Business Lesson:Burning Bridges is Bad

by Extreme John on February 22, 2009 4,537 views

I can’t really say I even know why I have to post something as obvious and dumb as this, but some people really can be lost and sometimes it helps to point out the obvious. I always thought at a young age around the world parents worked hard every single day to instill the silly little obvious things we should already know, into our kids little brains. You know all the sweet little things like ,”If you don’t have anything nice to say, than don’t say anything at all.” or maybe ,”Look both ways when you cross the street.” I mean simple little basic things, and this is one of those things that falls into that same area but for some reason I guess somewhere…… Someone… wasn’t teaching their fuckin kids the basics. The world suffers.

One of the most basic rules we should have all learned as a child should have been the “Burning Bridges is Bad” or “Dont burn bridges.” It really is simple and it really is important, especially in business or in the professional world. In this week alone I was made aware of three people that choose to burn down those sometimes very important bridges. Pretty stupid when you first think about it, and to be honest… Pretty stupid every time I think about it. There is nothing worse as a business owner than a self destructive bridge burning idiot…… that does it more than once, imagine dealing with multiple people like that.

One of the Bridge Burners was stealing from the company, the company that helped them move on to their latest venture… Pretty classy and one dumb way to burn a bridge after a long period of continued service. This is an interesting case and a classic, it’s that great employee (not associate) that does a solid job while they work for you and even at times goes above and beyond. Than when they have reached a time in their life when they have to move on to do other things, instead of giving two weeks notice or leaving on good terms they turn around and rip you off at the end. Pretty cowardly, and at such a young age a dumb bridge to burn.

Moving on to the next Bridge Burner we get into that special kind of bridge burner, it’s not the worthless piece of shit that can dish it out but can’t take it. It’s not the one that you have given excellent opportunity after excellent opportunity to or the one you taught each and every single thing to when it came to business. Nope none of those guys, this is a special character that Burned a Bridge once before, even with the bridge burned a previous time as a business owner at times you make decisions and hope that people change…. It’s always important to remember that PEOPLE DO NOT CHANGE, especially in the work place. Well this bridge burner is more than happy to soak off the land and hover above the dirt for long periods of time only to burn the bridge at the end when they could have just left the bridge there in case someone wanted to cross it again in the future. Double Bridge Burner….. I really never believed people were this stupid, thank you for clearing that up for me.

I won’t be wasting anyone’s time getting into the third bridge burner because much like the two above the third one is irrelevant too. What is important here is that you have two people at two different spectrum’s of the age chart which might not seem like such a big deal, however with one of them being so young and the other being so much older you would think at least one of them would have had a clue…. One of them would have stopped to think before setting their wheels into motion, not to mention the second one is really a moron because they already made the choice to burn a bridge once before and they got lucky. What makes someone that burns their bridges once already think that it will be acceptable to do it again? One important note to self seems to be a note I have used for a long time and I should have used in at least one of the above cases, If it doesn’t feel right it’s probably not right… Dont bother thinking about it twice.