Unpopular opinion: "open door policies" are just traps for honest employees

I swear every boss I've had who brags about their "open door policy" uses it to collect ammo against you later. My last manager at a retail chain in Cleveland said it with a smile, but when I brought up a safety issue in the break room, she wrote me up for "negative attitude" three days later. The policy only works if you never actually say anything critical. Has anyone else seen this backfire when they tried to use it honestly?

2 comments

2 Comments

kelly612d ago

My buddy Mike worked at a car dealership over in Parma last year. Their service manager had one of those open door policies written right on his office window in marker. Mike walked in there to say the floor drains in the service bay were backing up with oil and water, a real hazard. Two weeks later the manager gave him his schedule cut down to part time for "not being a team player.

the_seth2d ago

Hold on, you sure about that? I mean, yeah, the manager sounds like a real piece of work for cutting his hours, but walking in on a guy who wrote his own policy on a window with a marker? That's not really an open door policy, that's just a guy being a clown. If the manager was that petty, he probably wasn't going to listen to anyone anyway, no matter how they brought it up. Your buddy Mike was probably better off getting out of there, even if it sucked in the moment. Some managers just have a fragile ego, and nothing you say is gonna fix that.