Today, while cleaning up at the SCORE! Center I work at, I overheard the center director telling another director and a coworker “There’s something I need to tell all of you…”. I popped my head in the office and asked, “Should I be hearing this too?” and the Center director said yes.
Apparently, one of the three directors in the center had abruptly announced to the Center Director that she was quitting. Didn’t give any reason, just left a message on the phone saying she wasn’t coming in anymore. Now, this Director had called in sick many times in the past week which greatly inconvenienced everybody (2 days where she was the only Director at the center, and 1 time that caused us to miss an employee outing to Golfland :mad: ) When the Center Director had talked to her boyfriend, he said she was feeling fine, not sick at all. :dubious:
As if matters couldn’t get any worse another of the Directors had announced to the Center Director on the same day that she had to suddenly quit over health reasons. So that leaves the Center Director as the only manager there for a center that NEEDS at least 3 Directors.
I suppose both Directors could have legitimate reasons for having to quit so abruptly, but I’m surprised that its so bad they can’t just take a leave of absense or something. Losing 2 Directors is crippling to the center; it takes about six months of experience before a Director can do all the necessary tasks without being hand-fed instructions by the Center Director. So there is a strong emphasis to hire reliable people that won’t split anytime soon. It takes 2 to 4 weeks to get a replacement in, because the training process is lengthly. In the meantime, the Center Director is stuck working 9AM to 10PM 7 days a week. Its not the kind of job where they can simply promote one of us coaches up to ‘Director’ to replace the ones that are gone.
Had the Directors been able to give at least some warning, it would have given the Center Director time to find a replacement. As it is now, the rest of the staff are going to be burdened by the increase in work. (Particularly the Center Director). Honestly she’s probably far more pissed at them than I am, I suppose I am writing this rant for her since its pretty unfair the situation she’s in. Oh yeah, and to top it all off, this all got dumped on the Center Director the day she came back from vacation.
Are you suggesting that perhaps the Center Director fired one/both of the other Directors? I imagine its possibly with the one that called in sick, especially since it turned out she wasn’t really sick and her being gone that week was INCREDIBLY inconvenient for everybody (Hey, I was REALLY looking forward to playing miniature golf with my co-workers, okay? :mad: ) Plus there were two days where she was supposed to be the only director there and since she was AWOL they had to get a director from ANOTHER center to fill in that day, which left that center short-handed.
I think he is sugesting that since jobs don’t usually give employees two weeks notice that they are being fired, employees also don’t have a responsibility to do the same thing.
Barring contractual obligations, people should quit/resign in whatever manner is most convenient to them. The company they work for will sure as hell fire them in a manner convenient to the company.
If they’ve been calling in sick a lot and then quit without notice, it seems highly likely to me that there are some serious management issues involved.
But this really bothers me- this isn’t the kind of occupation where it is easy to replace someone who leaves suddenly. It takes several months to train a Director, then based on geographic location they are sent (I think they might get to choose between centers) to a center to work there. When they have time in advance to let the Reigonal Manager know they will be needing a Director in X weeks, it is feasable for him to find a candidate with sufficient training who is close enough and/or willing enough to work there. But when a Director is needed IMMEDIATELY it is much harder.
These people leaving so suddenly burdens everybody. The Center Director gets bogged down by 3x as much work, and the Coaches also have to work harder (their hours are the same, mind you, they just have to work with less employees at the center at any given time). Since all the Coaches are students, its hard to get people to work more days or longer shifts because most of the coaches have a highly limited availability.
The best thing I can think of is perhaps both of them were up to shenanigans that they KNEW were going to get them fired. I’ll never know why one Director decided to just not show up for a week. I do know the other director had given a customer a $600 refund, something she is not authorized to do.
If the Center Director was going to fire them though, she’d at least have the foresight to find replacements first.
My rant is more of an ethical one; I mean what this boils down to is that these 2 people are inconveniencing a LOT of people. And it happens right after the Center Director gets back from vacation, smack in the middile of promotion time (which always gets busy with new people signing up) and the beginning of summer (which has people coming in more frequently since kids are off school)
And they obviously don’t give a shit. All you, and the remaining director can do, is hope that these people come looking for a recommendation or put your center as a reference when they’re looking for their next job.
Don’t worry–karma will bite them in the ass sometime.
I hope there is a special place in hell for people like this…maybe give them a red slip and tell them, “Here’s your two-week notice for your eternity in the lake of fire”…or SOMETHING horrible involving two weeks…I can’t think of anything horrible enough…they’ve hurt my feelings too much!
