Your job is likely haunted. Many workplaces around the nation are inhabited by restless spirits that, for one reason or another, make our places of employment more like a Gothic horror novel than the office where we go to earn our paychecks, benefits and hopefully to make a positive difference in the world. There may be just one ghost at your job.
There may be a carnival funhouse ride’s worth of spectral beings there. The greatest drain on productivity and a devastating weight on progress is the worker who, whether they know it or not, has needed to move on without actually doing so. By continuing in place, they prevent the organization from reaching its goals and sap morale in the process. This is the Ghost Worker and like with literary specters in the Gothic genre, either no one wants to acknowledge their problematic existence, or colleagues and coworkers are so horror-stricken by the haunting that they cannot themselves function if they admit there are ghosts.
Hardened workers used to far worse conditions might actually go pale with fright if they knew what goes on in the workplace for those of us whose dress code is ‘business casual’. Poe would blench, Hawthorne grimace, Shirley Jackson would faint dead away if they could see the true eldritch nightmare of having a real live ghost at the office.
Like literary ghosts, Ghost Workers may manifest in several ways. There's the "Poltergeist," a constant source of distraction and disruptive noise and gossip, masking their inactivity as work behind empty action and ceaseless roaming in the halls. Then there's the "Spectral Wanderer," a dispirited employee who simply goes through the motions, disconnected, uninspired, drooping and yearning for a distant retirement date. The most toxic is the "Demonic Employee," whose negativity infects the entire team, setting a demoralizing precedent for others with nefarious toxicity which, if left unchecked, disrupts staff productivity, drains people’s will, sets a poor example for new hires and burdens everyone with problematic behavior ranging from lack of cleanliness or appropriate clothing to habitual tardiness and everything in between. In severe cases, one office might be unfortunate enough to house a “Malevolent Phantom”, a nightmarish combination of all of these traits, creating a truly hostile work environment that no one can stand for long.
Most administrations have, as part of their leadership responsibilities, the rituals to remove (fire) these unhappy spirits. Depending on the kind of business, the rites may be quite extensive and mean a lot of extra paperwork. Sometimes, the workplace becomes partial to their ghost, feeling like, even if they do no real or measurable good, they aren’t really harming the workplace either. Sometimes the ghosts become so bleak and awful that even the administration is helpless to purge the offending revenant. Worst of all, it can be the administration that is the source of the free-floating specter. Nothing casts a pall of terror over the office like a Ghost Boss.
Just like with literary phantoms, the general public is often unaware that a place of business is suffering a haunting. The bosses, too, sometimes really have no idea about the ghosts. They may believe that the issues are standard personnel problems and will be dealt with by the department heads or managers, or they think that they are the run-of-the-mill issues every organization has. Frequently, I think, the bosses just hope that the ghosts will go away on their own, believing that a passive approach will create an environment in which the ghosts will finally get the picture and move on toward the light. Whatever the administration thinks, those of us who exist in the Haunted Workplace know all too well the terror that wanders the corridors and we know the damage that these ghasts, ghosts, haints, phantasms and ghouls regularly do.
In Gothic novels, the old mansion that turns out to be haunted is populated with several different types of living being. There are the plucky characters who represent the untainted and skeptical perspective, (the new hires). They come to the ancient house to stay and though they know the legends and have heard eyewitness testimony, they nevertheless are not affected by the tales of terror and do not believe the stories right away.
Then, there are those who have lived in the old mansion for their whole lives (the oldtimer employees); the heavy atmosphere and frightening happenings are a matter of daily endured agony to them. They may remember a time before the place was haunted, but they try to warn the unwary of the current state of affairs, but almost no one listens to them.
Sometimes visitors who come from the other dark places (oldtimer employees who have worked in blue collar or food services industries and wind up in the white collar world) offer their own wisdom for dealing with ghosts. These characters are sometimes like the sunburned colonel who returns from the jungles of Borneo or the grizzled parapsychologist who has faced and destroyed werewolves and vampires in the lonely forests of physical labor without a hint of fear. The world-wise adventurers know what the workplace is like in other, less professional places. They have seen things that would scare the office worker to death. Like chilled steel, they can teach the trick for dealing with the ghosts in a straightforward approach, but they are usually dismissed as cranks or kooks, themselves—too gruff and rough-hewn.
Finally, the ultimate priesthood, who have the power to finalize the rites of exorcism if alerted (HR) will only be summoned when things have gotten so bad the haunting is undeniable even to them. Most often, the ancestral mansion in the ghost stories is never visited by the bishop or priest until things have gotten far worse. Even if they do come for a brief visit in the meantime, the spirits almost never act up without provocation.
