That’s a reasonable reason to do so. Apparently, however, he also missed a day of work on the same day he was supposed to be in Portland with me, and he emailed on that day, too. He didn’t lose his voice. I guess the ass. manager hit the roof and told him off about that. The problem here is, there is a store part to where we work, and he is supposed to open with the ass. manager. There’s not time to check the emails, and when you’re running your arse off and trying to help everybody, thinking your backup person is here, maybe, parking, punching in, or otherwise about to miraculously materialise, a phone call ahead would have been appreciated so you could call someone else and beg a favour. (Ass. manager even mentioned that if it had been a case of losing his voice, he would have been much more understanding.) Normally we’d have three openers, but only had two this week because of the manager being on vacation. Us believing he was the trustworthy person we had believed him to be up until this time…
Yeah, he’s on some pretty thin ice.
Oh, and lobstermobster, I just wanted to tell you: you totally made my day. While on the outside I’m trying to do the professional, mature thing, your post made me laugh and remember that deep down inside, I’d love me a little good, old fashioned *LEMME AT 'IM!! * action. You’re good people.
This really depends on company policy. But it’s not a good idea to assume an email will be sufficient unless your manager agrees it would be sufficient. A common policy is that employees calling out sick need to speak to someone in management to do so. Whether you answer calls when you are out sick generally depends on how sick you are and your level of responsibility. In conjunction with all the other strange stuff this guy was doing, these things just add to the suspicion level, especially if they are against policy.
The jerk likes to play power games, and has already reported you. You should expect more of this sort of thing over the years, so note down every incident, and review them with your boss on a regular basis, so that you will have fewer worries the next time he makes a run at you.
Did you miss that in this instance I couldn’t really speak? It was email or nothing. (The uvula is the dangly bid at the back of the mouth and it was very swollen). When you aren’t able to speak you must adapt and overcome. And others must make do if necessary. So long as you do your best, no one can complain.
Now, in Anastaseon’s case, I agree with Muffin. But she might mention to him that she got paid for 6 hours extra as well as expenses.
I was answering the question “What’s wrong with emailing in sick?” The main answer is, a lot of times company policy specifically requires a phone call. I wasn’t answering the question “This one time, with my uvula :rolleyes: …” If your manager had a problem with how you handled your situation, you probably would have heard by now.
This has turned out to be excellent advice. I have documented *every single * thing he said to me, how I reacted, why I reacted, etc, from last Tuesday onward. I would get home and just write it all down. I kept going the way I was going; acted professionally, didn’t respond to further taunting (which he kept up). Yesterday, my manager got back from vacation, and when I got in, before I could even request it, he requested a private meeting with me in the afternoon. He listened to everything I had to say, and I went through the entire list of things I had documented. When it was over, he told me that first off, he was very sorry that I had to go through that, second, that he was very pleased with the way I had handled myself so professionally, and third, apparently, my story was only fuel to an already well-burning fire - this guy has been doing things I was unaware of for some time, and is pretty much toast. I say “pretty much”, because today he was supposed to get written up, but didn’t show up to work. He skipped out on work yesterday, too. Also, he bounced out on us in the middle of the day on Monday, leaving a customer halfway through a transaction. Confounded red tape aside, if he doesn’t show up tomorrow, the deal is as good as sealed. He’s already in a whole heap of hurting as it is. Since my manager did not go into further detail with me about how he has been in trouble, and what I have heard has just been rumour and nothing official, I won’t bother going into those details at this point.
Also, my husband was kept out of this. At one point, he called our regional manager - as a friend, not a co-worker (the guy was the best man at our wedding, and also one of the people affected by the jerk’s childishness, so none of this was news to him), and vented his frustrations about the situation. He was given great advice on staying out of the situation, given great reasons to stay out of it (this is one reason it’s tough for husbands and wives to work together, and if he can’t keep it together while we’re working separately while at the same company, that can be totally unprofessional and cause some major problems for us) - ultimately, he cooled his jets a little and let me handle things my own way. He remained supportive but silent ever since. He’s a good man, my man.
There was an interesting kick to the story yesterday, however, so I will include it for those of you who are fans of karmic retribution: yesterday he called in and said he wouldn’t be showing up for work (and was subsequently told by the manager that his excuse was unacceptable. Oh, his excuse? “I don’t like [ass. manager].”) Anyway, later in the afternoon, his wife calls and asks for him. She is told, naturally, that he is not at work. She pauses, sounds confused for a moment, then says, suddenly, “BUSTED!”
While I can’t claim to know what’s going on at the old jerkwad homestead, I haven’t ever known “BUSTED” to be a very good omen for anyone.
All right, all right, all schadenfreude aside, it looks like this problem is about to wrap itself up. I made it out with all of my faculties intact thanks to all of your good advice, and keeping my husband out of it.
I’ll keep you posted on whether or not he gets canned or stays on on the thinnest of ice. We predict he won’t last the week, either way.
The guy was let go last week, when, after three days of not showing up, didn’t even bother calling it in this time and just stayed home. Hooray, we thought, now we can get some work done.
But no.
