The first time you fired somebody

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’ve had a couple of easy ones. They type where they call in sick for the 19th time in 30 days* and I just told them not to bother, don’t come back, I’ll mail your check.
I had one hard one. I had to fire a good friend. It’s a VERY long story, but I had been friends with him for quite some time, we drifted apart when he started dating a very controlling person, wound up in a deep depression yada yada yada then I caught him stealing from my business and out the door he went. One of the hardest things I ever had to do. At least by that point we weren’t really friends any more.

*My favorite was when a girl called and said “This is Amanda’s mom, she can’t come in today becuase she’s sick” and then I heard the school bell ring in the backround. I just said okay and hung up. Then I called her real mom to let her know that a fake mom had just called her in sick and it needs to stop.
**Ooo, while I’m going off on a tangent. Another one of my favorites. “I can’t come into work today, I’m sick” If I know their lying, I ask what they have and pray that they say something contagious. Pink Eye, Mono, strep throat etc to which I respond, “Ooh that’s pretty bad. Listen since you have something contagious, I can’t let you back here until I get a note from your doctor. I can’t have you getting my other employees sick”

22

I think that’s your in.

Catch him on WoW and say “Since you don’t have anything to do, you can go home now. I don’t want you playing games here” and send him home for the day.
Second time “I told you not to play games here anymore. Since you’re done with your work, why don’t you take off. By the way if I catch you playing games again you’ll lose your job”
Third time “What did I tell you about playing games here. Just go home and don’t bother coming back”

Be stern, be fair, be quick and don’t back down. Above all, remember this, he is not your friend, he is not even your co-worker he is your subordinate and you don’t owe him anything. Also keep reminding yourself that all he’s doing is wasting the business’s money. Money that could go towards your next raise.

23

Hi,

I have never fired anyone for the reasons you describe after 2 years- usually I would have fired a person like that in the first 3 months. It’s much easier that way but looks like you did not have a choice in that so I agree that you have to have a clear warning system in place to fire this person. You mentioned that your company doesn’t have a firing policy- I think now is a good time to develop one and inform all employees of it.

We do 2 written warnings, which the employee must sign even if they disagree with it or lose their job. 3rd warning= no job. We do have, in our office policies, a section that lists certain things such as theft, insubordination, abuse or neglect of a patient (veterinary hospital) as acts resulting in immediate termination.

It is really hard to fire people who are not expecting it- but I’ve found that I personally have no problem firing someone who has been given several opportunities to improve and just didn’t care enough to do it. There has been a very few times where the employee just couldn’t perform the job, although they tried very hard- and every time they have seemed to be relieved and not at all surprised due to our clear warning system. I even had one girl ask me at her second warning if we were planning to fire her, and I had the opportunity to give her a clear warning that we were close to that decision if there was no improvement. Honestly, no one has “turned around” at that point- whether from casual or poor attitude or just inability to be trained- most good employees do not put the business through that.

24

I’m a bit confused. What’s a competent employee supposed to be doing with the over seven hours remaining of the day when his duties are completed?

25

I remember the first time I had to fire somebody, because it was on Christmas Eve. The guy was a college student and it was a part time job, and he was frequently late for work, or called in sick at the last minute, or just didn’t show up at all. In fact, he was late on his first day of work! I think it was obvious to both of us that he wasn’t going to last long, but I still felt bad about having to fire him the day before Christmas.

26

My company doesn’t track sick days. When you’re sick, you just call in, no time deducted (we’re all salaried). Believe it or not, it hasn’t been abused, I think because everyone is so dependent on everyone else here. If you’re out, you’re missed.

27

Lots of things. At the very least, we have a few people who fill very critical roles with no backup, and I’d like to have somebody who can cover for them. Ideally, he’d also step up to help design and implement some technical solutions to other problems that we’ve never really addressed before.

Oh, hell, I’ll be more specific. What I want: a tape ape, a PC tech, and a very junior sysadmin. What I’ve got: a tape ape, who, after two years on the job, doesn’t know basic tar commands.

