Anybody ever get fired by someone who's ... not in charge?

The BBQ Pit
1

I don’t usually make pit threads, but I had an interesting experience in dysfunctional office politics that I thought would be fun to share.

I found some temporary database maintenance work through a staffing agency for about two weeks in mid-August. Nothing exciting, but something to do while waiting for school to begin. The agency tells me this will be a three-day assignment, I say okay and go ahead with it. Turns out when I get there that this company has more like three months, not days, worth of work to be done. Not sure what on earth made them think they had three days worth, but oh well. I figure I’ll just do what I can despite their misrepresentation to the agency of the scope of the project, which was more than a little inconsiderate to begin with.

So then they ask me on the third day (since it’s obvious I’ll never finish in three days) if I wouldn’t mind staying a few more days to get more done. I was hesitant to commit because I knew a forty hour week wasn’t in the cards since my morning classes would be starting the following week. I told them sure, but I’d only be able to manage 5-6 hours a day. They say no problem. I call the agency the following week and make sure they’re on the up-and-up about the reduced hours during the extension, and everyone is on the same page. So here’s where things go stoopid …

The last two days I’m there (last Thursday & Friday), the two people I reported to for the assignment were out of the office on business, so I had to “check in” with the one of the assistants so they could keep track of my hours. No biggie, or so I thought. I come in Friday morning (ten minutes later than I said I would, uh oh …) and go to check in with this girl, who then proceeds to talk down to me about how I’m conducting myself. :dubious: She says that “this being your last day on this assignment and all, just as a word of advice, you should try to work on being more punctual and timely in your future endeavors, both in your personal life and in your career”. I’m paraphrasing, of course, because it didn’t come off that eloquently when said while wearing a condescendingly insecure, fake smile with raised eyebrows and a nervous glare, as though she were doing her best to mask a seething disdain for me. I guess I deserved it, being a temp who was now ten minutes late on top of an already shortened schedule. I wonder in hindsight if anyone even told this girl that I wouldn’t be in at 9:00 every morning.

I begin to respond to her before she adds something along the lines of “… and you should also work on maintaining your professionalism”, as if to say “don’t talk back, or else”. Of course, being from the agency, I understood that I had to fulfill a certain decorum, but I continue with my response anyway, saying that “in all honesty, I only volunteered to stay here a few more days contingent on the fact that everyone was okay with my reduced hours”. She tells me I was supposed to be here at 11:30, not 11:40. I tell her I had a drive that could be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour long and that this place was many miles away from my campus, before she cuts me off again by saying how she "has to drive an hour in the morning too, and so-and-so has to drive from even farther away, and what’s-her-face flies in from Minnesota, etc. etc. An exaggeration, of course, but you get my point. She was now apparently convinced that I was intentionally being late to personally spite everyone else’s best efforts to be on time, it seems … and this, of course, makes me so unprofessional as to not deserve the job. Before I can even say anything else (not that there’s any way to respond to this woman to begin with), and perhaps sensing the fact that I’m not intent on listening to her “advice”, she blows a fuse and tells me that I can leave, because I’m fired. She says it twice, in fact. Damn, fired on my last day … there goes my pension.

I call my staffing manager at the agency to have a post-assignment evaluation a few hours later, after I’ve had some time to sort out the events of the morning in my head. Pretty standard procedure for the agency to find out how things went and whether everyone was satisfied. I told the agency that I was concerned about the incident hurting my future eligibility, but it turned out that I wasn’t the only one who called … Little Miss Warpath called her that morning to vent at my manager about how I was “repeatedly late to work and confrontational when spoken to about it this morning”. My manager goes to bat for me on the phone with this loon, asking her, most importantly “Uh, who are you and where are the supervisors Martin was working with? To date, no one has had a single complaint about his job performance or his timeliness, and more importantly, who gave you any authority to terminate him if your sole responsibility was to take his hours?” They basically put her in her place for being a nosy, condescending bitch, and said I had nothing to worry about after the way she spoke to them on the phone, because the woman was clearly just as unreasonable with them as she was with me.