Wrong! Sometimes it’s actually pretty damn hard to fire people. I can’t speak for other businesses, but in the one I run I’ve only fired 5 people in the last 6 years. We have between 40 and 50 employees at any one time. Each of those firings occurred after 2 written warnings…except for the guy I found smoking pot on the job. (Drug use expressly forbidden on the job. Every employee knows it.) Sure it would be easy to just dump problem employees, but we don’t do that. I’m betting a lot of other companies don’t do it either. (Are you suggesting we should?)
The other 5 firees went through the process of written warnings and a strong effort on my part to get the problem behavior changed.
On the other hand, the number of employees I’ve had walk off the job is much much higher. What amazes me is that later they put me down for a reference. Damn. How dumb can you get. All it takes is a 2 week notice…and not only do you not screw over your co-workers, but you get the added benefit of your company’s good will.
Sure I’ve had people leave suddenly for good reason. But more often the not it is sheer irresponsibility and a genuine cluelessness of how much a good work history improves opportunity for future employment.
It’s exactly two weeks harder, not “much harder.” If in fact it takes six months to train a director, two weeks is a small fraction of the delay you’ll suffer in productivity.
People quitting a job ALWAYS burdens the company. Always. It’s simply a part of life. If I quit my job my company would be hugely burdened, two weeks or no. If my boss quit we’d be in deep crap. With one notable exception I can’t think of ANYONE who could quit my company whose loss wouldn’t hit us hard, but you know what? A dozen people quit every year and we manage.
Not to point out the obvious here, but if you’re in a situation where these simply isn’t anyone who can fill in in the meantime, your organization is kind of screwed up. Why is the Director’s job so difficult for the next person in line to do? Perhaps “Coaches” should be part of some succession plan where they’re getting trained in some of the director’s responsibilities just in case.
I mean, they hurt your feelings by quitting? You want them to have a special place in hell? Christ, they aren’t indentured servants. If they want to work elsewhere, what’s that got to do with you? It’s a JOB, not a family. Inconveniences are part of having jobs.
I would guess that severance packages are the exception, not the norm. I am guessing that your average burger-flipper doesn’t get a severance package.
And while it may happen, I have never heard of a company giving a person 2 weeks notice. (Don’t bother showing up for work, uhhh, in 2 weeks.) Some may pay the unworked balance of the time-period on the final paycheck, but even that is rare, I bet.
So somebody needs to create a pseudoposition of “Assistant Interim Director in Charge of Helping Out” while the management staff scurries through old applications.
I did a job for 4 months that required an MBA/CPA, and I was a voice major with math anxiety. The difference is you’re at a SCORE center with Rules and Regulations, and we were working in the real world, where if the janitor or the head analyst either one saw something that needed doing, they did it.
Everybody suck it up and do all they can. The program will suffer.
The two that left will be given job references that read “Quit without notice”. To HR people, that might as well say “Three Headed Gila Monsters with Bad Breath, Flesh-Eating Bacteria and Horrible Body Odor.” They’ll have to lie.
OH, and get a little voo-doo doll of each of the former directors. And an ice pick. You’ll feel better.
I quit a job once without warning. I was well on my way to a mental breakdown, as it was. Then my boss started treating me very badly (like forbidding me to sit down during my breaks). Between my own mental issues and my treatment on the job, it became a matter of my own health and safety that I not go back there.
I always give two-weeks notice. The only time I have ever not given two weeks (or more) was the time I walked off a job- but it was a factory job, so I was easily replacable, and they were insisting on my performing a job I was not physically able to do (loading boxes taller than myself neatly without a chair or ladder), even after I pointed out that I was not physically able to do it. So that one occasion I didn’t have any qualms about just quitting and going home. But other than that- why make the boss’s job unneccessarily difficult? No point in burning those bridges- rather have good feelings behind me than bad ones.
This thread is exposing some interesting differences between employee-employer relationships in the US and in Commonwealth nations.
Here, two to four weeks notice is commonly incorporated into enterprise or “award” employment contracts. Even without contractual provision, the common law will imply a minimum period of notice (“reasonable notice”) into the employer-employee relationship.
In some professions, the notice period is in practice waived. Firms will “lock out” fired employees during their period of notice to prevent them stealing firm records, clients, IP, etc. They get to sit at home and enjoy getting paid for no work.
