Most difficult/uncomfortable management moments

In My Humble Opinion
1

Rather than hijack this thread, I figured I’d start a new one for this.

For those of you who have had the dubious pleasure of managing other people, what was the most difficult or uncomfortable thing you ever had to do?

There are several for me. I’ll start with a couple of them and let some of you pitch in. Both of these took place at a semiconductor company in the 1980s.

First was the one the aforementioned thread brought to mind. Several employees came to me to report that a coworker of theirs stank. Seriously stank. They all worked in the lab, and nobody wanted to sit near him. I had to have a very uncomfortable conversation with him to explain standards of hygiene. He claimed that nobody “back home in India” showered more than once a month. I told him that it didn’t really matter: it’s simply not acceptable to show up to work smelling as bad as he did.

Second was a discussion with a woman about dress codes. As the weather warmed up in the summer, she wore less and less, and I started getting comments from other employees. Finally, I walked into a common area where she stood backlit by a window, wearing a sun dress with no underwear. Being male (and being concerned about propriety at work), I was uncomfortable having to explain to an otherwise intelligent 28-year-old woman why her clothing wasn’t appropriate in a professional work environment.

Okay. Your turn.

2

I was acting head nurse in LA. I had a nurse who was of unknown heritage. She spoke several languages. When asked where she was from, she had different answers on different days. My first meeting with her, was on my first day there. My tour guide was a male nurse. We went into the nurse’s lounge, just as she dropped a grayish-white nylon uniform over her naked form. This was not a locker room, but the place we had shift report.

I had to document her behavior for several weeks before I could actually consider firing her. The final straw was when she threw a metal bedpan at me.
I invited her into my office, along with my boss and an HR rep. I told her that a physical attack meant an immediate firing.
I thought for sure I was DRT (dead right there) but she simply got this innocent look and completely denied the whole incident. She began to cry, asking why I hated her so much that I’d lie about her.
I won.

3

As a middle manager, I was usually spared the kinds of rerimands that might lead to lawyers being called, but I did have to give the final warning to an employee whose chronic lateness was disrupting everything. She was a hard worker, talented, eager to please, but she simply showed up late – not 5 or 10 minutes, but often a half hour or more. She’d be warned, straighten up for a couple of weeks, and then slip back into being late. She finally showed up 1 1/4 hours late on a day she was supposed to open up. The boss fired her on the spot.

I also had to wrestle with an employee telling me in confidence that she felt she was being sexually harassed by one of our clients. I started out determined to respect her wish that I keep it quiet, but after listening to her I was convinced there was no way in the world I should keep things secret. I told my manager. One phone call later, the problem stopped.

4

This is gonna confuse a lot of people under a certain age, who I am convinced have absolutely no idea what “appropriate” means in this context. Soon-to-be-ex-Mrs. ToKnow had to explain to an intern of hers once that flip-flops are not appropriate work footwear and was met with utter astonishment.

5

Here’s another of mine to keep things going. I had an employee who developed a serious alcohol problem (and possibly cocaine, but I’m not sure). He was an extremely good programmer. Reasonably fast, and his code was clean, solid, reliable, and testable.

I don’t care what you do on your own time, as long as it doesn’t interfere with your work, or cause the company grief. I could deal with him coming in late to work, because he didn’t have to meet customers, and he usually stayed late. But when he started taking long lunches and coming back sloshed, I had a talk with him about it. I recommended AA, arranged for the company to pay for it, and found a volunteer to drive him to the meetings.

It worked for a couple of weeks, and started getting worse. I told him I didn’t ever want him to show up drunk at work again. Just two days after that, he left for lunch at noon and called me at four to say he probably shouldn’t come back to work. I told him I expected to see him in my office at 9:00 am the next morning.

At this point, it’s getting clear what I have to do. The next morning, he walked in and said “Can I ask you a question before we start?” I nodded, and he said, “As fucked up as I am, why has it taken you this long to fire me?” Then he started to cry.

It was one of the most miserable moments I’ve ever spent. I hate firing people anyway, and this was just awful.

6

I was Day Shift Supervisor on a Security post.

One of our “people” (and I use that term loosely) was a 400 pound slob who would walk in dragging his uniform on the ground and who was rude, obnoxious and didn’t care who you were or what anyone else thought about anything.

Before coming to our post, he’d been removed from his previous post for tearing a Semplex panel off the wall because the alarm annoyed him. $7k in damage. Did they fire him? Nope, just reassigned him to our post. Lucky us.

