I Can’t Believe I Heard That!

The other day, I was waiting at a coffee shop for my car to get serviced. People watching 101 – just wait and something interesting will happen… After about 15 minutes, a couple of men came in, ordered their coffee, a morning snack and sat down. The topic of discussion was all about having to hire a new manager for their group. One of them was a the overall department manager and the other one, was either one of his managers or his closest friend (or both). They started discussion some of the potential candidates that they interviewed or were about to interview. I tried not to listen to the details, but they were talking really loud for a coffee shop… They went through their candidate list and discussed each person. I was able to determine, that they have to take an internal candidate and the candidate pool to them is not good.

As a outsider looking in – here were my initial thoughts:

1. If you are going to discuss potential hiring of a new manager – don’t do it in a public setting and do it LOUDLY. Those situations require privacy. The last time I checked, a coffee shop in the middle of the morning is not a place that is lacking in people.
2. Discussing each candidate (in the open) by name is not good. You never know if their significant other is close by or not. When they were discussing some of the candidates – if I was their significant other – I would be pissed off how they discussed them. There was nothing about their qualifications.
3. Every female candidate was a flat out no! Maybe they were not the best candidate for the job. As the outsider, they disqualified them for not being about to work with the all male management team. I became clear to me, that the manager was not ready to have a female on his staff. His partner with him was pretty much in-line, but was trying to open the manager’s eyes to one candidate. In the end, the partner just did not push too hard.

The story here that I hear was not good. Of course, I only have the side of overhearing what I heard. When you hear things, your mind tends to make assumptions… My assumptions were that this manager is not very good. He does not value a diverse work team. He also does not worry about privacy and making statements that could potentially get him into trouble. Is he a good manager? I really don’t know him and his performance, but from what I heard – I don’t think so.

Next time you are out with your work friends, peers or having a work discussion – make sure that you only discuss those items that are open for all human consumption.

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