Most difficult/uncomfortable management moments

In My Humble Opinion
21

:eek: I have this vision of the guy pawing through the lost and found box: “Let’s see . . . mitten, mitten, keychain, coffee mug – HAS ANYONE SEEN MY ARTIFICIAL VAGINA?”

I never liked firing people and I’m glad I’m not in a position to have to do it anymore. But I’m also not sympathetic enough for HR work. Frankly, I don’t care if your dog/grandma/postman died, that you’ve been depressed, that you’re having financial difficulties, that your marriage is in trouble: I want you to come to work on time and do your job. If you don’t, then you are making your problems my problems, and that pisses me off. It means I have to have uncomfortable conversations with you, and that pisses me off too. And we both know you’re bullshitting me, which pisses me off more, and that you’re not going to shape up anyway, which pisses me off even more. Don’t get me wrong: The genuine problems of good staff I had both time and sympathy for; but the FLMA abusers, half-ass workers, and liars would ruin my day.

I thought I had left that all behind me, but now I’m doing teaching and training and I get to hear the same shit from students.

22

My boss was fired and the others in my department helped her clean out her office and carry stuff out to her car. She was very professional about the whole thing, but it made things extremely awkward.

23

Did she have enough sick time to cover it? If so, do you need to have a discussion when some people have symptoms bad enough that they have to stay home?

24

I knew I would be really, really sorry.

25

I had hired a new secretary once (let’s call her “Amy”), and a group of us were talking at an after-work social hour. Amy was probably about 40, and had held a number of different jobs. She commented about her last two bosses being female, and someone asked her whether she preferred working for men or women. Obviously, my ears perked up (I’m male).

She said, “I much prefer working for men. With a woman, I can’t get away with stuff. With a man, I just say, ‘Can I have the day off? I have female trouble.’ It works every time.”

I walked up behind her and said, “Not any more.”

snicker

The reason I put “back home in India” in quotes is that I didn’t buy it for a moment. I used to live in a town where the Indian/Pakistani population was very high. I love Indian food, and had quite a few Indian friends and acquaintances. None of them had BO problems.

Be very careful about tailoring the interview to the candidate instead of the position. What you’re trying to determine in the interview is whether this is the right person for the job. You should already know things like work history from the résumé and/or job application. Tailoring the interview to the candidate can make it harder to compare candidates, and can end up being unfair to the others.

Unfortunately, most interviewers develop a first impression within the first minute or so of the interview, and the rest of the interview is simply spent justifying the snap decision. Try to avoid that trap.

I don’t want to sidetrack here talking about interviewing tips, tricks, and techniques, but if you start a thread about it, post a link here and I’ll respond in the new thread.

26

Thanks for the reassurance. I was something like :eek: :eek: :eek: when I read that!

27

Having to fire someone that was a great worker when he was there, but had become very unreliable in his attendance. We gave him every chance we could (more than HR wanted us to!), even making sure he had the Employee Assistance Line number in case there were personal issues that were causing the problem. He insisted he had no issues, but didn’t fix the problem. So I had to let him go. That was hard. At least he didn’t cry like the one guy my boss fired before I became Supervisor.

28

I do apologize, Anaamika. I didn’t go into a lengthy explanation because I didn’t want the OP to be overwhelmingly long, but I should have made it clearer that it was his excuse, not anything I actually believe about India or its culture.

29

Like others, I had to fire somebody once.

It wasn’t for something she was doing, either; it would have been a lot easier if she were stealing or looking at porn or coming in late or some other transgression. Rather, it was for what she wasn’t doing, which was trolling the office for additional work.

This was a start-up dot-com. We had about 15-20 hours of work per week for a particular function, but it was erratic and unpredictable and couldn’t be condensed into a part-time position. So either the work didn’t get done, or we hired someone full time and made sure they understood they’d be responsible for managing their own workload. We chose the latter, and we specifically interviewed people with “self-starter” in mind. There was plenty of random piecework floating around the office; you just had to go find it. I would not be micro-managing this person; I would provide general guidance and answer questions as necessary but I would not be generating a daily task list. The ideal person would handle their core duties and then run around familiarizing him/herself with how everything worked and soliciting additional tasks.

The woman we hired seemed like a good fit. Young, good energy, asked lots of questions, seemed ambitious and career-oriented.

Then she sat at her desk whenever she didn’t have something specific to do and browsed the web, 20-30 hours a week.

I told her repeatedly: this isn’t cutting it. I don’t have time to find things for you to do every single day. I’m pulling 60 hours already. I’ll help you out today, re-introduce you to people, give you some tips on how to find those who need help, but I can’t do this every single day.

That day, she was great. Next day, back to the same habits.

The worst part of it was feeling like I’d failed somehow. I was utterly perplexed about how to train and motivate this person. It was like rolling a partly-deflated beach ball through tall grass; as long as you’re pushing, the ball moves, but the instant you take your hands off, it stops dead.

