Tell me about being "written up"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Where I worked we had the Verbal Written Warning (documentation confirming we spoke to you about an issue, but that you didn’t have to sign in acknowledgement), Written Warning (same form, but you signed it and offered your version or someone else signed as a witness that we spoke to you), and Immediate Probation (written warning for behavior that - if repeated in the next year - would get you fired).

We had people who spent years riding the line on written warnings for attendance, and they were always shocked when 1) they slipped up and got fired or 2) discovered that when layoffs came around people on WW were immediately terminated, no severance. Aside from attendance, it was rare (and almost impossible) to write someone up for performance, unless they were mgmt.

We had an incident where a deadline was blown that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and my boss wanted to put me (VP of the dept.) on Immediate Probation. Investigation discovered that the error was actually by an entry level employee in another dept. with 10 years experience who deliberately ignored procedure because she “figured mgmt. didn’t know what they were talking about” when a memo about a procedure change hit her e-mail. They refused to write her up, much less put her on probation, despite the fact that she conceded both her supervisor and myself had confirmed she got the memo and knew about the change, and she admitted she’d mentioned no concerns to either of us when we talked about it.

22

I recall when I worked at a (unionized) grocery store there were people that talked about being written up, and it was clear to me what it meant: a written record of an employee’s transgressions that would be documented and the employee would be forced to acknowledge. I’ve not heard about them in any other employment that I’ve been in.

I have been fired after a week for being totally misunderstood and was not given a second chance (although loudly swearing because these people refused to accept that what I said was innocuous because people said they felt threatened may have been the real reason).

23

Thinking about performance reviews/evaluations - in my 37 years, I had very few, if any that went beyond: “Here’s your review - read it and sign it.” Maybe that was standard for those who did their jobs satisfactorily and don’t get into trouble. Never was I given any hints as to what I could do better - was I that good?

In my last 3 or 4 years before retiring, I had a supervisor who actually sat down with me and talked about what I’d done and what he wanted to see me do. Because of my age and since he knew I had no desire for his job or any supervisory position, he used me as a sounding board of sorts, asking what I thought about the climate in the office. It was never about any specific person or event - he wasn’t that kind of boss - he just seemed to want my point of view about what was happening in the trenches.

In my current post-retirement job, I didn’t even get an annual eval, but I guess I’m doing OK, because a 4% raise showed up on my anniversary date. I’m sure there was no eval because they know I’m just doing this job for something to do. And that’s fine. The raise tells me what I need to know.

24

This is one hypothesis but is likely not true. The term started its present usage in the 1950s. Other origins are considered much more likely.

25

This is not at all exclusive to Corporations nor to America and it’s not all that prevalent in any case.

26

My spouse and one of his coworkers were once written up for laughing. Sort of similar bullshit.

I was recently “written up” due to a couple of customers freaking out because, in the interest of preventing an accident, I spoke to their two children without their permission. I mean literal shouting, screaming, F-bombs, insults, threats… they left then called the store and DEMANDED I be fired immediately, on the spot. Because I said (exactly) “Please take two steps back from that” to their two boys attempting to climb on something that shouldn’t have been climbed on.

Because those two batshit crazies made a formal complaint to the company it lead to a formal write-up. In addition to recording their complaint the company wanted my side of the story. Oh, and the security video of my check-out station is also being saved (which, by the way, corroborates my side of the story). Additional statements by witnesses and management. The hope is that this all blows over but if the crazies decide to sue the company wants their side sewed up and documented.

There was another incident of similar nature last week with another cashier. Cashiers, being out there and visible and having a LOT of customer contact, are vulnerable to false complaints. The manager who did my one-on-one about the incident said she had acquired three such in her file and it hadn’t affected her career, and we discussed different ways to attempt to handle and diffuse such situations in the future, and what to do when you simply can’t fix the problem.

So, my understanding (based on talking to people with many more years experience at the store) is that as long as nothing similar happens for 90 days it will be viewed as an isolated incident, customer generated, and not my fault.

The fact that I’m consistently generating customer compliments, positive feedback from customers, I have excellent attendance, I’m helpful to my coworkers, and never found slacking or refusing to do things also counts in my favor. I’m sure if I was a chronically late slacker generating complaints I would have been treated differently.

