So use some other law or regulation these idiots would have heard but not really know anything about. If the company has anything to do with energy, health care, financial services, food, makes anything vaguely usable by the police or military, or has any sort of regulatory oversight, you can easily sell it that the nature of the company makes this crime fall under “special circumstances”.
Basically the “correct” way you are supposed to deal with this issue is that you as a manager are now obligated to inform HR with the facts as you know them. Because if something happens and you knew about it, it could come back on you. This way, you have covered your ass.
But the fact is, you don’t know who is making shit up and quite frankly you don’t need to deal with it.
Sorry, I think this is terrible advice.
From the OP, this has not affected the job performance of either of them. For all we know, Jane knows nothing about these suspicious calls. I see no reason at all to escalate the situation by staging a confrontation.
Jane has done nothing so far. Mary has gone to a trusted person with what she considers disturbing news. For this someone should get fired? And what documentation do you propose to make up to justify a firing? I assume that their performance, as reflected in the past performance reviews, has been adequate. Many companies have explicit ways of dealing with performance issues (not that there are nay here.) If a manager tried to fire someone based on what we see here, especially without HR input. she should be the one who got fired, because the lawsuit would be arriving in the next mail.
I’m with the injured third party theory also. Anyone actually caring about this would call the police, not a co-worker, but the police frown on false reports. I’d tell this to Mary, and thank her for bringing it to my attention, but that you’ll just be monitoring the situation. I’d document it, so the documentation will be there before something happens, but not send it to HR for fear of over-reacting. I’d also ask Jane, at a regular meeting, how things are going to give her the opportunity to bring up any issues. But I would not confront her. Her reaction of “what the hell?” can be expected whether of not she was planning to do anything.
Either go to H/R and let them handle it or start writing both Jane and Mary up and be shed of them. I hate to sound like this, but there are thousands of qualified people out of work, who will do the job better and probably for less.
You shouldn’t have to stress yourself out over employees in a time where unemployment is so high.
So you’re suggesting that the manager start making shit up too. That ought to clear everything up.
Also, what some people don’t realize is that not every company has an HR department.
My store doesn’t. If Mary came running to me with this news, I’d have two choices, tell her to deal with it on her own (possibly suggest she call the police, not me), or call Jane into the room and confront her about it. There’s a good chance that when looked directly in the eye and told “Mary said your son’s girlfriend called and said…” in a very stern matter of fact voice, she’ll back down and say something in a quiet voice and that’s when I step back in and say “That needs to stop, if I hear about it again, you’re done working hear”
Of course if it doesn’t play out that way have to deal with it as you figure it out. Your best case scenario is that it’s originating from Jane’s side and hopefully at the very least Jane will have an idea as to who it is so you can tell her it needs to stop.
If it’s Mary’s faking these calls, you’ll have bigger problems to deal with.
Making crap up about regulatory agencies or the police watching, that just causes more problems.
Part of being a professional is keeping personal issues out of the workplace as much as possible. Firing someone for fear that an issue will affect her work when it hasn’t yet seems kind of extreme to me.
Big companies have specific actions that can lead to immediate firing, like hitting someone at work or bringing drugs into the workplace. I doubt that one employee getting a call about potential behavior is ever one of them.
Foxy40, does your company have an Employee Manual? That might be useful.
Mary is not making this story up even though, yes, she would love to get Jane fired. The caller went thru the operator and the incident caused quite the stir. (I was out of the office at the time). Some of the employees were listening to the exchange from the office door. Talk about drama.
I agree with Joey that the reality is, if Jane goes, the drama goes and the scale is starting to tilt towards her being more trouble than she is worth. Unfair, maybe but it is her people that are causing the drama.
Why IS Jane telling her family that Mary is going away? I will admit I don’t entire disbelieve Jane has spouted out threats in anger about Mary. However, I do think the GF is stirring shit to make Jane’s life hell.
Oh, and we are a small company w/o an HR department. Technically, that would be me.
IIRC - and things haven’t changed - this is a sole proprietorship owned by Foxy. So she probably IS HR and probably does have authority to fire either of these ladies.
I wouldn’t fire anyone - or even formally reprimand them - not at this time - Jane is a hard worker she’s had no problems with since she said “please show up on time” who - unless she is making the phone calls herself, has done nothing wrong at work. And Mary, while prone to gossip and drama, and not as good a worker as Jane, seems to be a long time employee.
I might, as I said above, talk to Jane about someone trying to ruin her reputation at work. And I might talk to Mary suggesting that if she feels this is a serious threat, she should contact the police, but that it is also possible someone is taking advantage of her gullibility to get to Jane.
Oh, I see. The way you deal with someone from the outside slandering one of your employees is fire the employee for something out of her control, and thus helping the truly psycho person succeed?
With all due respect, you need to hire an HR consultant at the very least.
True, however, her personal issues are now affecting MY office staff and that can’t happen. It doesn’t matter if it is affecting her work, it is affecting other people’s including mine. I have better things to deal with. I have a meeting with them in 40 minutes so any other advice would be appreciated.
