Review the Situation

First off, keep an open mind. As much as it may be tempting to come up with a simple solution: “This is just a bad attitude” or “Clearly they lack the passion to work here,” most people are vastly more complex than that, and most of the time it’s a multi-layered scenario going on. Don’t fall victim to the fundamental attribution error, wherein if you do something, you have a good reason, but if somebody else does something, it’s because of who they are: unintelligent, or just a jerk. Remember to think about the circumstances and context, and not just ascribe the reason behind someone’s actions entirely to their personality.

Secondly, make sure you can describe—with supporting evidence—how long it’s been going on. The “supporting evidence” part here is important, because it’s all too easy to fall into a trap of allowing our own fallible memories to serve as a self-reinforcing bias. “Dang, Darcy was late today. Seems like he’s been late a lot—remember when he was always late six months ago?” What your brain isn’t tracking is the fact that Darcy has also been on time—or early—the ...