Yeah, I know folk think I should leave this alone, but an e-mail was just circulated, asking for volunteers to pick up this employees work for the month of June. Just seems so odd, to have a employee present in the office, but not doing their assigned work, with no explanation given. Just to be clear, this employee is in a pretty high position, making well into 6 figures.
Saw her on Friday, chatting w/ someone else. So visible sign of impairment.
Since this situation is so unusual, I am even less inclined to ask the employee or mgmt what is going on. I’ll just be keeping my head down over here, doing the work that has been assigned to me. Hoping this keeps mgmt distracted from whatever I might be doing well or poorly!
Looking more and more like there is some kind of discipline/employment dispute taking place.
Employee is back in the office (seemingly MOST days) but our office mgmt. seems to have no idea of her comings and goings. Suggests that she is being directly supervised by regional. Also, even tho she is back in the office, it is not clear what work - if any - she is doing. They are still re-assigning her tasks with June and July due dates.
I am a member of a union, and am subject to professional and ethical codes. And there ARE clear policies for how work is supposed to be assigned and handled. It is not at all clear to any of the rest of us that those policies are being followed, and we do not wish to play the part of unknowing pawns in some personnel struggle. So we’re notifying our union, just to let them know we are interested in everything being done aboveboard and consistent with policy.
Update - we just received an e-mail that the employee in question “has moved on to other endeavors.” :rolleyes:
I suppose we’ll never learn what happened, or why she finally left.
She has ostensibly been working these past few months, tho producing far less work than anyone else. I saw her in the office yesterday - didn’t notice anything unusual. She left A TON of work that will require considerable effort by the rest of us, and which will inconvenience the individuals involved - much of which she could have done with minimal time/effort. (It always surprises me when someone leaves shit for their past cow-orkers to clean up. In many instances, it makes the difference between benign memories of the past employee, vs thinking them an asshole.)
The union was absofuckinglutely useless - as is usually the case. When we tried to raise it with them, they completely misunderstood our concerns, and instead interpreted it in terms of some of their pet issues.
Pretty quickly we just figured we had done a good enough job of covering our asses - expressing our concerns to both management and the Union so no shit would come back on US, and just settled in to do whatever work was assigned to us. I had thought we had finally gotten through that chunk of work. Looks like another wave will be coming at us.
There was some REALLY hinky stuff going on with the way the work was assigned. I think there may still be some legal challenges pending concerning how things were reassigned. But not my concern.
Having to finish up her work, it is clear she did a really shitty job. It always sort of surprises me when someone does really shitty work - AND REALLY LITTLE OF IT! :smack: I mean, if you aren’t going to be called on the carpet for doing a really slapdash job, why not at least do CLOSE to the amount everyone else is doing…
So yeah, cleaning up her work is a bit of a pain in the ass, but I still get paid. It just slows down the pace of work flowing through the office to essentially have to do her work a second time. And minimally frustrating when it is so clear that she was largely stealing her paychecks. But I’m still doing the same amount of work and the paychecks keep coming.
In the final analysis, that’s what counts. I was talking to a friend last night who has done IT work for a large drugstore chain. His employers are rethinking their business practices and so, after 20 years, my friend no longer has a job. He (according to him) is too young to retire and too old to be hired. And he told me this after paying my bar tab.