Getting “written up” means different things depending on the context - someone with an excellent track record getting written up is very different than a chronic screw up, why a company writes people up and the uses to which they are put differs, and so on. The only reliable thing you can get out of it is the notion that something went wrong at this point in time and it’s being documented.

27

I work on a phone line for the government. Once in a while someone will either demand to speak to a supervisor, or put in a written service complaint. The reaction from the supervisor depends on who is at fault. The complaint might have nothing to do with the telephone operator (whether the caller realizes this or not). Or the operator might have given incorrect information (in which case the operator will get retrained). If that keeps happening, there’s a PIP, and if that doesn’t work the operator isn’t rehired. (We work on contracts.)

I was told a few employees were so bad they were told to leave early. They still got paid for the last few weeks but the point was to get rid of them, they weren’t worth it. Too many callbacks were being made to correct their mistakes, calm down callers who had gotten misinformation, etc. These were bad but not malicious employees (not committing fraud or other crimes).

A service complaint will get put into a permanent record somewhere, but I’ve only had a brief talk about two of them, as neither were valid.

Sometimes an employee will do a callback. Once I had to arrange a callback for some person who refused to understand what I was telling them. By the time they were called back by a senior agent, they had forgotten or gotten confused by everything I had told them – well, actually, they blatantly lied about what I had told them – and it almost became a service complaint. Fortunately not, so nothing got written up. (I would have defended myself had that happened.)

The superiors will also check for accessing citizen information, etc. If you accessed someone’s file when you shouldn’t have, you could get fired. I was told that a talk with the director and a suspension is the minimum penalty for doing that. There was at least one court case where an employee wasn’t fired but was moved to a less sensitive position after doing something really stupid along those lines. (Not intentional, but I’m shocked they weren’t fired. They had been severely injured in an unrelated incident and no information was actually exposed, so I’m sure that’s why they got to keep their job.)

28

In fairness, you’re right; my last job (just shy of 10 years) didn’t start doing that until the last year, year-and-a-half. My current job (just had my 2 year anniv.) has sorta/kinda been like that from day 1, but it comes in waves, so to speak.

But it doesn’t take too many instances of that shit to pretty much make you want to throw your hands up and say, “Fuck it.” It hasn’t happened to me (yet) at my current job, but I’ve seen it happen to coworkers who didn’t do anything different than I would’ve done in their shoes, so I’m no exception; I’ve (so far) just been lucky.

29

When I needed any job I could get, I took a job in the warehouse of a very famous ecommerce company. I figured it would be easy since I did so much time in retail and restaurants, but my body had changed in that time. Or the human body was not meant to do this work. It seemed like all the good workers were built like jockeys. So I got “written up” for not working fast enough. it didn’t matter that the machines and computer broke down multiple times per shift or anything else. Didn’t make the numbers.

The strange thing to me was: Nothing was written anywhere. I don’t have any record of anything. The dude just said “This is your first written, This is your 2nd written”, and so on. it was verbally coming to you and saying “You qualified for a written warning because of this number on my computer.”

30

I was almost written up for threatening someone at work. They asked where I got my tie and I said “I can tell you, but then I’ve have to kill you.” Someone that had never heard the expression reported me to HR, who had to investigate. I didn’t matter that the other person laughed, or that my boss laughed and explained it’s a common expression. We literally had to wait while they Googled the phrase (it’s got about 4 MILLION hits) in order for them to drop it and follow up with whoever reported me. :rolleyes:

31

Did the supervisor get written up as well? How did you two get along after that incident?

32

I don’t know if the supervisor got written up himself or not. Supervision kept things like that pretty secret. We got along pretty well afterwards, I knew that he didn’t lie to get out of trouble. He told the truth, that I had warned him about what would happen. From then on if he told me to do something and if I asked him if he was sure he wanted to do that, he would then ask me why.

33

Get everything you can in an email, and save & archive all emails.