He emails a regional manager and says some blanket nasty statements about the whole work crew. Heh, we say to each other, so he needs to get it out of his system. Classy guy. Wish we had kept him, he’s turning out to be a real winner, wink wink.
A couple days later, apparently he felt he hadn’t been specific enough. He named each and every one of us, and claimed something terribly negative about each one. ie, for one guy, he claimed he came in to work drunk every day, and drank on breaks, etc. This is false. Another guy he claimed came to work high every day. Also false. His claim about me was that I knew nothing about paint. Well, that’s what I get for asking a guy who was in the painting business for 20 years painting questions; I’ve only been in the business for about five months. Either way, I’ll let my soaring high 3 month review score on product knowledge speak for itself. What was weird was that he then claimed another, female, co-worker, should be the manager. He had nothing bad to say about her. And she suddenly began defending him like mad after he left. You can go ahead and assume what the rest of us did at this point. I don’t know for sure if it’s true, but it’s walking very similarly to a duck.
What. The. Hell. This thing goes deeper than we had all thought.
Now, two co-workers are fighting about the whole thing (the “manager material” girl and another co-worker) because of her defensiveness when confronted. Now she’s speaking very little to anyone.
Then it was discovered that someone put water into our diesel-fueled delivery truck, and it won’t run anymore. We all suspect one big giant jerk of an ex-co-worker.
HR is coming today to speak to each one of us individually about the claims made against us.
Huh, that’s f’d up. Weren’t there any security cameras where the truck was parked? And what does HR hope to accomplish by talking to everyone about this guy’s claims? Does that mean they’re taking them seriously, or are they just advising you what the response to this is going to be? If they’re taking them seriously, that seems really awful to me. If he had claimed that you ate babies, would they have to investigate that?
Sucks, but you’re making me happy that my brief stint into the corporate world included only mere incompetence and vague interdepartmental backstabbing, rather than a full-on meltdown.
So, back when his wife called work and “busted” him, was his defensive co-worker at work or did she take off also? And when he stood you up do you suppose they hooked up during that time? Please elaborate, we love good gossip!
HR is doing what HR is paid to do- covering the company’s collective ass. If they don’t look into the claims and Jerk files a complaint against the company (either through legal channels or via some sort of governmental watchdog organization), that’s a huge mark against them right from the beginning- especially when the claims involve things like drug and alcohol abuse. I imagine the meetings will go something like “So. There’s been a claim made that you come into work every day drunk. True? Nah, we didn’t think so. Thanks for your time.”
We have “grievance boxes” at work on each of the units, and a special “grievance person” who goes around collecting said grievances. Now, you have to remember that our kids are emotionally/behaviorally disordered and prone to rather wild flights of fancy. But each and every one of those grievances- even the ones that say things like “Mr. John killed my invisible friend Nancy by sitting on her when she CLEARLY was already in that chair, and I want him fired and sent to jail immediately!!”- are looked into by the appropriate department head. It doesn’t mean they take the complaint even remotely seriously, and I can’t imagine how they get through most of those meetings with a straight face, but they do it for documentation’s sake. So I can’t fault HR in this case for having meetings, and I hope that Jerk doesn’t try to set the company up for some sort of wrongful termination suit or a drawn-out campaign of harassment and property damage.
Look on the bright side: You get to update this thread daily with the ongoing details (as you feel comfortable sharing) of this slow-motion train wreck.
And you better, too. If you don’t keep us abreast of the situation, I will hunt you down and demand the latest information.
I’m home on my lunch break after getting through speaking to the HR person. Mostly it was true/false questions, easy to answer.
I am satisfied, for now. Only time will tell if anything further happens.
As for defensive co-worker… she had the day off the day co-worker was “busted”. Hmm.
Honestly, I don’t know if we’ll ever truly know what’s going on with that. She seems more insulted that anyone would believe that about her… but I just don’t know. I try to put myself into her shoes - why would I defend somebody like that? Someone who is trying to take all of us down (but her)?
Well… it’s sort of dwindled down to nothing. The girl in question, if she is/was shagging the guy, no longer speaks of it, is happy and talking to everyone again - nor has she assimilated and begun making fun of him along with everyone else. Whatever she thinks about the guy, she’s not insulting us by defending him, nor is she “lowering” herself to our level - if she sees the good in him, I can’t fault her her peaceful right to quietly disagree with us, so long as she understand why we’re a little “grouchy” about the whole thing. As long as we’re working happily together, I don’t care who she does or doesn’t screw.
As for the Jerk, well. There have been no more vehicle tampering incidents, which is good. There was, however, and giggle all you want to, because as disgusting as it was it ended up making us all laugh - we did find a frozen pile of human feces outside our back door, where all of the employees enter, one early Monday morning about a week ago. There’s only one suspect on our list.
You know, that’s probably the funniest part about this whole situation: for the next several months or so, pretty much anything that goes wrong is going to be pinned on the Jerk. Fairness doesn’t even factor into at that point: he earned the suspicion; he’s going to be looked at funny and though of poorly. That dwarf in my book club who steals all of my ideas? Well, it all makes sense, now!