And to think, this girl was all smiles and helpful to me the first week I was there, even making casual conversation with me before this whole psychotic outburst. I’m curious if anyone came in this morning and told her what an idiot she was when they found out she fired that “nice young temp guy” for no apparently good reason. One guilty look from a co-worker towards her would be enough retribution for me. I should add that this is only the second time in my life that I’ve been “fired”, but I’m just not sure if it really counts. :: shrug ::

2

I’m sure the actual supervisors will hear the whole truth of a story by the young lass.

If you happen to bump into them in public somewhere, don’t be too suprised when they turn and run away as fast as they can, screaming something about “axe murderer” and “violator of suckling pigs”, don’t be too suprised.

3

Hey, knock it off, my axe murder case may still be pending, but I was acquitted of every one of those suckling pig violations years ago …

4

What happened…did the pig squeal?

I’m sorry…I couldn’t help it…>>SCL goes to “time out” corner<<<

5

That’s not what Miss Piggy said.

6

Temp assignment before school? Unofficial “boss” talking down to you? Last day, with no real bosses around? Sounds like a tailor-made scenario for “Ohboyohboy! I can let this byotch have it with both barrels free and clear of real consequences!”

Believe me, in ten years, you’ll kind of wish you had.

7

Back when I worked in a mailroom, they added a new guy between my boss and the director of administrative services (my boss’s boss). My boss’s new boss let me know in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t welcome there, from trashing my cubicle to berating me for reading after I had finished my duties.

8

I once told a woman that thought she was my boss (she wasn’t even in management) that I would pay attention to what she had to say when I saw her signature on my paycheck. She never uttered another word to me. :smiley:

9

Ogre,

Oh I know, but this caught me completely off guard. It would have been one thing if I’d have known it was coming, and I’d have probably definetely let her have both barrels, but seeing as how she lost it with no warning and how I’d only been there less than two weeks, I’m not taking it too personally … but it’s still ridiculous behavior.

Lute,

That definetely tops my story, but I’ve been through something very similar to that at a previous job, too. Seriously, WTF is wrong with people. If you have to fire someone without any reason, even if it’s under pressure from higher-level management, then that’s one thing, but why be an incomprehensible asshole about it? I bet these same people wonder why office shootings happen …

Squeekster,

Definetely true, except in a manner of speaking, this girl’s name was on my paycheck … well, my timesheet anyway. :rolleyes:

10

Where was this person’s position in the organization? Just because someone’s name’s not on the paycheck does not mean they’re not in charge of another person. That is, after all, why a number of organizations have organizational charts.

11

Monty,

My guess is she was the executive assistant to the manager that I was working directly for. Not much different from the title I once held held prior to this temp job, but I certainly never acted like she did toward anyone. I mean, how much of a superiority complex must one have to go off on a temp, and on their last day, at that? She may have been the next person down on the organizational chart, but I don’t think the agency gave a damn who she was or what title she held, because it wasn’t her decision to make. Nevertheless, I just nodded and did as she asked because, again, the agency pays me, not her. Temping can be hit or miss … it’s usually pretty thankless, but hey, I can at least be glad there are no strings attached. Usually companies that go to staffing agencies treat short-term project temps like crap and the agencies know it. They have to deal with a lot of incompetent and unappreciative managers at companies with ridiculous expectations and poor hiring practices, so it comes as no surprise that they tend to rule on the side of their employees when their clients become unreasonable. They have stood up for me on more than one such occasion, which is nice.

12

Sounds more like an inferiority complex to me. She sounds very insecure in her position there if she was threatened by a temp on his last day. Or maybe she was just jealous because you didn’t have to work there any more and she does.

(The temp agencies in Calgary are all about the clients, not the temps, which makes no sense at all, because if I don’t book hours, they don’t make squat.)

13

I was once fired from a cashier job at a national pet store chain by an assistant manager in training. She had no authority, no pull, no power, no say, and was, as far as the company was concerned, my peer. But she had a superiority complex because she got to wear a shiny flair button that read “ASSISTANT MANAGER [sub]in training[/sub]”.

