Office Boss

Entry-level employees and middle managers: hide this story from your superiors. It’s unlikely you will match the work ethic of 60-year-old state employee Clyde McCormick, or his humility.

The administrative coordinator for the state’s Office of Workers’ Compensation is bearded and bashful, and as sheepish as a kid who’s just won a perfect school attendance award. McCormick’s ears, peeking out from under a baseball cap pulled protectively over his face, are on fire.

That’s because Fabian Blache III, a special assistant to the department, is gushing about his employee’s work ethic. McCormick has not missed a single day of work for 14 years running, Blache marvels. He arrives early, and if need be, stays late.

McCormick downplays his dogged diligence.

“Oh, I’ve had to go get my license renewed or some glasses made a couple times, so I take off an hour early,” he confesses. “Of course that’s about every four years.”

Since 1994 McCormick has done everything for the state agency from casual labor to digital and physical filing. He still does “a little bit of everything,” says Blache.

But these days the Baton Rouge native and U.S. Army veteran’s mind is on the mail. Every incoming and outgoing parcel goes through McCormick. He sorts correspondence and reroutes claims to the district offices where labor hearings are held, sometimes as early as 7 a.m., when he picks up buckets of mail and carts it to the Office of Workers’ Compensation.

Twice daily he ensures the correct co-workers get their mail at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. “He’s very particular about his mail, very personal with it,” says Gwen Fabre, an administrative assistant to Executive Director Tim Barfield. “It’s more than mail to him. The little things we take for granted are a big deal for Mr. Clyde.”

A work ethic like McCormick’s usually comes from two places: upbringing, and the fact the work is satisfying, says Courtland Chaney, LSU’s J. Trigg and Bettye Baskin Wood, Jr. endowed professor and instructor of management. Chaney has spent nearly three decades thinking about what motivates employees.

“If you want to be happy for a moment, eat ice cream,” Chaney says. “If you want to be happy for a year, have a job you like.”

Chaney has his own working streak going: he hasn’t missed a scheduled class since he began teaching at LSU in 1978. His mother and father never missed work, which helped build Chaney’s work ethic long before he reported for his first day of work as a teenage stock clerk at Kroger supermarket.

“My dad worked at Allied Chemical. I don’t think he ever missed a day of work,” Chaney says. “That’s what I saw, that’s what primed the pump, and the pump wasn’t even used yet.”

Before McCormick went to work for the state, he spent 13 years serving hamburgers, Bloody Marys and cold beer from behind the bar at Briarwood Golf Club. Even there he was detail-oriented, consistently refusing to run tabs for golfers who would have rather paid monthly than by the round.

The longtime Mid-City resident swears he hasn’t even contemplated a vacation since 1976. Back then one of his co-workers at Woodfin-Smith Pontiac told him taking time off was a sure way to tell management you’re expendable. McCormick still lives by the philosophy. He remains a certified mechanic and regularly spends weekends working on co-workers’ cars.

“He fixed my car a few years ago,” says his supervisor, Malcolm Behrens. “We take him for granted sometimes, I think, because he’s such a constant figure. He is always doing his work, even at lunch.”

McCormick sometimes reports for duty when the office is closed. Once during a hurricane-induced closure he still had to see the chains on the gates for himself. “We had a little gale of wind, and the governor closed the agency,” he says. “I just wanted to make sure.”

McCormick wants management to set their clocks by him. He says he is afraid to take leave time, but compliance manager Brenda Williams assures him his absence could never go unnoticed. She remembers back before McCormick managed the mail, days filled with hassles and mistakes by comparison. His deferential smile belies the fact that he knows the department needs him more than he lets on. Which means McCormick truly is there every day to do his job and do it well.

“Mondays are the busiest, but sometimes it’s unpredictable,” he says. “You’ll have a gully wash.”

What’s that?

“Just a whole bunch of mail.”