How To Survive Office Politics

The material contained on the following program is designed for informational purposes only. It is not intended to replace existing training policies or guidelines of individual law enforcement agencies.

This is stuff you never ever learned at the Academy from in the line of duty. Hello, I’m Ron barber. I’m calling this stuff you never ever learned at the Academy because that’s what this podcast is all about.

Recently a retired cop buddy, a 33 year veteran, told me that it isn’t what’s happening on the street that gives cops their tightest sphincters for the vast majority of cops. It’s the crap they slogged through day by day in the office trying to dance around the inept boots, who by nature of their almost supernatural abilities to Brown nose, ask his toady and Weedle and yet somehow get into positions of power where they so often make the lives of those beneath them as close to a hell on earth as possible. You know exactly what I’m talking about.

As a much younger fellow, I used to get fired so often that I became affectionately known as the human torch to friends and colleagues. Now, it wasn’t because I lacked talent and gifts. It was because I lacked any ability to get along with bosses who I felt were for the most part, idiots and knaves. I think, and will always think that is a huge impediment to the advancement of many careers of otherwise highly talented police officers and hardworking schleps in general.  So I get it. I do!

Survive The Jive

Now, here’s a little story that perhaps will make some sense to you in light of what’s just been discussed many years ago, I had a friend who was one Wiley, clever and calculating SOB. Not a huge amount of talent, but an almost unbelievable uncanny ability to “go along to get along”. He was hard not to like, and even enemies who probably with good reason may have wanted to disappear. Him from the face of the earth ended up liking him. He took a modicum of talent and parlayed that into a high six figure salary in a position of national prominence. He was able to convince the powers that be that he and only he had the stuff that could fill a void left by a nationally prominent predecessor. It was damn near and remains unbelievable to those of us who knew him. I don’t like in him to Abraham Lincoln, but he had an uncanny talent at being liked.

On one occasion he told me that he could look a person straight in the eye whom he hated and that that person would go away thinking he was one of the nicest guys he’d ever met. I know that was no bull-jive because on many an occasion I saw him do Sit. He would never lose it with those he didn’t like. Later when they were gone, he’d usually just laugh at what would make many of us erupt in fury and order another Merlot.

Time To Develop Some People Skills

What do you think? Could you do the same thing if it meant going along to getting along and might conceivably make your life on the job just a bit more tolerable? Remember it was Lincoln who said “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”.

Hell yes. It may go against every fiber of your being, but if it’s for the greater good, YOUR greater good. Could you make someone whose guts you hated, walk away thinking, Hey, that is a really good guy and could you then take that to your bank, perhaps making many deposits you could never have made otherwise. Give it some thought or if it comes to it as president Donald Trump has said, “if your boss is a sadist, then you have a big problem”. In that case, fire your Boss and get a new job.

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Thank you for listening to “That stuff you never ever learned at the Academy” Podcast  from in the line of duty.

I’m Ron barber.

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