Shortly before I became a supervisor, he’d been “fired” for showing up to work blind stinking drunk.

Several months later, he shows up for work again. I was astonished. Turns out that he’d agreed to go to rehab, so they hadn’t actually fired him after all.

The first day back he brags to me (the Supervisor) about how drunk he’d gotten the night before.

The second day back he brags about how much marijuana he’d smoked the night before.

The man had no indoor voice and was as racist and foul mouthed as they came. He’d show up nearly an hour before his shift (2nd, thankfully not mine), sit in the office and rant at the top of his voice. Racial slurs I hadn’t heard since I was a child in LA, very profane language. The office people were constantly on my case about disciplining the guy.

Oh, but he was a personal friend of the Manager and the Client Boss. They protected him and refused to consider doing anything about his behavior. “He’s a good guy, lay off” is what I got. (Personally, I figured maybe he was their drug connection.)

There wasn’t a good resolution to this while I worked there. The Manager (“Site Supervisor”) was a royally corrupt piece of shit.

The Karmic Justice came later.

Six months after leaving, I met a guy who was a Field Supervisor for the company in question. I asked about the previous job site. When I asked about the Site Supervisor, his response is so wonderful that it’s burned into my brain.

"He got Shitcanned."

I later saw him working for a furniture moving company. He’d been planning to retire soon when I’d known him, but I guess that didn’t work out. Surely moving furniture wasn’t a good health move for him.

About three months after that, I saw BigFatRacistSlob walking out of the County Jail, looking a bit cleaner than I’d ever seen him. Guessing that he’d just been released from doing a little time.

7

Pictures man, pictures!

On a related but not specifically on-topic note;

Back in the early 90’s I worked for a major music retailer in their corporate offices. Our IT department was right next to an Advertising area.

There was a woman there who was maybe 6’6" and extremely well built. All I can think of regarding her is the old SNL Tarzan, Tonto and Frankenstein bit where they’re looking at a Playboy magazine, note that the playmate is tall and Tarzan says “Tarzan live on her like mountain!” She was just…WOW. Very long legs meant that her ass was damn near eye level.

In the summer, she’d wear very tight short shorts and a bra-less halter top. :eek:

Then one day she had the nerve to complain to management about how all those geeky programming guys were constantly staring at her.

Didn’t quite work out the way she wanted. They gave her a warning about her dress habits.

8

Hi,
Been a manager at a vet hospital for over 10 years now- firings have gotten easier for the most part and more often than not, a pleasure. I’m not a hard-ass but I do have a pretty strong sense of responsibility and ethics so I don’t have any problem letting go the lazy, the dishonest, the entitled… etc.

However, I did have a problem with one firing last year. I interviewed a lady in her mid-forties that I had worked with about 5 years previously at another hospital for a kennel position. It had been awhile, but I remembered her as a good worker, reliable and with a good attitude. She seemed a little heavier and “slower” mentally than I remembered, and she admitted to some medical issues but assured me that they were resolved and she was up to the job. I did have some reservations, but I felt sympathetic to anyone in her position- middle aged and only qualified to do kennel work. Plus, we were a bit short on help and my owners were breathing down my neck about getting someone in there.

She worked for us for about two months, the first few weeks were slow and she seemed up to the task at first. But the summer boarding started to pick up and we had a full kennel most of the time and she couldn’t keep up. Sweat poured down her face most of the time and she often looked pale and shaky. She took one day off for back pain, and came back and seemed ok for a week or so.

We had a (not the brightest) client who brought three cats in for boarding but only two carriers. When they came to pick up these cats, the receptionist intercomed to this employee to bring the cats up. After about 15minutes (it usually takes 5), I went to investigate what was happening. This employee was in the cat room, in tears, because the two cats were trying to kill her when she tried to put them in the same carrier. It didn’t occur to her to A.) ask for help or B.) get another carrier (we have lots!!) to loan to the client. I was more disturbed by how mentally shaken she was than anything else.

A few days after that, she passed out at work (again, sweating profusely). I sent her home (she didn’t want to go) and told her to get a doctor’s release to come back. She did get a release but the next week, passed out again at work.

She had still not completed the probation period and my owners were adament that she posed a liability risk to us and that the job was a health risk to her. I think we had no choice but to let her go, but it didn’t make it any easier. She was devastated- this was literally all that she knew how to do (she had 15 years experience in kennel work) . I couldn’t imagine being in her position and hope I never will be. I just felt like a total jerk …both for firing and for hiring her and probably setting her up for failure in the first place.

