Thanks for the rest of it Diogenes, I know you didn’t owe me an explanation, but reading some of your posts I thought, “Diogenes wrote that?” It makes more sense now.
As to the calling the cops, there may be some legal issues there, as well as a zero tolerance policy. Many places will bust you for shoplifting if you’re caught, and I’ve met lot’s of people who got busted and reported to the police for the theft of a shirt from a clothing store. Barring that, I agree it was over the top.
Sure I did. I just didn’t whine like spoiled child about what I was entitled to when I got caught.
**Diogenes the Cynic **, well, then, it doesn’t SOUND like you were the type of employee we were talking about, just someone who was burned out. You did your job, you just didn’t go the “extra mile”. Whatever.
I think what the OP was talking about were people who deliberately acted like assholes.
Ah, and you would know how a great manager works I take it?
Thank you for your insightful suggestion. Unfortunately you’ve posted nothing in this thread that indicates you know shit all about the subject, and rather a lot that I find laughably ignorant or pompous. As such I have decided not to act upon your suggestions.
Please feel free to submit further gems of wisdom, as god knows I like a laugh on a monday morning.
Gary,
People of lesser ability are usually mystified and alarmed when they meet their superiors.
Many times, to protect their ego, they will react with hostility.
Just getting back to this discussion…
Aha andymurph64:
That doesn’t seem consistent with your policies.
Ignore the productivity issue.
He wasn’t ever specifically cautioned that stealing clients would led to instant termination.
By your standards of management-shouldn’t he receive a warning first?
After all, it was right before Christmas,his son was flying in to spend vacation with him and he was fixing to be evicted.
Shouldn’t we have given him another chance?
I see where you are going jlzania.
I answered your question thinking about the company at which I am employed. This company does specifically ban salespeople from stealing clients.
If they didn’t, I would still fire them. It may seem inconsistent but it is a matter of degree. The stealing of a ream of paper is small enough to permit a warning while stealing clients is a direct, large threat to the company.
I believe it is also smart. For the first 3 months, the net output of a new employee in my department is essentially negative. Six months and they are more of an asset than a liability. At about a year, they really start pulling their full weight. To throw away an employee and have to train another one is stressful and costs the company more than a trivial amount of money.
Now if someone in the department was attempting to steal clients that is another matter entirely.
I make it sound like a cold calculation and am getting away from ‘it is the right thing to do’ argument. Even if employees are a dime a dozen, minimal disruption and a bit of conservatism is in order, IMO
I think we’re reaching an understanding andymurph64.
I was (as I’m sure you realized) relating a situation that actually occurred at the small business that my husband and I own.
I wasn’t directly employed in the company at the time and he came home completely devestated by the fact that he had to fire the guy right before the holidays.
He sat down and cried.
Then he went in and canned his ass.
At your company, the cost of re-training an employee far outweighs the cost of a ream of paper-hence the attitude that, in this situation, the most expedeninet course of action is to put the proverbial fear of god in the offending employee.
In a retail situation however, if you have numerous employees all stealing trivial amounts, you go under very quickly.
It’s also a matter of degree there as well.
That’s the point that I suspect Stemba .
Jeez Louise, what is it with me these days?
I suffer from that dread internet disease-premature submission.
Please ignore the above post.
What I was trying to articulate was:
I think we’re reaching an understanding ** andymurph64**.
I was (as I’m sure you realized) relating a situation that actually occurred at the small business that my husband and I own.
I wasn’t directly employed in the company at the time and he came home completely devastated by the fact that he had to fire the guy right before the holidays.
He told me about it and he cried.
Then he went in and canned the jerk.
At your company, the cost of re-training an employee far outweighs the cost of a ream of paper-hence the attitude that, in this situation, the most expedient course of action is to put the proverbial fear of god in the offending employee.
In a retail situation however, if you have numerous employees all stealing trivial amounts, you go under very quickly.
It’s also a matter of degree there as well.
That’s the point that I suspect Stemba was getting at.
He didn’t fire the pharmacist to simply exert his authority.
He wasn’t gunning for the guy personally.
He had laid down the conditions of employment-all theft will result in instant dismissal.
He didn’t distinguish between a well-paid pharmacist and a stock clerk which makes his action even more equitable in my book.
He did what had to be done to return his store to profitably and he did it fairly.
Ah, another pearl of wisdom from our resident management guru, who also appears to be an anthropologist.
Let me try to be clear here. To recap: when faced with universal dismissal of your posts and claims, your entire defence has been to accuse other people of being poor managers, and claim superiority.
Dear chump, I don’t think you could claim superiority to mold. I honestly hope that your claims of management responsibility are as empty as the rest of your posts. Frankly employees have enough to worry about in this economic climate without having an incompetent like you for a manager.
I eagerly await your next announcement of superiority, great management experience, or whatever else you’d next like to try to hide behind. Good luck, and try to be creative. If you want to be really surprising, you might even try to reason or give evidence for something - it’d make a refreshing change from your current m.o. of baseless ranting and pontificating.
I agree with your cold, hard logic jlanzia.
However, I recoil from the ‘throw-away people’ attitude of retail. We ARE talking about people and, no matter how easily replaced, caution and conservatism should be the rule, IMO.
To show I can be cold, I wouldn’t have been devastated like your husband was. I would have canned him and not felt a degree of remorse. Stealing clients is a huge, huge threat.
However…since we are on personal experience stories here…
What happens if an employee is working for a client on the side? The service they are providing is not in direct competition to the company but it could be in the future. Think of it as more lower level tasks - tasks we would rather not do but would provide if the client insists. Assume the employee and client ‘found each other’ because they have contact on a regular basis through his employment at the company…
What do you think? What would you do?
I also recoil from the “throw away” attitude that permeates our society.
However, I extend it far beyond retail employees-which is why I have 4 dogs, 7 cats, 3 horses, and a mini-mule.
In the circumstance that you outlined,I don’t think I necessarily see a conflict of interest-unless, of course, employee’s have been informed that they are not allowed to contract their services to existing clients.
This was a BIG no-no at a company I used to work for. I was verbotten to solicit or accept outside work for a client. Because if there was any problem, it would come back on the company. Grounds for immediate dismissal, for the company’s protection.
Isn’t that really the crux of the matter,spooje?
Your company had a clear policy in place.
Unless I’m misreading the post andymurph64’s company doesn’t.
The point was that the employees weren’t ‘throw-aways’, the company had to do it to protect themselves.
I’m still waiting for a response from andymurph64 to my scenario from earlier. I used to work at a pizza shop, and we had one super-mega-ultra employee that worked there for about three years, but got canned on the spot when the manager caught him shooting up heroin in the bathroom.
Three years of work dedicated to this employer, and there’s no way he can use him as a reference when looking for a new job because of an illegal act commited while on the job. And there was never any personal “Don’t use drugs at work” warning given before the incident occurred. So tell me, andy, would you have done the same, or was this just another example of “heartless managers throwing away a human life in an unfair throw away retail society?”