“You make a valid point. You’re still fired.”
“Then, Geoff, you’re an idiot. Hopefully, my replacement will kiss your ass and steal everything he or she can get. It would serve you right.” Bosses that treat their employees like feudal serfs deserve employees that are con artists.
It’s a slippery slope when an employee believes that they “do a darn good job for this company” so that excuses their behaviour on or off the worksite.
If it were my business, I’d fire Lemoyne and give Patrice a last warning. This sends a message to everyone that you mean business when it comes to a respectful workplace and no individual is beyond reproach.
In a management position, inaction is your enemy.
IMHO, I don’t think car salesmen work all that hard anyway. In today’s car market, they just have to be the first salesman to greet customers at the door and then try not to scare them away.
No, it’s sends a message that the boss is a vindicative, petty little tyrant who plays favorites, punishes scrapegoats, and that how you do your job isn’t nearly as important as how well the boss likes you. That said, sociopathic con artists do love this sort of work environment, it makes getting away with stuff so much easier.
I think the moral of this story is, “If you are an asshole and people at work find out you are an asshole, you may get fired for being an asshole.”
I could see your argument at first, ZPG Zealot, but with this last post your message is getting lost. I’m not sure how firing someone for being an asshole that not only insulted their boss but may be a liability and one day alienate customers (and probably already has coworkers) turns into playing favorites and punishing scapegoats.
While I know car sales isn’t exactly a “team environment”, it is true that personal fit with the business is a big consideration during the hiring process. It’s probably an even higher consideration for the firing process. In the end keeping workplace morale high usually trumps one worker’s need to have their true colors flying high.
Because ultimately, firing the sales personnel for off work behavior of this nature is far worse for morale than anything they said. These guys were drinking and blowing off steam at a non-work related function. Firing them establishes the prinicipal of the boss doesn’t care about the quality of your work only the quality of your ass kissing. If I was one of their co-workers I would be looking for another job and I would be avoiding contact with Geoff.
At the dealerships I’ve worked out, the hierarchy went like this:
At the top: the ownership. Sometimes the sole proprietor, sometimes the partnership, sometimes corporate.
Just below that: the general manager, Geoff’s position in this story. When the store’s a sole proprietorship may be identical to the owner, but not necessarily.
Below the GM: the general sales manager, the service department manager, the finance department manager, the parts department manager, and possibly the get-ready department manager. All technically equal in the chain, though from a salesman’s POV obviously the GSM is most important. Stephen’s level.
Below the GSM: depending on the store, either the new cars manager and the used car manager, or the managers of the different brands. Usually it’s a NCM and UCM.
Below them: the desk managers, who are in charge of negotiating and approving all deals. A salesman who’s good at closing and at keeping profit, like LeMoyne, will often be free to negotiate his own deals and only nominally be under the supervision of the DM. This makes them doubly valuable, as they require less management attention and also may do a DM’s job when another salesman needs help.
And finally the regular salesmen. The best of them make more money that the DM’s, and though the department managers make still more, the best salesmen needn’t work as many hours.
That’s an accurate gloss.
Actually it can be. It depends on the dealership. At one of the dealerships I worked at, one of my coworkers on the used car had two terrible months in a row and was in danger of getting canned. The rest of us circled the wagons and shared deals with him till he was out of his slump. He’s the used car manager there now.
Refraining from insulting the boss and/or his wife is hardly kissing ass.
Admittedly I haven’t sold cars for a few years now, but it’s harder than you’re thinking.
Meh, they never intended the boss or his wife to hear what they said (and if the boss hadn’t been a snoop he wouldn’t have heard it). Expecting your employees to treat you as holy and sacred figures on their off-time is ridiculous. Actually, it’s quite evil when I think about it. Geoff seems to expect some level of absolute devotion similiar to the cult of personality inspired by dictators.
I’m going to urge everybody to stop responding to** ZPG Zealot** as this point. Because I think the long-timers can see what she’s doing, and we’ve been down this road before.
I would have said that 110 posts ago. Hell, put it in the OP.
I would define it as “private” if it was a conversation not deliberately meant to be overheard, was between consenting adults, and was not in the workplace.
If they were drunk and loud and discussing a sensitive topic in a boorish manner in a setting where they could be overheard, I have less sympathy.
But in the OP, it sounded as if the boss was eavesdropping a conversation taking place between two private parties who thought they were only expressing opinions to each other. Unless a legal issue is involved, such a conversation has no standing to create further action on the part of a third party whose only beef is that they find the privately-expressed opinion offensive.
Afraid of honest debate, are we?
:: reaches out to hook, gingerly removes it from fishing line, places it in pocket ::
Not to mention the fact that if they got their stories good and straight enough to stand up to cross-examinations, the sales personnel could sue Geoff and the company. After all it’s only his word against theirs as to what actually happened.
Sounds like Geoff is in place when the conversation starts, and the digs, though slight at first, begin right away. The first sentence sounds like a conversation starter, not the middle. Geoff didn’t follow, thinking “what are these people saying about me?” They came up to where he was (though obscured) and started the trash talking. Geoff had no way of knowing that his employees would be there (outside, not the wedding itself) nor that they would begin by discussing him. What’s he supposed to do, put his fingers in his ears and sing “lalalalalala” when they start discussing him AND insulting his wife?
Geoff doesn’t have to give any reason for firing them, and probably wouldn’t. My hypos are always set in Memphis unless otherwise specified, and this one is explicit on the issue specifically to establish that it’s an at-will state.
Most etiquette experts would advise him to ignore borish behavior (like talking behind someone’s back) unless it puts others in jeopardy in a situation when it is not immediately possible to make one’s presence known. Maybe if these were junior high school students I could understand how a fight could break out from one boy overhearing two others trash his date, but grown men should be able to rise above insults about someone being ugly. This wasn’t slander. They said nothing that would endanger the wife or her reputation.
Even in an at-will state, there are lawsuits companies don’t want to mess with (which is why out-of-court settlements with non-disclosure agreements exist). If the fired sales people are mad enough, clever enough, and bold enough (and it takes plenty of the last two to be sucessful at selling cars), I imagine they could cook up a scenario in which Geoff’s firing of them is related to something infinitely sueable and highly embarassing for the company. Heck, if they’ve got the guts to do it (and some people do if they feel they were wrongly fired), airing the actual reason with a detailed recreation of the conversation made available to the wider public would probably be more than the company would want to mess with. Not to mention it would be very nasty thing for Donna to have to go through. In fact, if I were Geoff’s fired employees a very generous out-of-court settlement with non-discolosure agreement would be the only way Donna (and most of Memphis) would not find out about what happened.