Disney always gets the message wrong: Why Remember the Titans is false advertising

In my late twenties, when I got a new job managing both a helpdesk and a deskside support team, I was ready to kick ass and lead my teams to Harvard-case-study-worthy excellence. I knew I could do it - all you had to do was get them to work seamlessly together, like 2 parts of one whole. And to learn how to do that, all you had to do was watch Remember the Titans.

In the first couple of months, I had a big team meeting with both teams together. I had them sit mixed in together: helpdesk-deskside-helpdesk-deskside, just like Denzel Washington did when he got his football players to sit together black-white-black-white on the bus to football camp. It worked for Coach Boone when he was trying to integrate his football team, so of course it would work for me when trying to get my 2 teams together!

Shortly after my meeting, Human Resources informed me that someone had lodged a complaint about me treating them like children by telling them where to sit. Nevermind that the complaint was made by the same guy that fought (and won) my complaint against him by saying that when he fell asleep with his forehead on the phone, he was still doing his job: his job was to answer the phones, and if it rang, the ringing would wake him up...it still stung. Where was my Gary and Julius?

I'm not sure if it was that moment that I started hating my job, but it must've been close to it.

After that, little by little I've come to realize that it really didn't matter how the team felt. If they answered the phones and fixed people's desktops, then we were doing alright. No one had to love doing it - they just had to do it.

I would love to see Disney make a movie that got that message across. It was probably one of the best lessons I ever learned as a manager.

PS. I have to tie this back into the whole my-bloke-is-on-the-dole theme, so here goes.....
According to Disney, coaching football in a newly racially integrated high school is as easy as picking people's seats for them and having them call you Daddy. Sounds like fun, right? I think I'll suggest to my bloke that he research high school football coaching jobs in Zimbabwe. I think there's still plenty of racial tensions there. Oh, the possibilities....