Most Workplace Ghosts don't really understand that they are ghosts. They have failed to see that their employment actually ceased a long time ago; that they are still collecting their checks and benefits well after their work life has ended. They are restless spirits who happened to get lucky enough to have a professional career, but have long since stopped caring about it and just go to work out of desperate habit. They have never known anything else and they don't know they can move on to a more peaceful realm, so they just hang on.
If they don't know that they are ghosts, many may actually believe they are still doing their best and giving 110%, unaware that each project they leave incomplete and each email they fail to reply to further mires them in the chains of the underworld. Their dreadful actions strike fear into the hearts of their coworkers. It is almost not their fault. No one helped them to understand that their place of work stopped being a good match for them or held them to account soon enough to keep them from fizzling out.
For the rest of the workforce, a Ghost Worker is a nightmare of unparalleled proportions. They cause a lot of trouble. They meddle, offer spooky advice, pester, gossip, ramble, haunt the staff lounge and corner people going to get papers off the copier. They impede productivity and they lower the general morale. They often get away with things that the other employees wouldn’t dream of doing and so, by their very existence, cause there to be a double standard in the workplace. If the bosses tell the ghost that they are doing a good job, just to encourage or appease them, what does that mean for the living workers who are actually trying their hardest? If the ghosts get away with anything and don't face consequences, does that mean the other employees are likewise free to do whatever they want without ramifications? The ghostly presence lowers the bar to levels where praise and merit, discipline and performance become meaningless.
Because people don't believe in ghosts it is hard to take the people who do see them seriously, as Horatio admits when he sees the spectral figure of King Hamlet on the battlements at Elsinore Castle, when he says, “I might not have believed without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes”. In order to release the spirits, it is necessary to prove they are real. Thriving workers need to document spectral shenanigans as much as possible. This includes—but is not limited to—sightings, examples of bad behavior, dates and times, interactions and all failures to live up to the expectations in the employee handbook. Anything that could be used to make a case against the ghost must be put in a memo or diary and be copious. Those documents are then kept in a folder and when the time comes and the Bishop (HR) is headed to the workplace, if requested, the documents are available to add to the ritual of removal. They can help build a case against the ghost but they can also provide evidence that the ghost really is a ghost.
In the meantime, out of frustration, one may be tempted to turn to the elder states-persons of the office who have seen all kinds of horrors. They can both provide context or give advice and may know exactly what is necessary to remove the spirits, but because they are gruff, rough-hewn and world-weary, their tolerance for the bureaucratic solutions is always at low ebb. They would prefer to address the ghosts directly. They have no patience for the Bishop (HR is of no use to them, except as a source of information about their retirement and benefit accruals) and they have spent their lives being direct and tolerating no nonsense, even from the living. Unfortunately, the direct approach can backfire, causing even more paperwork and disciplinary action.
A séance is certainly an option. This is a variant of the direct approach where several members of the staff, without involving the administration, approach the ghost and address the situation honestly and hope for a response. It takes a lot of courage because ghosts can be frightening and terrible when provoked. The séance informs the ghost about their behavior and encourages them to come back to the living or to shuffle off this mortal coil. It is a kind of intervention or wake (the dead) up call. Rarely effective, especially because the ones who hold the séance are often not the mediators they think they are, this approach can just make things worse for everyone.
Most often, unless the administration becomes aware of the problem through someone’s documentation or evaluation processes, the problems just persist. The bosses are unwilling to address the haunting or they hope that some living employee will expand on their own work mandate and mentor the ghost until they fall in line or leave of their own accord. It's possible that someone's well-meaning modeling of appropriate behavior may help a ghost see they have been long gone for a long time, but it is doubtful. A mentor can only do and say so much.
There will always be ghosts in the workplace. They are disheartening, upsetting, frustrating and frightening. They are of almost no use to anyone except as an example of how not to conduct oneself. It’s not hard to look better than a free-floating phantasm. Show up on time, work the whole day, be a help to one’s coworkers, lend a hand, finish projects, promptly reply to emails, be respectful of the work your colleagues have to do and be serious and devoted about the job; pull together when able and be encouraging of one's coworkers with a cheerful and empathetic approach to the work. We all have a job to do. We don't have to love it, but it helps if we are at least productive members of staff. Remember too, that, at least in the capitalist sense, everyone is expendable. I am lucky to have a job, so I try to act like it.
Someday, maybe the dead will move on and haunt another place. It’s not worth getting dyspeptic about. If it bugs and bothers, as ghosts will do though, take it from the fan of Gothic novels and tales: write everything down. No ghost can tolerate actual proof of their miserable state becoming evidence against them.
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