I wasn’t let go for being stoned half the time. Or for my regular tardiness. Or for my short fuse with customers. Or for my destruction of company property during temper tantrums (hey, I was 17, gimme a break). It was because I changed the radio station. Twice. In direct defiance of her facism.

She was of the opinion that gangsta rap at more than a background type volume was perfectly acceptable during normal business hours. I disagreed.

I was tempted to drop the gloves and test her authority when she told me to go home, but two things immediately crossed my mind: 1) if I leave now, she has to work the entire store by herself and she’s barely capable of walking and chewing gum simultaneously, and 2) now’s my chance to see if that catnip-in-a-can stuff actually works.

It does. Every cat in the neighborhood was rolling around on her car within the hour.

14

featherlou,

From what I recall of psychology, an inferiority complex applies to someone who sees themself as undeserving of recognition in some way, either because they are not tall, skinny, attractive, wealthy, etc. enough to deserve something, so they in turn limit themselves accordingly and become self-defeating. The degree to which inferiority complexes occur varies considerably, but pretty much everyone’s got at least one. It’s basically how the psychology between people creates a pecking order … whoever has the most inferiority complexes ends up on the bottom. The ones who end up at the very top may have insecurities, but they don’t manifest as complexes which socially immobilize them as a result.

A superiority complex isn’t really a term used in psychological circles even though it mostly stems from the same sort of thinking … I think it developed more as slang to describe someone who thinks they’re top dog when they’re really at or near the bottom of a pecking order, so they feel the need to push around the few they see as peons beneath them to assert some form of control, when in reality they don’t really have any. I suppose it’s the same as an inferiority complex, but with an antogonistic/sociopathic reaction. A good example would be abusive parents … Colonel Fitz from American Beauty springs to mind! I would easily say people with superiority complexes often amount to less because they become mired in their own failures and end up taking it out on others.

I don’t know how threatened she was, but like I said originally, I think it was just because she was pissed that I was working two less hours than she was. :rolleyes:

15

I guess their position is that they’re saving their clients money by not sending them people.

16

Great. No posts for 1 1/2 hours and then I come, post, and instantly get crossed by 2 others. :dubious:

I guess their position is that they’re saving their clients money bynot sending them people.

This may be a manifestation of Canada Nice: such as when you’re on a hot bus to the ferry from Vancouver and the driver kindly offers to turn on the A/C, and the passengers repay his kindness by not asking him to. Hey, you never know, someone might be cold, and besides, why put him out?

17

Back when I was still meek and mild, I had a coworker pull a power trip on me, reprimanding me for how I was doing my job, which had become a very bad habit of hers. Since I had customers at the moment (which made it all the more inappropriate) I couldn’t address the issue right away. Which worked out in my benefit because I was able to cool off and think of exactly how I would address it. Finally we were both free of customers, or any onlookers. “Rose,” I said in my most cheerful voice, “I wanted to congratulate you.” She smiled a little hesitantly, then asked why. “On your promotion to Manager,” I said brightly. “Oh, no, I would never accept that position,” she protested. Still cheerful, I answered “Oh… I thought you must have been, since you feel like you can tell me how to do my job.”

That shut her up rather nicely, and she never did it again.

18

What do you expect when a company hires a girl? It would have made a lot more sense to hire a woman.

19

Yeah, this is what struck me. Just a little bit of resentment about being asked to report to a ‘girl’ perhaps?

No matter, a pretty obvious case of an assistant being given a task that’s really the boss’ responsibility and it going to her head. She doesn’t have any managerial skills, goes completely over the top and probably vents a few unrelated gripes while she’s about it. That “condescendingly insecure, fake smile with raised eyebrows and a nervous glare” was probably nothing to do with a dislike for you. More likely she realized she was in over her head, scared, but determined to plough on regardless.

She may have also been storing up a grudge where you, a mere temp, had inadvertently intruded on what she saw as her job.

I don’t suppose it matters what the rest at the company thinks now, but I’d hope that they maybe have some reservations about her taking it on herself to fire you and some suspicions that the problems lay with her (or her relationship with her boss) rather than you.

20

Any female that acts like that ain’t a woman yet.