Are You A Team Player?

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For most of my brother’s life he had either worked where there were only a few employees or at self-employment. So I guess you can say he didn’t have any real employee smarts. When my brother lost his job he got another one through a friend of his getting him hired at his friend’s place of employment. A month or so into the job my brother got bit by a hobo spider on his way to work. So he went home. After being off work for a week he decided he didn’t want to go back to work. “I’m not going back.” He told me. “You better call and tell them,” I said. “Nah, I’m just not going back.” “You’ll be better off if you call and tell something. Tell them you can’t handle the job.” That’s basically what he told me. “I’m not calling them,” he said. “I’m just not going back.” Then my brother signed up for unemployment. The unemployment office called him and said they were going to have a conference call with him and his former employer. His former boss told unemployment that he didn’t even know my brother had quit. And he was not budging from the fact that brother just basically walk off the job. So no unemployment for my brother. I told my brother if he would have called his former boss he may have worked with my brother on getting unemployment. But now it was too late. So my brother started putting applications in everywhere he could think of. Then he got a interview. After the interview he called me. “They asked me if I was a team player,” he said. “I asked them what they meant by that. They didn’t tell me. What did they mean by that?” That shocked me because my brother is a big sports fan. I figured if anyone knew what a team player was it would be him. “Did they end the interview there?” I asked. “Pretty much,” he said. “Well, they’re never going to call you again.” “Just because I didn’t know what a team player was?” “That’s right. They would have taken it to mean you were not a team player.” “What exactly is a team player?” I decided to use my brother’s favorite sport to explain it. “You watch football don’t you?” “Yeah.” “The whole team works together to get the ball over the goal line, right?” “Yeah.” “Well that’s what a team player is. Someone who is willing to work with everyone else to get the job done.” “Oh,” he said, “now I understand.” “You did as good as tell them you were not a team player.” It turned out that since my brother has had back problems all his life (it got him out of the military) he decided to apply for Social Security Disability. So now he no longer needs a job.