I don’t know what you could even write the women up for. The OP ignored the warnings about Jane’s alleged stealing and drug use because there was no evidence. No tire-slashing/vandalism has occured, so there’s nothing to act on there. Right now you’ve got one woman who sometimes shows up late and takes long smoke breaks (and has been warned already about it), and one gossipy woman who sounds kind of lazy. We don’t have all the information the OP has, and the OP doesn’t have all the information that’s out there. Only knowing what we know from that first post, I think Mary’s a nutbar who’s trying to frame Jane for… something. But there’s no way to prove that. I imagine someone will get caught in a lie sooner or later, or else the police will end up involved.
(bolded mine) I don’t know, just because someone goes through the operator doesn’t mean they are actually who they say they are. I don’t think there is enough evidence from what you’ve posted to prove that any of these calls are actually connected to Jane. If Mary really feels unsafe, she should go to the police. I’m inclined to think she’s the drama hound here, not Jane.
Don’t fool yourself. If Mary is prone to gossip and drama - only THIS drama will go away if you were to fire Jane. You hire someone else, and Mary will find more drama somewhere else. Or worse, you replace Jane with someone who likes drama and gossip as much as Mary and suddenly find your office has turned into Peyton Place.
ETA: I used to work with a drama queen - Debbie (that was her real name). And it really didn’t matter who else was in or out of the office, Debbie could always make drama. The office dynamics changed a lot for the two years Debbie worked there (it was a high turnover sort of place), but the office dynamics remained challenging for the office manager until Debbie left - not all those other people who Debbie had problems with.
Then I’ll repeat my comments to Joey. If you fire Jane, you are rewarding her enemy. Do you really want to do that? If the GF were living under her roof, and if she had some control over her, that might be one thing. Jane to GF: If you call one more time, I’ll get fired. GF: Where’s the phone?
If everyone heard this, have you spoken to Jane about it? Have you asked her if you can help? Has she yelled at anyone? Acted unprofessionally?
If you fire her, do you know you are doing it in a way that will keep her from suing you? Even if she’d lose, you might not want the legal bills.
Why on earth would you consider firing Jane over what amounts to triple hearsay? She hasn’t done anything wrong, and as far as I can tell, has no idea at this point that anything untoward is going on. Seriously, if you were to fire her for this, she’d have a very good claim for wrongful dismissal against your company (depending on your jurisdiction). And how does Mary expect you to “handle this”? Just because they’re both employees doesn’t make this a workplace issue.
See to me it sounds like Mary is the one that is causing drama because she is the one took the call, and as you said let it turn into a 20 minute exchange. Even if it really was the brother’s girlfriend or whoever. Outside of that you have 2 anonymous phone calls that, previous to this, you were fine with ignoring.
These are your staff, obviously, but from how it reads here my guess would be that if you got rid of Jane then Mary will have the same conflict with whoever is the next top-performer in the office. Might be worse because that will be the newbie who is supposed to know their place and now show up Mary.
Having dealt with a mentally ill former client who decided to start calling my employer and “warning” them about me, I’d say either Mary or the girlfriend (if she even exists) is either a shit-stirrer, mentally ill or both.
The tip-off is that Mary wants me to call in Jane and threaten her. Mary wouldn’t be salivating over this if she weren’t somehow invested in it.
Ask Jane what the situation is, and if there is anything you can do to help. Thank Mary for reporting the call, and tell here you’ll handle it. Everyone else should get to work.
I worked someplace where a woman employee had a sex change operation and turned into a man. The managers announced that he/she would be using the mens room, and anyone having an issue should let them know privately. That was less drama than this, but then we were all engineers.
You say the truly psycho person succeeded, I say the drama and bullshit is out of my hair, I really don’t care what happens to them after that. Yes, it sucks that someone from the outside managed to get you fired, but why should it be my problem? Look at it this way. Let’s say I was calling your work every day accusing you of all these things (assuming we knew each other and I had some sort of motive). What would you expect your boss to do? At some point they’re going to start writing you up (or whatever they do at your place). If it’s a big place, you might not lose your job, but it’s going to cause problems. If it’s a little mom and pop place with 15 employees, you’ll probably be out on your ass fairly quickly. They know full well they can replace you quickly enough with someone that won’t drag their problems into work.
I should probably mention that we have between 10 and 20 employees. Of them about 5 or so are full time and have been here for a long time. The rest are mainly high school kids. So my experience may be different. Also, I won’t be hiring an HR firm, most places my size don’t have one. We have enough expenses as is.
You have to understand, when I read the OP, in my mind it’s playing out between a couple of high school girls, and yes, they’d both be gone.
If this happened with one of our long time employees it would be different since we tend to consider them like family and are actually pretty protective of them.
Mary is the biggest pain in the ass but she didn’t make it up. I’ve worked with her for over ten years and know her pretty well. She is a woman in her late 60s that is genuinely shaken up over this and does fear her property may be in danger. Honestly, I really think Jane did make some stupid statements in front of the wrong person when pissed about Mary’s BS.
