I have to throw this out there - it’s been impossible for me to read this thread and not picture Mary and Jane as Kathy with a K and Cathy with a C. (video, I’m going to go ahead and say NSFW).
If I were in your shoes, I’d confront Jane, very matter of fact “Mary said she got a call from your son’s girlfriend and she said you were going to ________, what’s going on here, is there a problem?” and I’d say it just like that. Don’t ask her IF she knows about the call, ask her WHY the call was made. Basically, you need to accuse her so she can’t wiggle out of it or have time to think of an answer.
From there you can decide if your need to say “This needs to stop, if I hear about one more call like this, I’m going to let you go” or if you’re just going to let her go now. Also, you’ll need to decide if you’re going to bring up the other two calls while you’re talking to her. If you think she’s going to go and talk to the son’s GF about this, she might want to know about the other calls as well.
Update on meeting with Jane and Mary:
Jane has no doubt it is her son’s gf that called. She states the GF hates her and is trying to cause her trouble. She denies saying she plans to damage Mary’s car nor telling her that Mary is going away. Jane had no answer as to how she would know this if not for Jane talking about it. Jane said she has no intention or reason to damage Mary’s property. Mary is less than satisfied but at that point, I excused her from the meeting.
I explained to Jane that she needs to find a way to keep her personal life out of the office as the drama it is causing can not be tolerated even if it isn’t directly from her. She states she doesn’t know how to do this but will post on Facebook that she got fired??!! so GF will stop calling. I told her this person is harassing her even indirectly, maybe she should check with the police to see if something can be done like a restraining order to keep this person from calling her place of work. Jane states this would probably have to come from Mary and I think she is probably right but she will check.
I really am not sure what to do should this person call again. The operator and Mary has been instructed to direct any future calls to me.
I am not sure that there is much wisdom in telling Jane that her job is on the line because of the action of third parties. I think it invites litigation (even though it might not be the strongest case in the world), and moreover, seems to be counterproductive considering that she is your best employee. At any rate, I’ve never known “drama” in a workplace to be reduced by casually threatening termination.
I think you ought to consider this situation officially beyond your pay grade and escalate it to HR and/or your company’s general counsel.
Sounds like you handled it effectively. One thing that seems a little odd to me is if someone hated you to the point where you are not surprised that they tried to sabotage your career, why would you have any contact with them at all such that they would know you worked with a woman named Mary, who would likely make good use of incriminating information, etc.
I am the HR department and I run the company. Florida is a right to work state so anyone can be fired for any reason. I once had an ex employee denied unemployment because her ex husband showed up and made a scene in my office so I doubt she would have a case if she tried to sue. I really would like her to stay. However, as I said, I can’t have the drama and the lack of productivity that comes with it. It is one of those “but for” issues. But for her working here, my office wouldn’t be disrupted so therefore, she would be the one to go to solve the problem. Hopefully it won’t come to that. She is excellent at what she does. However, she needs to keep her personal life out of the work place and if she can’t do that, she will need to go.
EXACTLY. Thank you. It is odd to me that Jane claims she didn’t say anything to the GF and yet she knows so much. Mary even said she mentioned her make and model of car. Also the specific dates she was to be away. Jane is obviously lying and isn’t very good at it. I still contend she actually did say these thing in a moment of anger in front of the GF and doesn’t want to admit it. Oh, and she claims the GF hates her because she refused to loan them money to pay their rent. Seem like a family of wackos.
And why would you “friend” someone on Facebook that you hate and hates you?
SO much of this doesn’t add up. However, I just want it to go away. I don’t care if Mary and Jane dislike each other as long as they continue to do their jobs. Unfortunately, they share an office and I can’t see away around that.
Okay, so if some employee, let’s call her Sally, has a stalker - some guy she doesn’t even know - and he’s starts making prank calls to your business, you’ll fire Sally, the innocent stalking victim, because it’s “her people” making the calls or because it’s “her drama”?
You need to talk to an HR consultant. And either Mary or Jane or both should contact law enforcement. A call like that isn’t a “helpful warning” it is designed to cause fear and be threatening, and may run afoul of some kind of stalking laws.
ETA: Meh, on the heels of the post that appeared right above mine, sounds extra suspicious, and I agree, Jane sounds like she’s part of the loonie tunes. The freaky GF wouldn’t know the dates of Mary’s vacation without being told.
I’m not sure why, if you can’t have drama in the workplace, you’ve been tolerating Mary - who you said was a HUGE gossip in your first post - for all these years. It really seems to me that getting rid of Mary would be the better move - she’s the inferior employee, and she is gullible enough to believe this and not just hang up the phone, plus - she’s a gossip, so she is more likely to create new drama.
