We were at the Laundry CEO Forum a while back. A handful of us owner/operators standing around talking shop. One of them mentioned he wasn't spending as much time at one of his locations lately. Not because of finances, not because of some emergency, but because of a team member.
He didn't share anything dramatic about their behavior. No theft, no blowup, no insubordination. Just someone who, over time, made him not want to be there when they were there. The way he said it was almost apologetic.
I knew exactly what he was talking about because I've felt it too.
The Feeling You Can't Shake
You're heading to the store and you realize who's on shift. Something shifts internally. You start thinking, "I'll go later." "I can handle that tomorrow." "I don't really need to do this right now."
It's not something dramatic, and that's the issue. If a team member stole, you'd act immediately. If someone cursed out a client, you'd handle it that day. But this? This is quieter and builds over time so you don't notice it until you're sitting in your car in the parking lot, not wanting to walk inside.
It's the team member who won't put the stapler back at the front counter, no matter how many times you ask. It's the one who asks you the same question you've already answered four times. The one who always has an excuse for something in advance. The one who is negative about every situation even before it happens. The one who throws the tone off in team meetings.
None of it is egregious. But it compounds over time.
We had a team member who got the job done. Did fairly good work. But they were extra about every little thing. Notes everywhere. Someone didn't close a door? Note, toilet seat left up? Note, someone needs to do X going forward? Note taped to the wall. The store looked like a crime scene evidence board.
They weren't a bad team member. But being around that energy day after day wore me and other team members down. And that's when the avoidance crept in.
What Starts to Slip
Here's what happens next, and it's so gradual you don't see it.
I'd check the schedule, see they were working, and think, “Maybe I'll go by there later." That meant something didn’t get done right away that should have been. So now I'm staying in the store later to work on it after their shift ends. Orders didn't get checked right away. Paperwork didn't get done. All because I kept pushing things to a time when they weren't there.
Other times I'd go in early. I knew they came in the afternoon, so I'd rush to get everything done before her shift started.
I was the owner, literally sprinting to finish my work and get out of my own business before a team member clocked in or leaving as they were coming in.
And when our schedules did overlap, I was managing my facial expressions and energy so they didn't know something was off. Spending emotional energy hiding the problem on top of the emotional energy the problem was already costing me.
Everything gets affected. Not because of one catastrophic event, but because hesitation becomes your default. One person's energy creates a chain reaction across your entire operation.
The Research Says This Is Real
Psychologist Richard Lazarus studied stress for decades at UC Berkeley. His finding that surprised researchers, daily hassles, the minor recurring frustrations of everyday life, are a better predictor of psychological symptoms than major life events.¹ Not equal to. Better than.
It's not the stapler. It's 100 staplers over six months.
Christine Porath at Georgetown surveyed 800 managers and employees across 17 industries and found that 63% of people who experience ongoing workplace friction lost work time actively avoiding the person causing it.² Another finding, de-energizing relationships have four to seven times more negative impact on performance than positive relationships have in the other direction.³
One person who drains you doesn't just cancel out one person who energizes you. They cancel out four to seven.
But here's what's telling. Every one of these studies measured the experience from the employee's perspective. Not the owner's. Nobody has asked us.
Who Does the Owner Talk To?
Maybe that's because we don't talk about it.
You can't complain to your team members. You can't vent to the person causing the problem. Your entrepreneur friends are in their own trenches. Your family either doesn't fully understand or they hit you with, "I told you not to go into business."
Research shows 50% of CEOs report feeling lonely in their role.⁴ 39% of entrepreneurs say they have no one to talk to about their stress.⁵ A study in Personnel Psychology captured it perfectly: "You can't confide in others at your company what problems you're experiencing. You are the leader. You must show confidence. You can't complain down the chain."⁶
So you absorb it. You internalize it. And you start finding reasons not to go in.
That conversation at the Laundry CEO Forum happened because a group of owner/operators were finally in a room where someone felt safe enough to say it out loud. And the recognition was immediate because we'd all been there.
The Gap Nobody's Studying
We have decades of research on toxic bosses. Entire industries built around "bad boss" content. Books, podcasts, TED talks. We have research on toxic employees and what they cost organizations, Harvard Business School found that avoiding a toxic hire saves roughly $12,500, nearly double the value of hiring a superstar.⁷
But nobody, not one study, has directly asked business owners, "Have you ever avoided going to your own business because of a specific employee?"
That study doesn't exist. But the experience does.
Thinking about the thinking of laundry:
When you realize that gut feeling you have about that team member isn't going away, it's compounding.
If you've felt this, you're not the only one. That owner at the Laundry CEO Forum wasn't the only one. I wasn't the only one. And the fact that nobody talks about it is exactly why it persists.
The first step is recognizing the pattern. The second is having the conversation. Whether that's with a fellow owner/operator, a mentor, or honestly with yourself about what needs to change.
You built this business. You shouldn't need permission to walk into it.
That's all I got for you today.
Waleed
Echoing the thoughts of Henry Cloud.
We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.
Footnotes:
¹ Comparison of Two Modes of Stress Measurement: Daily Hassles and Uplifts Versus Major Life Events — Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, Lazarus, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 1981
² The Price of Incivility — Porath & Pearson, Harvard Business Review, 2013
³ The Hidden Toll of Workplace Incivility — Porath, McKinsey & Company, 2016
⁴ Half of CEOs Report Feeling Lonely — Harvard Business Review
⁵ Entrepreneur Burnout Report, 2024
⁶ The Many Faces of Entrepreneurial Loneliness — Cardon et al., Personnel Psychology, 2024
⁷ Toxic Workers — Housman & Minor, Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 16-057, 2015
