Don’t Be A Costanza

My last column, Don’t Be A Lumbergh, focused on behaviors that supervisors and managers should generally avoid from a risk management and employee morale perspective.

Being a big believer in balance, I thought it’d be a good idea to round out that theme with a column on things employees should avoid. That left me to figure out: Who’s as bad an employee as Lumbergh is a manager?

That’s easy: George Costanza.

I saw only a handful of Seinfeld episodes growing up. I remembered it being funny (e.g., Jerry’s puffy shirt, etc.), but I didn’t watch it religiously. When my wife found out, she was in disbelief. We remedied this critical deficiency by binging the entire series on Hulu. Time well spent.

While everyone on the show is funny, George really ties everything together for me. His laziness and his creativity; his self-loathing and his overconfidence. He’s a confounding juxtaposition of human traits whose behavior sometimes borders on diagnosable mental disorder.

George had a lot of jobs on the show. He was a real estate agent, a parking attendant, a salesman, and an assistant within the New York Yankees organization, among many others. (He was also unemployed a quite a bit too, see The Summer of George.)

George didn’t excel at much, but he had a special talent for losing jobs, and his workplace shenanigans provide some ready examples of behaviors employees should avoid if they want their careers to flourish. Here are some I think are worth discussing.

1. Don’t Fake A Good Work Ethic.

George’s laziness and creativity reached an all-time high while he was with the New York Yankees. He came up with several techniques designed to make him appear to be an all-star employee when he, in fact, was anything but.

I think the best idea he executed was when he had a contractor build a bed under his desk in his office at work. George would curl up under his desk, pull his chair in, grab a nap, and no one suspected a thing. (Note: I once deposed an individual who took naps under her desk at work. Unknown to this person, a coworker snapped a picture while she was sleeping one day. Impeaching her with the surprise napping-under-the-desk photo was the highlight of my career so far. I’m not making this up. This is one of the reasons employment law is so much fun.)

It was with the Yankees that George also deployed his “always look annoyed/angry” strategy. George’s theory was that if he always looked passionate and in the middle of something important, no one would bother him or give him more work. George also left his car in the parking lot overnight so that his boss would think he was the first one there in the morning and the last one to leave.

I think it’s true to say that whether it’s the practice of law or any other field, faking a good work ethic won’t get you very far. Avoiding tasks that you don’t like or evading assignments in general will eventually get noticed. No matter how carefully you try to hide it, managers will eventually realize you’re doing this. Maybe you won’t get fired or demoted, but you’ll certainly lose a lot of credibility in your boss’s eyes, which might be impossible to get back.

2. Don’t Pretend To Be You’re Someone You’re Not.

After leaving the Yankees, George went to work for a playground equipment company called Play Now. When George interviewed for the job, he was using a cane due to his physical deterioration during The Summer of George. His use of the cane led management at Play Now to think George had some manner of physical disability. George being George milked this to his advantage. When the company found out George had no physical impairments, they were of course very upset with George.

I hope there’s no one reading this column who would consider faking a disability or some other protected characteristic like veteran status to get or advance within a job. It should be patently obvious to never, ever do something like that.

George’s behavior illustrates a less obvious but very important concept, however. Pretending to be someone you’re not for the sake of a job is not a viable long-term strategy. If you strongly dislike a particular practice area, boss, company, or firm (for whatever reason), it will, over time, impact you negatively in many ways.

It can make you bitter and depressed, and your performance and personal relationships will begin to suffer. If a place, practice, or person is making you miserable, don’t let your long-term plan be to fake it. Put together a strategy to make a change. You and everyone else will be a lot happier.

3. Understand Your Place In Your Organization.

The first job George had on the show was with a real estate company called Rick Barr Properties. In one episode, George is banned from using his boss’s private bathroom. This infuriates George so badly that he immediately quits, delivering an impassioned speech about how his boss is incompetent and stupid. (Regretting the decision, he later returns to work acting as if nothing happened but his boss refuses to let him stay. George later tries get revenge by drugging his boss at an office party.)

The lesson to be learned here is to recognize and understand your role and station within your organization. Learn what is expected of you and what is not. Assess the constraints within which you need to work and excel. This doesn’t mean to not reach for more at times (because that’s how you show you’re ready to grow, after all), but do so with humility and circumspection. And, most importantly, don’t throw a temper tantrum when the boss says you can’t use his or her private bathroom.

Conclusion

Managers need to avoid being a Bill Lumbergh, and employees need to avoid being a George Costanza. I think we’ll all be better workers if we learn some lessons from these two characters.

Earlier: Don’t Be A Lumbergh
The Most Common (Hidden) Managerial Error

---

Evan Gibbs is an attorney at Troutman Sanders, where he primarily litigates employment cases and handles traditional labor matters. Connect with him on LinkedIn here, or e-mail him here. (The views expressed in this column are his own.)