Public humiliation isn’t the way to solve problems

By Bill Erin

Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008 | midnight

In my opinion, the Boulder City employee evaluation meetings, open to the public, are an abomination. The three recent meetings to evaluate, in turn, the city manager, the city attorney and the city clerk were particularly inane.

I won't go into the details, which were reported in last week's Boulder City News and are still available on the Web site, because I would hate to repeat the stupidity of what went on. Unfortunately, state law requires that these exercises in bad taste are held on an annual basis.

Despite what the legal definition of slander might be, I believe what went on at the Boulder City evaluations were a form of public slander against the three employees who, over the course of the past year, may have made some mistakes or did not perform as one or another council member thought they should.

The main concern of two council members seemed to be that they weren't given the respect or obeisance they thought their exalted offices deserved. They said they were yelled at and employees of theirs shouldn't yell at them. Neither of them specified the reason for which they were yelled at, so I couldn't determine whether or not I would have yelled at them in a similar circumstance.

It seems to me a responsible boss would have stopped at that point and said, "Whoa, wait a minute. What did I do to aggravate my employee to the point that he or she risked their job to yell at me?"

But I'm straying from my point. My point is that all this went on in front of an audience. How humiliating is that for the employee? How long would you work for an employer who stood you up in front of a public audience and berated you for whatever mistakes and/or imagined breaches of respect you may have committed?

I don't know about you, but I'd have my resume in the mail the next day. I might even yell at the boss.

Now if the boss called me into his office and said to me, eye-to-eye, "Bill, here are some reasons why I'm dissatisfied with your performance. I want to hear what you think, and I believe we can work them out. If not, there have to be some changes," I think that would be a reasonable and workable process.

I understand, and so do the employees, that in this case the public airings are required by law. So it's a yearly flogging they know they have to endure. But the mean spirits exhibited in this year's fiasco, justified or not, in my opinion crossed the line into very poor employer-employee relations.

Is it against the law for individual council members to meet with individual employees before the public exhibition and talk about any problems? Then, at the public affair, they could announce how they rated the employee in specific categories and why, in a well-chosen sentence or two.

Or does the striving for "transparency in government" demand the public airing of dirty linen?

I saw transparency. I very clearly saw that some members of the council lacked a sense of public relations, good employee relations and a common goal with other members of the council.

However sincere council members were during these evaluations, it seems to me a stranger dropped into that audience would think they had fallen through the looking glass into an episode of "Alice In Wonderland."

My sainted mother always used to say, along with a couple million other Americans, "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

I'd like to see all members of the council try a little more honey. The aftertaste of council meetings would be a lot better.

Bill Erin is a Boulder City News columnist.