Congratulations on your promotion! It was only March of this year that you were talking about your coworker, after all!
But I agree, there’s a lot that isn’t adding up in this tale of woe and drama.
Yes. After being given an opportunity to remedy the situation with law enforcement I would have no choice. I am running a small business of less than 25 employees and although I sympathize, if someone has issues such as this and can’t control them, I would have no choice. Clearly, I can’t be expected to have the disruption with no end in site for one person. It isn’t fair to the other 24 who have a job to do and shouldn’t feel afraid and threatened.
But that’s not that hard to casually and accidentally drop in a family situation…“oh, that week won’t be good for me, Mary will be out of the office on vacation and I won’t be able to take the afternoon off.” Now girlfriend knows, and in such a way that Jane won’t even remember having told her.
I’ve not dealt with anything exactly like this but I’ve had a few individuals who have worked for me who have issues “along these lines.” The incident I remember most is one in which Employee A reported to me one Monday morning that they had casually seen Employee B out over the weekend and Employee B said something rude to them.
I dealt with that by telling Employee A and Employee B (in separate meetings) that we all need to get along and have a good working relationship with one another. I didn’t specifically address the issue of something said out in public over the weekend, because I don’t feel it is my place as the employer to say “don’t say something vaguely rude to someone outside of work on a non work day off work hours”, but I do feel employees are responsible for maintaining a good enough professional relationship with coworkers that their job performance is not hindered in any way.
In this specific case I’d be sympathetic to Jane, and I’ve known people who have had family members make their lives hell for them at work and I’m sympathetic to that up to a point. I’d probably be willing to deal with it a few times to keep Jane, but if it became an ongoing, unresolvable issue obviously getting rid of Jane is the only option. However, that is before you met with Jane in your office. When you met with Jane in your office and she stonewalled and said she didn’t even mention to anyone outside the office that Mary was going out of town on vacation that set off alarm bells. I’m fine with Jane coming home one day and saying something bad about Mary. Hell, I’ve opened emails at home about an employee and said, “I could kill that mother fucker” and I don’t feel that saying such a thing in private in the privacy of my own home is anyone’s business. However I am very concerned that Jane didn’t even cop to casually mentioning something about Mary or Mary going on vacation, and the question as to how the son’s girlfriend would know about it otherwise is a good one.
I’m fine with Jane’s personal life spilling into the office a little bit, as long as we can get it resolved. But I wouldn’t be fine with Jane lying to my face, I don’t know if that’s “immediate termination” but it would cause me to put Jane on a very short leash and any other incidents where I questioned how much I could trust her and she would be gone immediately.
No congratulations are in order. I have run my company since 1996. All the people I work with are “coworkers”. Why does that phrase seem odd to you? I am using the term employees right now as I have to handle an issue. If I was talking about a vacation they took, they would be coworkers.
High school students - firing is no big deal. Probably good for them. But it doesn’t apply here.
There are some solutions if someone was calling every day. First, block the number. Second, get whoever it was to go to the police and get a restraining order. If I understand this situation correctly, there was one call, so it is kind of hard to make them stop when they already have.
I even said to her that we have all gone home and vented and I wouldn’t hold that against her but she still claimed she hadn’t said a word.
Well I casually refer to employees as coworkers depending on context. I’m a partner in a real estate firm and despite being one of the owners and principal manager in the office itself I will still refer to some people in conversation to others as “a coworker said this” even though technically all of the individuals not part of the ownership group would not be considered my coworkers but my employees.
What if she went to law enforcement and nothing happened?
We had a similar case, actually, not in my group. A woman whose ex was stalking her got into trouble when he showed up and called the police instead of informing our security and her management. Management did not like the cops showing up without warning.
In any case, one thing you haven’t mentioned that seems appropriate is to say that you know there has been an issue, and that you expect everyone to act professionally - IOW, biddies, shut the hell up.
That was my thought, too. Though Jane does sound suspicious, if someone is being harassed, I don’t think it’s right to chalk this up to “personal problems.”
I’ll treat someone being stalked or a person having trouble from an abusive spouse they have separated from very differently than someone who I think is having general interpersonal problems with people of low moral and social character who are choosing to bring that argument into the work place. One I will be looking out to protect my employees and insure they are safe and that law enforcement is totally aware of the situation, the other I view as an employee’s personal problems with people outside of work impacting the entire business and that can’t go on indefinitely.
That’s why I would have some willingness to try and fix it, especially if Jane is a good employee. A little bit of aggravation will typically be less aggravation than hiring someone (all depends on the position, but even then not really, even menial jobs it can be hard to find a good employee to fill a spot), but after going through some reasonable procedures I don’t know what options I would be left with to end a disruption other than removal of the employee.