SultanOfSwing

He's taking the piss with that, though. Unexpected illness/injury/family emergency - that's all OK. But "I feel a bit upset today", or "I was angry when I woke up"? No, that's complete BS.

I know you had that letter you made him sign, but I think you're well into formal written warning territory here, good worker when he's in or not.

Pulaski

Working alongside "angry" colleagues is one of the nightmare scenarios of living in America.

scrubbedexpat097

He has money and ex GF problems. A gun?... I live in Tx,


The letter was written as a warning as well. The meeting we had when I talked to him included a HR person as well.

SultanOfSwing

Different kinds of angry, I suppose. I often wake up 'feeling angry', usually because one of the kids was being a dick, or I had a fight with the wife the night before. That was what I thought this one was (and just a BS excuse to get off work, rather than doing the decent thing and claiming to have explosive shits), rather than him being a shooting risk.

Might be getting close to pink slip time, then.

RICH

This! The "managers" are usually the last in in the morning.

In this case the manager (seemingly clueless) registered attendance with HR and HR applied policy. Manager told me-OTR- it wasn't what she wanted-no choice.

This guy was far from your slacker. Maybe one too many oversleeps.

My thing is, there is little between his attendance and the rest of us. IDK if others are on written warnings, but we might be hiring soon!

And funny enough, after the news broke, today half the office was late

scrubbedexpat097

It's been a learning curve for me since I became head of the department. My first hire I fired after 2 months, my inherited employee quit before I fired her ( and yes it would have happened, she had been allowed to get away with all kinds of crap with our previous boss) My part time lady is great but didn't want to work full time so I hired 2 guys, both with science degrees and some Lab experience. The one I was dubious about hiring has turned out to be the best employee of the two. And the other, well...he may be out the door soon

I am counting the months till retirement.

Rete

He's in Texas. What do you think?

mrken30

Maybe that is one reason I did not take Pulaski's advice on moving to Texas. We have enough crazies up here.

Pulaski

You never agree with me on anything else, so why would Texas be any different?

AFAIK there is no particular association between Texas and spree shootings.

mrken30

They just have too many crazies, I think guns are a secondary problem. Too much sun down there, mad dogs and all that.

Pulaski

You don't live in Texas. I have the same opinion of the population of Oregon, but that is likely as valid as your opinion of people in Texas.

Steerpike

I honestly think many people change their whole perspective on this 'firing' topic once they become managers and have to manage people themselves. When I was a lowly employee, I had all kinds of opinions about how cruel and unthinking 'management' was when dealing with employees. Then I ended up managing people, and I realized what a minefield it was, and how incredibly difficult it was to deal with problem employees.

For one thing, you are not allowed to disclose many facts; so you can't 'make your case' to the other guys if you follow the rules. You can only say very limited and careful things.

I had a guy on my team who was chronically ineffective at work, but dealing with that proved very hard because every time I gave him documented tasks to perform (as part of the whole process of disciplining him), he performed them well. But in the end, we 'got him on a technicality' - he kept coming in late and we made an issue of his attendance, and had a written warning that next time he came in late without first calling in or explaining his absence, he would be terminated; this happened and we terminated him. So the 'real reason' was subtle and difficult to prove, but there were other 'behaviors' that were easier to document and pursue. I was never allowed to tell anyone else what was going on. I followed his career for a while after (via indirect friends) and he could not hold a steady job.

Pulaski

A manager of the same grade as me shared a "management only" email with someone on his team, which then caused me an awkward situation when she shared the info with someone on my team. Within a couple of weeks both the manager and woman who passed on the email were gone from the department, and the manager left the company a few months later, but not before a corporate re-org left him demoted by one level (a peer of my direct reports).

vikingsail

Which just adds credence to my point that the tardiness/absence tool is usually used when a manager is pissed off. Look at the phrasing used (highlighted). It becomes a 'we got him' issue. Sorry Steerpike not picking on you I feel the pain but I think we all approach this the wrong way and the tardiness/absence tool is often misused by managers for other underlying issues. In fact it happens to be one of the easiest tools to utilize when attempting to remove an employee providing the rules are followed, as it is clear cut. You were either present or not, allowed excuses excepted.
btw, Im not some bleeding heart liberal/ snowflake.

Steerpike

I don't think you are picking on me at all. This guy was a complete flake, took advantage of many situations, and ruined a great team. He very clearly needed to go. If the rules about terminating an employee weren't so darned restrictive, we would have fired him for all the right reasons, but since we couldn't, we chose to use the technicality. This guy was white, heterosexual, male - but because he was over 40, HR were having fits that he may claim age discrimination. In the end, due to the fact he had demonstrated certain 'violent tendencies' and 'instabilities', we chose to pay him off with a 'package' so he would go quietly. It was a ridiculous situation.