28

Gah. Wait till you have to lay people off - people who are doing a perfectly fine job, but the company is going through lean times and you have to reduce headcount. That truly, truly sucks. Especially the older guy you personally hired a few months back who had been out of work for a long time, and who showed great potential, but hadn’t been there long enough yet to make a business case to keep.

Are you serious? You give 2 weeks severance per year of employment, even when terminating employees for cause? Yikes.

29

We don’t really track sick days either, we just pay attention to trends. So it’s 3:30, the cashier was supposed to be here 15 minutes ago, but who knows if she’ll even show up today, and the phone rings, you look at the person next to you and say “What’s her excuse today :rolleyes: ?”

About half of our crew is part time high school kids. They don’t care if they’re missed. They don’t care if we’re short crewed, they don’t care if they are late, they don’t care if they charge people the wrong prices, they don’t care if they ring things into the register correctly, they just want a paycheck. We’ve gotten pretty used to it, hell we’ll even put up with it for a while, but when you call in more then half the days your scheducled, you better have another job lined up.

30

As some wise Doper once said…you don’t fire people. They fire themselves. You just fill out the paperwork.

31

Have you ever been on a construction project? In the last four months, I’ve seen at least ten people head down the road for incompetence (not including labor types). But there were no formal sessions of any kind. You can’t take a chance on someone sabotaging the project.

To answer the question, I’ve usually been in jobs where either I didn’t have the power to fire someone, or it was done by the HR department and based on the documentation you mentioned. The first person I had to actually give the bad news to was on this job; he was one of the aforementioned ten. But I did give him notice that his performance needed to improve dramatically, because someone losing his job (meaning his mortgage payment, his groceries, his health plan, etc.) is a serious matter. He couldn’t ramp up to the required level, so I had to let him go. It was the first person I’ve personally fired in 40 years.

32

I didn’t mean to imply that our company’s policy of not tracking sick days would work for everybody. I guess that we’re lucky that the people we have feel some sense of obligation to their roles, even though most are pretty young (22-35 mostly, with me as the old geezer).

My hat’s off to you for managing a bunch of high schoolers.

33

It would indeed totally suck to have to fire someone because your company needs to cut back. I hope I never have to do it.

34

Find something else that needs doing. If need be, find out how to do it. Tell your supervisor that you’ve completed X, what’s Y?

I may have overstepped myself on occasion, or make mistakes teaching myself, but my thumb doesn’t smell like butt.

Never been fired.

35

Well, to be honest, the first time I had to (actually, I should say “got to”, but you will understand in a moment) fire someone, it was my first day as a manager.

When I was a teenager, I worked for the local McD’s off and on several times. When I moved back to the area, the manager of the store as well as the owners, tried to lure me to come back as a manager – they needed good people. I finally got the salary and schedule I wanted and agreed to come to work as the assistant manager of the store.

My first day there, after being introduced, I was put to work. At one point, we were pretty well slammed, so I went down to the basement to get some fries out of the freezer (better a manager do it than take someone off their station, IMO). While stacking up a few boxes to carry upstairs, I heard “hey, Litoris – look at this!” I turned around to see one of the (male) employees standing (in a freezer) naked from the waist down, wiggling his (oh so very tiny, limp and ugly) penis at me. I honestly do not know what this guy was thinking. I mean, he had just met me, was an adult (this was a morning shift, so no teenagers), and IT WAS IN A FREEZER! I looked at him, and calmly said, “please put that little thing away, and go wash your hands.”

When I went upstairs and spoke with the store manager about it, he was shocked. He told me that we would have to bring the guy in and he (the manager) would confront him (penis boy) – if penis boy admitted what he had done, I was to fire him on the spot. If penis boy denied the allegations, then the owner would have to intervene (because the video tapes would have to be reviewed – only the owner had access to the videos). Penis boy was asked into the office and admitted what he had done. I looked at him and said, “thank you for your honesty, but you are no longer welcome at this eastablishment. Your check will be available for pickup on Friday as usual, but you will no longer have a job here.”

Yeh. That made it easier for all future firings I have had to do. I now actively steer away from management, but if I have to fire someone, it’s no skin off my back.