Here's how clever I'm not! Years ago, I was a foreman in a machine shop, with a mechanical engineering degree and every intention of creating a better world. A seminar on job enrichment inspired me to enrich the jobs of my direct reports by making them careers in manufacturing. I moved people from equipment and processes they knew to others they didn't, expecting them to be enriched by learning new tasks.
Good idea, right? Wrong! They didn't want their jobs enriched, at least not the way I was doing it. All that my so-called "enriching" did was keep them completely off-balance and uncomfortable. After a few weeks of this, a delegation "suggested" I not go to any more seminars. I got the message and life, enriched or not, got back to normal. With that humbling preamble, let's look at a few appalling ways guaranteed to drive employees nuts, cause them to form a union, spend more time complaining than working, or even quit.