clique mongering

I have to get this out of my head.

One day last week, I had a disciplinary conversation with an employee. Her performance has dropped off, she's spending too much time talking about non-work happenings at work, especially with a newer hire who has become a close friend, and her attitude has slipped far into a negative space. According to her, she feels unappreciated because she hasn't had a raise in a year while others are getting raises. As I explained, the people who are getting raises are minimum wage workers. She's on a much higher salary already. Finances are too tight. Then she said she thought (and others in her department think too, by the way) that there's a clique that she can't break into. I asked her to name the people in the click, and the people she named were the first 6 employees of the company.

The whole thing just leaves me so frustrated. I found out today they have a name for us, the order of protection, and they talk about it like it's an actual thing that we planned out and are perpetrating on purpose. Like we want to exclude people and make decisions that only benefit us. Like we're blind to everything else going on. The funny thing is, two of those six I hardly even talk to anymore, and one of them is on my permanent shit list until she starts acting like an adult and not a child who thinks she can come and go any time she wants and make all the trouble she wants just because she was employee #2. Of course no one outside of management knows about this. Why would I spread my disdain for her actions around? To everyone else, it must look like business as usual. I thought that would be the best way to continue.

Good grief, I'm only human. I'm trying to make the best decisions I can for the company as a whole, and I advise our management team to do the same. The management team is made up of a completely different group of 5 people, only my boss and I seem to be in both "groups." When we see potential in someone, we recognize it and give them a promotion. I guess this employee and her cronies are pissed because we don't recognize any of them as stellar performers? But they haven't done anything to deserve it. One of them does really good work, actually, and will be moving to a new department soon, but she's also a gossip so I'm not surprised at her new alignment. They all sit together, which will soon be put to an end, but even with that done, they still can talk on skype.

This negativity seems to be infiltrating this department, a department I happen to be responsible for managing, and I'm getting fed up. I don't know how to stop it. It's three girls and two guys in the department, though one of the guys is too new to be involved. The three girls have ganged up on the one guy, and the guy happens to be the one who is doing the best and the one that we're promoting most quickly. Chicken or the egg-- are they mean to him because he's doing good work and making them look lazy? Or do we just think he's doing better work and also feel sorry for him because he's somehow managed to stay out of this clique who is picking on him? Either way, the clique is not helping.

They accuse us of having a clique, but I would argue it's the other way around. My initial reaction is to shake them, ask them why in the world they think we would do things and make decisions that aren't in the best interest of the company. Maybe it's because they don't care about the company, maybe they only care about their own little worlds. I'm tired of babysitting them, though-- when an email or a phone call comes in, it's like I'm a mother hen pecking at them until one of them finally, reluctantly, picks it up. Just DO YOUR WORK. That's all I want. Maybe if you spent less time gossiping on skype about how much you hate that your coworker is getting promoted, even if you think it's unjust, and about how much you don't like things that are going on, maybe if you spent more time actually doing real work you would be the one getting promoted to a position where you could change the things you don't like instead. I need an attitude change around here, quick.