Dude, you’re not restricted to clicking options in a poll. You can be as open-ended as you want.
Certainly they should be fired, bosses deserve no especial respect but all people do; politeness trumps most things.
However I hope Stephen’s suggestion included a couple of burlap sacks, some heavy stones and a visit to the local reservoir.
There are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold, or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice upon a dark night.
Kai Lung
But they were overheard. And if they are making comments like that about the boss’ wife they are certainly making similar comments about customers. One day they will get overheard by a customer and the shit will hit the fan. They’re a liability and a potential disaster waiting to happen.
Well, that’s pretty easy then. I’m rewriting Stephen’s character so that to be best friend status he’d be on the same page as Geoff in morals. He now thinks it was absolutely atrocious the things they were saying. The first thing he says after Geoff tells him the story is, “I always thought there was something off about Patrice and LeMoyne. We finally saw them for the assholes they really are. Who knows when they’ll show their colors in front of a customer. Get rid of them. We can’t afford a harassment lawsuit.”
No pussyfooting with the “Does Donna know what happened? Donna hasn’t actually been hurt.” and bullshit like that. It’s not about Donna. It’s about their attitude.
I guess my attitude is that it’s not conducive for a happy workplace to know that your boss is eavesdropping on private, off-job, conversations and looking for petty personal slights in order to fire people.
Hell, I know if I was one of LeMoyne’s coworkers, I’d be updating my resume and cruising job sites about 3 microseconds after hearing about him getting fired and why.
I mean, God knows, I’ve never blown off steam to a coworker after a drink or two.
If I were in Stephen’s shoes, I wouldn’t try to talk Geoff out of firing them. As the manager, he has the right to employ people he wants to, and not wanting to employ people who say horrible things about your wife seems acceptable to me.
Now, if I were in Geoff’s shoes, I may not necessarily fire them immediately without giving them a chance to explain or apologize. But I wouldn’t question him if he wanted to fire them.
Your version of blowing off steam is making incredibly insulting remarks about women in sexually degrading ways? If I were your coworker and overheard a conversation like that I’d be updating my resume to get away from you even before my boss would have heard a thing. An attitude like that is far from a petty personal slight.
But do those conversations detail how ugly someone is? I mean, I get what you’re saying, but I think there’s a big difference between blowing off steam about something like “my god, Tom is such an asshole, I can’t stand him, can you believe what he did today?” and “my oh my, have you seen the new girl that works in accounting? That bitch is uuuuugly!”
Character is what you do when nobody is looking. When LeMoyne and Patrice thought nobody was looking, they were dicks. That’s their true colors. I wouldn’t want someone who’s a dick working for me, no matter how good they are at covering it up at work.
The point of Stephen asking that question is to clarify for Geoff what his motive for canning L & P is. It can’t be to avenge his wife’s hurt feelings, because his wife’s feelings haven’t been hurt, and won’t be unless Geoff (or Stephen) tells her about the overheard conversation. It probably isn’t to protect the business; LeMoyne is clearly doing a bang-up job, and his behavior, however odious, wasn’t really work related; it wasn’t at the office or at a company function. So Geoff’s motive is probably (and I write this is poster, not OP) to get back by proxy at people who have insulted Donna in the past, something he may not be entirely conscious of. I’d say that Stephen, as Geoff’s friend and subordinate, might want to help him realize that.
Well, not really. “Right to work” means the employee can’t be forced to join a union, and has nothing to do with this hypothetical. “Employment at will” is the phrase you wanted, and means that someone can be fired for any reason, or no reason, so long as they are not fired for a bad reason–ie, unlawful discrimination.
That said, I’d fire both employees involved in the mocking. Don’t care what their excuses may be. Don’t care how sorry they are. Get them out of my sight. Now. However, unlike Geoff, I would not pass the buck to their manager. I’m old school like Ned Stark, and I’ll swing the sword myself.
I would fire them both, immediately and with prejudice.
The cause? Aside from being demonstrated as bad people, the cause is stupidity. People should know better. Badmouthing anyone at an event where bosses and\or customers may overhear is a phenomenal lapse of judgement.
I think keeping them employed and constantly careful and skittish would be more effective, and more productive, than firing them.