I’m only partly comforted by the fact that when I asked those above me for advice and assistance, that I didn’t know what else to do, they ultimately said, we don’t know what else you can do either; just not a good fit; if you decide to give up we’ll support your decision.

I decided to give up. I still felt like it was partly my fault. It sucked.

She cried. That sucked too.

30

I was a new manager with one of the Baby Bells. Fresh out of college, on a “fast track” program for management. One of the requirements was that the candidate be in a supervisory position.

There’s lots of little stories about my cluelessness, lack of respect from 40-year veterans to the new kid out of college and all that stuff. Nothing noteworthy.

One stands out, though. I had a subordinate in the latter stage of AIDS. This is 15 years ago when the treatment wasn’t so good and having AIDS was a death sentence, the only question was, “when”.

We weren’t supposed to know - we all suspected, though. The job is physical, there’s equipment to move, chances to get fingers pinched and cut. All of which made him the walking lepper of the floor. All my other subs were worried about catching it from him. The sexual/blood vector was well known and understood. Just talking to him wasn’t a big concern. They did, however, have reasonable concerns that a pinched finger would leave blood and tissue on the equipment to be contacted later by one of them.

The company policy says you can’t ask. You can’t react. We had requests from the other employees for sanitizing wipes for the equipment and common phone & computers. We filled these.

Eventually he left on disability, after bouncing in and out of the office for varying lengths of time as his symptoms got worse. Once on disablity, we got a “temp” to cover for him - knowing he wasn’t going to return.

It’s not fair but he always blamed the company and his coworkers for his illness. He said that, due to changing shifts (caused by his coworkers’ shift picks and his low seniority) and other disruptions in his life caused by the department and company, he never had time to have a steady relationship. Somehow, this “forced” him to have frequent, anonymous sex and that’s what gave him AIDS.

A big man, he died looking like a withered old man, half his body eaten away. Only my boss and I attended his memorial service. The other workers had been so alienated by his attitute and demeanor that they didn’t want to come.

31

Here’s another one that was pretty uncomfortable:

I should disclose that I was in management for over 15 years in call centers. How I lived my life in that special circle of hell for that long and came out with most of my sanity is still somewhat of a mystery.

One call center I managed was in Arkansas, and was the bastard child of the company. Our paychecks were not shipped to us Fedex, or even UPS, they were sent by some courier service out of San Antonio TX (where corporate ofc was located) and flown over in a puddle jumper cargo plane.

Even though we could not track the packages, we never had any problems with the paychecks showing up late, or not showing up at all.

Until one week.

The paychecks didn’t show up on Thursday like they usually did. Hmmm, maybe they’ll be here on Friday…I called corporate who assured me they were shipped and “should be there”. Rumors already started that “we’re not getting paid this week, they’re keeping our money”, etc.

By Saturday morning still no checks. I went to our little “Wings”-style airport to ask the counter agents to make calls to find out if anyone had seen the bag containing our payroll. Miraculously, they were located in Shreveport, LA and were headed to us on the next morning’s…SUNDAY’s…flight.

They arrived on the plane in a sopping wet box, every check was soaked clean through…I had them all spread out in my apartment on towels with fans running overnight to dry them out. REALLY!!!

Meanwhile I had a virtual riot at the center. When employees were told that the checks were delayed, but they were on their way and would be given out Sunday, I had one guy say “When I come back I’m bringing my gun and I WILL get my money!” Like if I had the freaking checks I would just keep them in my drawer and make it all up or something!! I called the police after he left and had them in the parking lot until all the checks were given out.

Amazingly, we only lost a few employees from this fiasco. Even more amazing, I continued managing that call center for another year and a half. :smack:

32

I interviewed a gentleman for an open financial manager position recently (the one I promoted out of to take this job, in fact.)

On paper, this guy was a dream - older man, looking to slow down before retirement (the job pays on the lower end of the spectrum, but doesn’t have as much responsibility as you might think, looking at the title.) I was clear with him on the phone was the job was about, what it entailed, etc. He was interested so I interviewed. I had one more candidate I’d already spoken to and liked, so it was him and the other guy.

Nice guy, good first impression. Running through my questions - “Why did you leave your last position, since I see you’ve been unemployed for the last nine months?”

(Expected answer entailed retirement and being bored, but nooooOooooo…)

“Well,” says he, “my ex-wife kept coming into work when we were divorcing. The owners of the business took out a AVO on her, since she was physcially and verbally abusive. Despite that, she kept coming back. I quit when I was ARRESTED FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE at work. It wasn’t my fault, though, cause she showed up while under the AVO.”

In my head I’m going…ok, gonna wrap this up soon…employers had to take out a restraining order, WTF?..and I did, but I made a rookie mistake, telling him that I had one other candidate under consideration, and I’d make a decision and call him back in a day or two with the results.

Before leaving, he assured me that he knew he’d gotten the job, and could I show him around. I reminded him that I hadn’t made a decision yet, and I’d let him know.