9

I had an employee who’d decided to take a break by masturbating in the men’s room. We found this out because he forgot to pack up his parephenalia when he was done and it was found by other people. Not surprisingly, this became a topic of conversation and there were many jokes being made at his expense.

My personal inclination would have been to ignore this situation as much as possible beyond telling people to knock it off and move on. But as this guy’s boss, I was the one who had to discuss our workplace’s sexual harassment policy with him and tell him what options were available if he felt that he was working in a sexually hostile atmosphere.

10

I’m really, really sorry to be asking this, but what constitutes masturbatory paraphernalia for a guy, exactly?

11

More stories, please! I’m not a boss, and I don’t want to be a boss, thank you very much. It’s much easier to be the grumbler than the grumblee. (And I’d hate to have to fire someone.) But reading anecdotes like this is good for a little perspective on how difficult it can be to manage people, and you’re giving me a bit of sympathy for my bosses. :slight_smile:

12

Never in a million years when I became a manager did I ever think I’d have to do the “Stink Talk”, as we called it. But I have done it more than once, I’m sorry to say.

The worst was a lady who basically lived in her car. She was a large woman and always looked nice, wore dresses, her hair was always done but she REEKED of fermented Fritos. It was horrible!

I had to call her into my office and she knew right away why she was in there. I tried really hard not to gag but did a couple times while I was talking to her. She had transferred to my call center from another within the same company and it turned out that they had written her up for being stinky 3 TIMES!!!. My managers would not let me fire her for stinking until she had been written up by me at least 3 times. I only got to 2 before she quit.

Having to do the “Stink Talk” is one of the reasons I do not ever want to have to manage people again. Ever.

13

Like InvisibleWombat, mine revolves around BO.

As a young male, managing a department of 20 women, most of them older than me, was a challenge. Several of them came to me with a problem one day - Mrs. X stank. I had never spent much time near her work space. She had been there for several years and was exceptionally proficient in her work. After checking out the situation unobtrusively and just about burning out the hair in my nostrils I had to agree.

Asked Mrs. X to come into my office. Explained that her BO was a problem, that her performance was first class but that she had to solve the problem. She was calm and thanked me for taking the time to tell her what everyone had been whispering about. She left for lunch and never came back!

And I don’t even want to remember all the discussions I had to have with the women who missed work regularly every 28 days! That was miserable.

14

I’ve never been a manager, but I recall when I worked at McDonald’s there was one lady no one wanted to work with closely because of her poor hygiene. Every once in a while, you’d overhear the managers arguing over who was going to talk to her “this time”.

I don’t have any sense of smell and she was a nice enough lady, so I didn’t mind her much…except on the days the dirt was visible. Yikes. Needless to say, they kept this lady in the grill area.

15

Can I just defend my country? Yes, we certainly do bathe much more often! In fact, if you have your own home and shower, it’s expected daily. You may only wash your hair once a week, but people do that here, too.

Disgusting, that guy was, and even more disgusting that he should try to pull an excuse like that.

As to the question, I’m no manager, but I have been present when a manager of mine bawled out a fellow employee. Wrong, wrong, wrong - that should be a PRIVATE matter.

16

They actually showed me a film on how to handle that specific situation in a management training class!

17

I was working at a startup 4 years ago when the expected next round of funding fell through, and I had to layoff 3 people. The guy who I had just hired a few months back and who had sold his home to move closer to work was tough. The guy whose wife was 8.5 months pregnant was worse.

18

Magazines and an artificial vagina.

19

I’ve never had to do anything I’d consider difficult, but I soon will have to do something I feel uncomfortable about…

Interviewing for an open position.

I’ve never interviewed a person in my life… I’m bad enough when I’m the interviewee…
Does it make the interviewee more or less nervous if the person doing the interviewing is nervous themselves.
I’m sure I’ll be fine though. I basically know what qualities I want from the candidate. I know I’ll be able to prepare a specific interview geared towards the specific candidate beforehand. And I’m pretty sure I will be able to end the interview in a comfortable way.

But all that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not looking forward to it.

20

I had to have the stink talk with an employee too. It was very hard - even worse she asked what she could do about it as she didn’t have money to clean her uniform everyday.

I suggested smoking only outside (to air the clothes out a little) and washing underwear in the sink.

I didn’t know what else to say.