Something smiler happened to a coworker not too long ago. Walked into work to find out that after 6 years with the company (an eternity in our industry) “work” was over. Almost nothing was left.
She asks what’s going on, “Yeah, sorry but we’re shutting down.” She starts sobbing and goes to leave, “Oh, but do you mind clocking in and helping us out with a few things first?” Sad thing was she was so hard up for money she did it.
OK, I’m not gay, I’m not male and I don’t live in Studio City, so Antinor01 and me are not the same person. We might be long-lost twins, though. In my case, I would have been fine if he’d really had more experience than me, but as soon as he came in it was evident he didn’t.
I would train whomever to the best of my ability and leave every procedure documented to the best of my ability and the extent the company allows for it (some companies documentation policies are anti-information). Same as when I leave because I got another job, or move to another position.
And some of those same companies are crying that people are buying Toyota vehicles because we should support American business… :smack:
This happened to me while I was working for a small mom-n-pop. We were also friends outside of work and our relationship had been slowly souring over the previous six months for other reasons AND I did their books, so I knew they were hemorrhaging money for real and honestly couldn’t afford me AND one of their clients/“friends” offered to do the job for minimum wage and to defer her pay for a few months while they caught up with other bills (it was a hobby job for her, her husband is filthy rich). I did my best to train her, but yeah, it was rather bitter. She was also a screw up and a flake, which didn’t help. I didn’t show her anything incorrectly or anything, but I had to bite my tongue a lot. Mostly, I was pissed at HER for so seriously underbidding a very complicated job. I couldn’t blame them for taking someone at half the pay when they really were seriously in debt and sinking fast.
Unfortunately, she lasted about four months before that blew up in everyone’s face in a deluge of drama and tears. They decided to stop hiring their friends after that, and hired someone off of Craig’s list. Last I heard, they had done a better job of maintaining professional boundaries and it was working much better for them.
I had a friend at a mainframe computer company who was told that her ‘position was eliminated’ and she would be let go in 2 weeks. She was about age 59-1/2, and about 4 months away from reaching 20 years with the company (which would have been a big jump for her pension vesting). She asked why she was the one being eliminated, when there were 6 people doing the same job, and she had the most seniority and best performance reviews of the six. She was told seniority didn’t enter into it, and no one would explain why she was the one chosen to eliminate.
Then a new young male was introduced, and she was told that she was to train him as her replacement! She asked why a replacement was needed, when the position was being eliminated. Was told that his was a new position, that did part of her job and part of other jobs. She asked when that new position had been posted, and why she and others had not been able to apply. Was told it required ‘specialized skills’. If he has such special skills, why do I have to train him? she asked. No answer.
She said to hell with this; I have more than 2 weeks vacation coming, I’m taking that starting on Monday, and walked out.
When she went for an appointment with an outplacement consultant provided by the company, she met some fellow ex-workers in the waiting room. Turned out all were female, close to age 60 or 65, all within a few months of pension vesting dates. (The company had scheduled all of them with the outplacement counselor on the same morning – not smart!) Well, they ended up having many more mornings together, as they held meetings with the lawyer they hired to file a class action lawsuit against the company for age & gender discrimination.
The same company tried to lay off one of their employees, who was a respected State Legislator, having served over a dozen terms. Despite a specific state law that prohibited companies from laying off an elected Legislator while they were in session. And they didn’t even notify him that he was being laid off!
After the session ended, he showed up for work as usual. He said some people looked at him rather funny, and they didn’t seem to want to assign him to projects. Finally, his 3rd day back, his boss took him aside, and told him that his position had been eliminated a month or so ago.
He sued too, and also won.
That company is no longer in business. Treating employees like this is probably part of the reason.
This situation happens a lot in software. The work gets out-sourced, local employees get RIFed, and they are assigned to train the new recruits before they leave. The incentive to train your replacement is the severence package; the implication is that the company can always terminate you and give you nothing. Usually the quality of the training is pretty lackluster. Partly because the RIFed employee is resentful; partly because their mind is elsewhere (stressed about losing their job and distracted looking for a new one). But I think the primary reason is that it is a bit pointless to ‘train’ someone on software. It is more a task of self-teaching.
My personal feeling is that once you RIF someone, you should let them leave immediately. If you want to do it nicely, then increase their severence by the amount you would have had them stick around. Having RIFed employees at work is bad for everyone: them, their peers, and their boss. Usually there is a lot of rumor and stress leading up to the RIF; it works best if there is a clear-cut transition.
Now I realize I rambled off-topic a bit. I was thinking back to a stint where I managed a group that was slowly being RIFed. Everyone was given six months notice and asked to train their replacements. It was a really miserable and unproductive time for everyone. I wish I had the confidence to push back on such an awful plan.
I had a variation of this happen to me. The department that I was teaching in fired all of us adjunct faculty, thinking that TAs could teach the classes instead and save the university a bunch of money. They had two major problems:
The TAs didn’t know how to teach. Part way into the quarter, I got a call, asking if I could come in and “mentor” the TAs. I said, “Do you mean teach them how to do the job that you fired me from?” Oh yeah, they wanted me to do this on a weekend, for free. I laughed in their face.
Payback: the TAs were contractually allowed to work only a set number of hours over the course of the quarter. Unfortunately, they reached that threshold in the eighth week of the ten week quarter. They were then told to stop teaching classes, grading papers, replying to e-mail from students, and holding office hours.
Yep. When my father was laid off, he was told he had to train the new folks half a country away. The incentive was that you would get your severence. A contract was signed and all that. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t… unless you were recently hired and a couple of months severence isn’t worth your sanity. But when you’ve done the grind for 25 years and you’re given the option of one full years worth of severence to stay the duration and train, or walk and get nothing, well what are you going to do?
My dad worked for a company for like 18 years. When it was sold, they brought in a bunch of new employees. My dad was to train all of them. He thought this was going to be a good change for him, since now he was not doing so much manual labor, and doing more supervising and training. Nope, the were planning to fire him the whole time. After about 3-4 weeks of training the newbies, they let him go.
Fuckers.
Walk and sue? Or train them very badly. 
Walk and sue, and maybe you’ll get something minus lawyer fees and headaches, or stay and train them badly and walk with a years pay and time to find work.
I was once in the position of training someone who I knew would take my job even though my bosses swore up and down that she wouldn’t. I posted out and my colleagues were liquidated after about six months.
I bluntly told my boss that a condemned man doesn’t tie his own noose. She ended up getting a few minutes of my time where I walked her through the training manual which I didn’t have a problem with. The manual was so old and only lightly based on reality that she would have learned more about the job reading a comic book.