34

AIUI At my job and as a supervisor the first step is an oral admonishment where nothing is formal. I have had to do this once in almost 15 years. Second step is a written counseling admonishment that I retain and the third for the same infraction is a formal write up that does go into the Official Personnel File for a period of two years. Employees can be “written up” for good deeds as well. That gets routed up the chain for an official BZ letter.

I have never been written up or oral admonished but have had the BZ several times. Maybe I am too lenient on my employees.

35

Something I found out long ago: One aw shit cancels out 100 atta boys.

36

There’s even an “Atta-Boy” certificate that warns of this! (It’s been going around workplaces since the early Xerox days. The George W Bush sig at the bottom is obviously a modern version.)

37

Where I currently work is a large, ISO certified, multi-national corporation. The write up procedure there is pretty simple. Every position has (in theory) a step-by-step procedure to do any and every task for every position. If you fail to do any step for any task and you’re seen or it screws something up, you can be given a write up. The first is a verbal warning with a paper you have to sign saying you were given a verbal warning with the content of the verbal outlined. The second, it’s a first written warning. Unlike the verbal, this goes into your CORPORATE FILE (GASP!) along with a copy of your verbal write-up (WHAA?) that was kept in your “local” HR folder.

Then, ya gots one more chance boy. You get a second warnin’, son. Ain’t no third, ya done get escorted out.
I’ve been there ten+ years and have received one verbal and one written, for completely different things. The verbal was completely deserved. The written was not. Strangely, the written was my first ever write-up. My violation was so egregious that it skipped the verbal and went straight to first write-up. Had I not documented my side in the Employee Comments box, my confession would have doomed me while protecting the manager’s ass. When she left, I was told my write-up never made it to Corporate HR, she just had it “in case.”

Favorite write-up memory. Early 90’s, I had been at (different) company for five years. ASSistant manager had been there less then a year and needed to throw her weight around. I was, admittedly, an insubordinate asshole who was knew he was very good at his job. My two man crew and I were loading freight onto semi-trailers. We were in a hurry because no overtime was allowed and we had ten minutes to load load eight more pallets (out of fifty three that day,) close the dock doors, and punch out. I accidentally stabbed a box of liquid that was on the bottom row of an entire pallet of liquid. I grabbed some cardboard, set the pallet down on it, and grabbed another full pallet of same product and used it instead.
The next morning, she comes to my desk with a typewritten page accusing me of willfully and maliciously damaging freight in anger and wants me to sign it. I pull a red pen out of my desk drawer and start circling her grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. I tell her I won’t sign it until all that is correct so that there is no miscommunication as to what she says I did. She came back several hours later with a revised copy and I mentioned there was no official “employee comments” section. She pulls out a pen and hand writes “Employee Comments” on the bottom. I wrote that “Jane is full of shit, I fucked up one box of liquid due to the speed we had to load due to the no overtime rule. It was an accident and it has never happened before and it won’t happen again.” I wouldn’t sign it until she gave me back the red penned original, which I had framed and put on my office wall.
Later on, she fired me three times in one week.

38

The 1903 volume “Notes On Track” by W. M. Camp discusses the use of demerit points on a railway by a manager named Brown–sorry, volume not to hand so can’t be more specific but he names the railway and manager. My father was a fireman on the Canadian Pacific Railway in the early 1950s and brownie points were demerits then and there.

39

Where I work, being “written up” generally refers to having received a formal counseling memo regarding behavior that has not yet reached the level of taking disciplinary action. Informal counseling (which is basically a conversation) happens all the time , but under certain circumstances , the counseling session will be memorialized in a memo that goes into the employee’s personal history file. The counseling sessions/memos are not themselves disciplinary action but are used to support disciplinary action if the same behavior continues to be an issue (as the employee cannot say such things as “I was never told I had to submit a timesheet every two weeks” at the disciplinary hearing.) But the only way you would know about these memos is if you received one, you were the supervisor/manager who wrote one, or you happened to work with someone who for some reason had no problem telling everyone the got one - which is a very small number of people, as they don’t get much sympathy.

40

I was “written up” twice in the Navy. Once when I was transferred and once when I was discharged. It was too long ago to remember what they said. Disciplinary problems would be my guess.