I would keep them after they apologized, but then again, I work in a company where unfortunately we have people who try to get others fired over far tamer issues. For example, I got put through the HR wringer here at work because I had a private conversation with a co-worker about sleep apnea. The co-worker mentioned her boyfriend snores and gasps in his sleep very loudly sometimes, but that she didn’t think it was apnea because “only fat people get that, and he is in great shape, working out every day”.
My wife treats sleep apnea for a living and has for more than 15 years, so I know a little something about it, and when I asked if he was Asian (he was), I told her this was not uncommon. Among her patients, about 5% are Asians of normal weight who still get it because of the recessed chin and flatter face of some Asians, which is especially bad with Koreans. Needless to say, the Korean woman in the next office could still hear the conversation even with the door closed because of the paper thin walls, and reported me for “making fun of flat faced Koreans”. When I explained it to HR, they still treated me like a criminal because someone interpretted what I said as being offensive.
That said, while these guys were clearly trying to be malicious, it is still something that deserves at least a warning, especially if there wasn’t otherwise another reason to get rid of these salespeople. I wouldn’t treat Patrice differently just because she doesn’t have the same sales numbers as the main guy who was doing most of the talking. In fact, it’s almost easier to justify keeping her because of that. And if Donna really is that ugly, I suspect Geoff has probably heard this stuff before.
I would fire them I find it in poor taste to mocking someone’s bf/gf
I actually felt disgust at how they spoke about her assuming because she wasn’t to their liking they could say rude things about her
Wait, what?
Patrice is clearly a marginal employee at best. LeMoyne is tops not only in units out the door but in profitability of his deals, something very important in car sales. Why would you advise keeping the marginal employee over the profitable one?
That’s not a rhetorical question; your reasoning escapes me.
He clearly has, though possibly only second- or third-hand; he refers to prior incidents breaking her heart in the OP.
If I’m the guy making the decision, it would go like this. “Look you two, as you know, Geoff overheard you talking trash about Donna. You will write Geoff a note of apology, I will approve the note before you give it to him, and then if he still wants your sorry asses fired, you will be fired. So make the note persuasive. I will give a small effort into asking him to forgive you, but’ I’m not going to work up a big sweat about it. You guys screwed up big-time and we all know it. Whether you are fired or not or forgiven or not, we are done with this kind of behavior. If that is agreeable to you, then we will proceed. If not, you are fired right now. Is that understood? I’d also offer words of wisdom about ever trashing talking anyone in any circumstances, but if you imbeciles didn’t already learn that lesson from this incident, I would be wasting my time, wouldn’t I?”
Always assume someone is listening around the corner, or you have butt dialed them on your cell phone or didn’t hang up the phone correctly.
The 90/10 rule definitely applies in sales, in fact, it’s probably even higher in automobile sales. LeMoyne probably does more business and brings in more $$$ than the three people immediately behind him.
Many sales people are horrible people and I wouldn’t want them for friends.They probably work long hours and party pretty hard when they’re not working. But, you can’t eat your morals for dinner at night. I wouldn’t fire them, they’re not on the sauce during working hours.
Fire Patrice. He isn’t great at his job and he just fucked up royally violating the number one rule of don’t piss off your boss.
LeMoyne on the other hand is a valuable asset to the company, I could certainly justify firing him but since he’s been doing so well otherwise I’d want to keep him on.
I wouldn’t bother explaining Patrice’s reason for being fired other than poor performance. I also wouldn’t take official action in regards to LeMoyne. Geoff can go demand an apology from LeMoyne independent of company action. If he doesn’t feel the apology is sufficient I can fire LeMoyne later.
‘Geoff I’m fine with firing Patrice but can you please give LeMoyne a second chance. He’s our top Sales guy, he’d be hard to replace.’
My solution is by no means fair. It is business.
I don’t go where you’re all going. I wouldn’t fire two employees on the unsubstantiated word of a third about a single event, even if I believe every word of the claim and the accuser is my buddy.
I would call the two in (separately) and ask about what happened and what was said, and suggest to them that I know everything. If they’re stupid enough to admit any specifics about what they said, out the door they go. If they’re smart enough to admit nothing, or to say something like, “We said some terrible things that we’re not going to repeat because saying it the first time was a bad idea”, then they don’t get fired on the spot.
Then I’d have to give some thought about what to do if there’s another similar incident.
Yes, I imagine I’m Jack McCoy. 