In honor of this being the month of Halloween, we are going to discuss how to handle ghosts. Not the spooky, incorporeal kind – the best way to handle that kind is by screaming and running away, unless of course you have a plasma cannon calibrated for the proper ectoplasmic frequency, and I’m guessing you don’t. No, I’m talking about professional ghosts, the kind that stop coming to work without any notice or explanation.
Apparently this has become a bit of a thing, the workplace equivalent of breaking up with somebody by just never talking to them again. And it seems to be expanding – now you can occasionally run across stories of employees being offered jobs, accepting them, and then never showing up for work and also never saying why. Did a better offer come along? Did they get abducted by aliens who were equally impressed with their qualifications? We’ll never know….
Anyway, this trend is undoubtedly annoying to hiring departments, and so I thought it high time that those departments developed some retaliatory tools of their own. So if you’re sick of employees and new hires ghosting you, here are a few ideas to consider:
Stop Paying People!
Made famous in Office Space, and why don’t more companies use that movie’s wisdom? Just don’t tell them that you’re going to stop paying them. That would make them mad. Simply stop your direct deposits and wait for them to come to you! Some of them might not even notice that you’ve stopped paying them, and if so – congratulations! You can continue to not pay them for basically forever!
Rescind Job Offers!
Again, this works best when done without notice. When your “new hires” come in for their first day, march them right back out the door and inform that their services will no longer be required. Or better yet, just instruct everyone to ignore them until they decide to leave on their own! Less confrontation that way.
Change Locations!
Can you imagine the look on the faces of your employees when they show up for work on Monday and your building has been abandoned? Well you don’t have to imagine it, as long as you set up a camera by your former front door to record their looks of confusion, despair, anger and betrayal. I’m sensing a viral video out of this one!
So there you go! Plenty of ways to show employees what it feels like to be on the other side. And if any of these seems drastic or unprofessional or childish or wrong, please remember that none of it would have been possible without ghosts. Thanks, invisible employees, for showing us the way.
And happy Halloween!
