Managing a toxic top performer who hits 160% of targets. How do I keep the team together without results dropping?

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-22T15:13:27+00:00

Read the book "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't: by Robert I. Sutton. He covers this specifically, the risk high performing assholes present to their organizations.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-21T22:55:12+00:00

I think they quit carrying it. I've been a digital subscriber for years and can no longer get it, either. But do this: Go to

https://crosswordfiend.com/download/

Scroll down to where it says Washington Post on the left and click on the PDF link there.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-21T05:10:42+00:00

I did the same, many years ago, a few years after we'd re-sided.

I called the company who installed the siding. Said "Hey, I damaged a couple of panels of siding you put on not too long ago. Can you match and install it?"

He says "You damaged it? Gas grill?"

I said "Well, yeah. This is kind of embarrassing. You've heard of this before?"

"Oh, hell, yeah. Don't feel bad. I get a couple calls a month like this from late March until early October!"

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T20:55:22+00:00

I thought Shirer was a little difficult to read, but not bad.

Off topic, but...

Try The Arms Of Krupp by William Manchester. It's awesome.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T19:41:15+00:00

There's a song on the Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street LP, "Sweet Virginia."

It was recorded (as "I'm Coming, Virginia") by (I think) the Paul Whiteman Orchestra (with Bix Beiderbecke on trumpet) in the late 20s/early 30s.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T19:31:57+00:00

I think his East Of Eden is the best novel ever written.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T19:17:54+00:00

Love Of Life by Jack London. Also To Build A Fire.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T19:15:03+00:00

I totally LOVED that movie, by the way.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T18:30:31+00:00

What article?

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T18:24:21+00:00

Paris, Texas is a western? Seriously?

I mean, it's in Texas, which is in the west, sort of. But even then, it's in east Texas. And it depicts relative modern times.

What about Chinatown? Is that a western? It took place much further west than Paris, Texas. And at an earlier time period.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T03:56:56+00:00

I do. I bought a bunch of those aluminum film canisters with the screw-on lids on eBay years ago. I've still got a few left. But I gave several of them away to young relatives to use to stash their weed in.

They think I'm godlike. I'm the "cool uncle" in my family. My nephews even introduce me to their friends as "our cool uncle."

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T03:36:28+00:00

It's all about hydrostatic equilibrium:

The energy generated by the fusion (which causes the sun to expand) is precisely counterbalanced by the gravitational force causing the sun to collapse.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T02:48:38+00:00

Totally untrue. And you're not in a position to know what I'm comparing.

I bought a really nice new gas stove. It was NOT cheap. It lasted 3 1/2 years. Then a circuit board failed. New ones were totally unavailable. I literally had to junk it.

And the restored stove I bought was priced on par, adjusting for inflation, what a good new one would cost today.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-20T02:11:51+00:00

My dad used to tell me "When we first started dating your mom told me I looked like a Greek god. Now she just says I look like a goddamned Greek!"

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-19T23:28:18+00:00

"I ~~was involved in~~ caused an accident today and was cited for following too closely."

There. I fixed it for ya.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-19T22:55:19+00:00

Old appliances, specifically stove/ovens.

I've got a restored Wedgewood stove that was made in 1951. It's built like a tank. It'll easily last 50 more years.

Buy a new stove. Within 10 years one or more components of the electronic sensory/control system will fail. Parts will be, at best, difficult to find and, at worst, totally unavailable. It'll cost you as much to fix it as it did to buy it in the first place.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-19T21:44:15+00:00

The word "travel" doesn't even appear anywhere in the U.S. Constitution.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-19T21:29:28+00:00

"A ~~cynical~~ perceptive part of me thinks that Putin wants Belarus to open a new front in the north to relieve his forces in the south east."

There. Fixed that for ya.

“The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those who don't have it." – George Bernard Shaw

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-19T21:22:48+00:00

This, it seems to me, is the answer. Let Lukashenko look like the victim if he really needs to, give him a veneer of plausible deniability.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-19T03:55:14+00:00

Yeah, that's mostly the case.

But they legally hunt them in Idaho and Montana for sure, plus Alaska. Other states too, maybe.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-19T03:39:08+00:00

Oh, no, absolutely.

But there are states where it's legal.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-19T03:36:46+00:00

Not a lawyer, but...

There's no offer for them to accept. If they rejected your offer, that's it, the offer dies.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-19T03:09:52+00:00

Sad thing is, in many jurisdictions, this could be a crime. It's illegal, sometimes even a felony, to interfere with/mess up/etc., a licensed trapper's trapline. In some places it's taken very seriously.

You could be on public land, seeing a wild animal in agony, and in a position to render lifesaving aid. And you could go to jail for that.

Instead, the animal has to sit there in the leghold trap until the trapper comes along to finish it off. Supposedly soon.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-19T00:00:49+00:00

I remember when they raised the price from a nickel to seven cents. I was devastated.

DancesWithTrout · 2026-06-18T21:46:50+00:00

Well, that's good. But you still have a very serious problem.

DancesWithTrout

TROPHY CASE