He left. He called EVERY HALF AN HOUR FOR THE NEXT FOUR HOURS to remind me of things we’d discussed, to add to the discussion, and to ask me when he could start. Oooooookay. Creey McCreeperton is not getting hired by ME, that’s for sure.

So the next day when he started his half-hourly phone calls again, I told him thanks but no thanks and he began to lecture me on how I’d made a big mistake and his qualifications were stellar (they really were, skill wise) and etc. I gasped out "thankyouvermuchforyourtimesosorrymustgobestofluck"and hung up the phone like it was on fire, then told my receptionist to put him on my “Gleena doesn’t talk to salesmen and psychos” list.

The sad thing was, if he hadn’t been a nutter, I’d have hired him, his qualifications were perfect.

Cheers,
G

33

Crazy situation involving two separate companies…

Person A (manager) hires best friend B to entry-level position. Friend B surpasses A and becomes General Manager. Owner tells person B to fire his best friend (difficult position #1). Person B hires person C, then gets fired himself. Person C ends up transferring to the same company that A is now working and becomes a General Manager, hiring back person B.

So at two separate companies, people were subordinates of coworkers they themselves hired.

34

Does anyone else have “Werewolves of London” going through their head now?

35

I wrote that, and didn’t till you mentioned it. But now I do. Thanks. Thanks heaps. :wink:

Cheers,
G

36

No problem.

Now I gotta go get a big dish of beef chow-mein.

37

'mika, someone tried to give similar crap about being late to work and “back home in Mexico” to an American manager who’d been Sales Manager Latin America (living in Mexico) for two years. She told him the other one has bells on it - in Mexican Spanish of course.

People like that make my feet itch and I’m not even good at kicking.

38

I hope you were able to fire that guy.

39

I worked in call center management as well. I fired an incredible number of people – generally, though, not face to face, it was through a temp agency, or after they just stopped showing up altogether.

There were a few that spring to mind.

  • When I was new to management, I had one employee, G, who was a single mom and very poor. She had a zillion excuses for her bad attendance, lateness (including from breaks when she was already on-site), and poor performance. Finally, we caught her and about 6 other people in some scheme to hang up on others (they all did it so no one person would look bad…er, that doesn’t really work, we still notice all the hangups). Basically a call would ring through and they would just hang up. She was the only one who apologized for what she did, and cried and wept for her job. She swore up and down she would never, ever do it again, and she would shape everything up.

A week later I checked the logs. The very logs we had shown her the week before. She was still releasing calls. A lot of them.

We fired her. All the while she was weeping that she couldn’t support her family, couldn’t we give her one more chance, etc. I was so angry at her I could barely look at her in the face.

  • There was one guy who stank. Thankfully not mine. He kept getting “warned” until finally he was fired for something unrelated because nobody would actually fire him for the stink.

  • We had one guy who brought stuff in a backpack and told other people that he was having a garage sale. He would sit at his desk and try to hawk items to passersby. He also said “there are some customers I wish I could just take to with a baseball bat”. That discussion with my manager was uncomfortable to say the least, since I had to justify why I fired him and why it couldn’t be fixed. Ummm…

  • There was one person who really broke my heart. She was my all-star employee and I talked to her everyday. She was so sweet and about 19 years old. She was tiny and very soft-spoken. She was having a really rough time with a boyfriend. Then, she showed up with bruises one day and came to my desk and started crying. Her boyfriend was beating her and she didn’t know what to do. I tried to encourage her to go to a shelter but she wouldn’t go.

A few days after that she didn’t show up for a shift. I was terrified. She never just didn’t call. I started calling relatives. They didn’t know where she was. The next day I pored through her employee file calling like every number. She was living with him at a new address, her phone was disconnected, I didn’t know where she was to call the police. I was convinced she was dead or something.

Finally after weeks of me repeatedly calling relatives – whom I couldn’t discuss her personal life with, because of confidentiality - she finally called me and said she moved with said scumbag to Colorado. Just like that. I asked her why she didn’t call and at least leave a message, and she didn’t have an answer. After a brief call I never heard from her again.

There are more, lots more… yikes, what day there didn’t I have an uncomfortable management moment.

40

You reminded me of another story.

I was having a problem getting my techs to wear safety equipment. Mostly, it was just safety glasses, but people who worked on a few of the other machines needed rubber gloves and oxygen masks. Finally, I laid down a firm rule. I catch you without the required safety gear for your job, and you’re fired.

Then one afternoon a supervisor came running to me. One of the guys had been unsoldering some components without safety glasses. A wire had popped loose and flung a ball of molten solder in his eye. When I got there, he was at the eyewash station. It turned out the solder had just barely missed the eye. It was a bit of flux that was hurting him. We got it washed out, and then I sent him to the doctor with instructions to come back the next day and clean out his locker. The timing sucked, but I had to do it.

What’s an AVO?