees and how to address issues. I thought most of the advice was pretty solid.

My big problem with this book was that it needed another round of copyedits before it went to press. I found several instances where the names of the employees and the bosses got mixed up in the examples. Hope they fix these errors in the next edition.

[Melissa Knowles · Rating 1 out of 5]

As an operations professional with extensive experience in managing successful teams (as well as two HR certifications), I believe this book not only proves unhelpful but offers bad advice. I assigned it as reading for my leadership team (which has a few junior managers). I ended up pulling the plug on the assignment. Lesson learned and I won't assign reading again before reading a book myself!

[Renae · Rating 1 out of 5]

The gist of this book? If you have a bad employee then fire them. I wonder if the writer has ever worked with Human Resources.

[Carrie Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is made of case studies telling the stories tough workplace situations and leaving you to decide what the manager should have done and what he/she should do in the future.

I liked it as a general study of the group dynamics of a workplace, and I also liked it because it provided many suggestions of how one can react to a situation, running from the obvious "immediate termination" to "ignore it and it will go away", including very interesting ideas in between those two normal reactions.

It didn't address anything that would help me at this moment, however, as I'm not running a traditional workplace. (I should really read something about managing volunteers instead.) But this book is an interesting read, and I felt like it expanded my mind a bit more about how a manager's reactions to a situation can affect the entire staff.

[Ravi]

Not a great book to deal with real-world situations.