Editor’s Note: I recieved this tonight from a friend who is a practice owner and a part time associate in response to the How To Fail post. This piece offers insight from the employee point of view that is valuable to employers and should be taken very seriously.

1. Start the relationship by promising the associate he/she will be paid a per diem but then extending clinic hours without adjusting compensation because it’s still “one day.”

2. Assume the younger doctor’s suggestions are ridiculous and that your way of doing things should never be questioned (in my opinion, we should all be students for life)

3. Bring up the fact that you have successfully (in your definition of “success”) treated thousands of cases (ignoring the fact that every debond has overjet, is undertorqued, etc.)

4. Repeatedly telling the associate that you will get partnership but that conversation will happen “next year” (every year for multiple years).

5. Owner doc repeatedly correcting/overruling associate doctor in front of staff, causing the staff to lose confidence/respect for the younger doc. Public humiliation is no way to motivate an associate.

6. Asking your associate to do things he/she feels are unethical (ex. “if you see caries at the initial consultation, we put on braces first and then refer to the GP” or “we don’t use separators, just use posterior IPR”).

7. Ask the associate to take calls off the clock and not be compensated when the associate has no opportunity for equity and is clearly a W-2 employee (non-salaried). This is in clear violation of existing labor laws.

8. Ask the associate to essentially “follow my orders and do not think, this is NOT YOUR practice” but also “treat this like YOUR own practice and solicit referrals.” You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have it both ways.

9. Be sure to repeatedly comment to the associate on how bad he/she is as an orthodontist so they never gain enough confidence in their clinical skills to leave you and open their own clinic

10. Be sure to continue the negative commentary about said associate to all other docs so they question his/her abilities and do not believe their “crazy boss stories.”