If I were you, I would also consider giving a call next week to the person that Joan was speaking to when she made this comment.
Tell her Joan was terminated for making false & disparaging comments about the company, like the one she made to you last week, and that you wanted to call to let her know that it was a false statement, and you want to make sure she doesn’t get herself into trouble by repeating this false statement to others.
This will have the effect of letting others in that other division know how seriously your company takes this, and may cut down somewhat on people repeating this misinformation. (There’s some possibility this other person is a gossip too; they tend to talk to each other.) If she isn’t, you’re just being nice in warning her about repeating this. Also, it might help to undercut Joan’s statement about your programmers being incompetent.
Just my 2 cents worth, would the false statement be the best thing to emphasize since it is kinda a value judgement. Insinuating or making claim that she is licenced mediical staff might have better teeth as far as legal preceedings go since its a more black and white issue.
Maureen, you gotta let us know ev-e-ry detail of her reaction to being fired! Give us dialogue, facial expressions, her demeanor before and afterwards…Everything!
umm, I think folks are becoming more aware of thier “rights” to bring a lawsuit. Company I work at, lady quit because she wanted to move to another state and was denied unemployment - suing the company, man who was fired but had arranged a loan form owner using his car as collateral, didin’t make payments, company took car- suing the company. Driver aganst the rules had grandson riding with him, driver had a wreck, truck totaled, people only sightly injured - suing the company, a woman was fired for gross incompetence (didn’t do her work, hid the work in her desk, lied about it when caught and tried to pass the blame onto everyone in the near vicinity, suing for wrongful terminiation. 4 lawsuits I know of and I have worked there less than 2 years. Company I worked for before was always being contacted by lawyers from former employees, one was a woman who was fired for hitting her supervisor- she brought charges through EEOC. Of course the one time that I thought a law suit was justified, a woman was let go while on family leave, she didnt bring a suit because the company was going bankrupt and had no money.
Yeah, it would be enough for a formal write-up/slap on the wrist kinda thing. Thing is, this guy ia highly unstable as it is. Not a bad guy, just not very smart, and a very overinflated idea of his capabilities. As has been proven in this case.
If I initiate a process as you describe, it’ll most likely send him into a burnout again (he’s been home for 2 months this year), and even if I succeed in convincing HR he needs to be let go, it will take months of effort on my part. During this time, he will be on my budget, I can’t hire a new guy, and my other employees (some of which are similar basket cases) will have to work under more pressure, inevitably leading to more stress, sick days, mistakes, et cetera.
Since I’ve already been told a raise is underway in early 2006, I’m awaiting that, and then I’m off looking for a new gig. If that makes me a bad manager, so be it, but it’s damn tough in this country to fire someone.
In other news, we really need to do another Dublin thing. How does spring sound?
Be careful about doing this. At my husband’s company, someone was fired for cause (letting someone else buy something using her employee discount). The manager, hoping to forestall anything else like that happening, mentioned that SOMEONE had recently been fired for doing this. The company got sued for violation of the worker’s privacy or something like that.
IOW, you can say that SOMEONE was fired, but not talk about WHY they were fired.
I’ve had numerous prisoners threaten me with legal action as well. And some of them have also misspelled my last name in their paperwork. My last name is “King”. How seriously can you take a threat of legal action from a man who can’t spell that correctly?
But the best of all is when a prisoner decides that you’re being completely unreasonable and calling in a lawyer isn’t enough. No, for a situation like this he needs to call in the highest authority - he’s going to telephone his mother.
I’ve even had the moms call me!! I have no idea how they get my direct number. Usually mommies end up talking to my nurses first.
And most of the moms are reasonable people. Once I assure them that their boy is truly getting his medical needs met (probably far better than they were met when he was on the street), they’re usually satisfied. Usually.
Well, I don’t know about pissed off. But I remember the stereo thread. I remember being so aghast I could barely think of a response. People like her are the very SOURCE of the “mind boggle”.
Unbelievable. But like others have said, you’ve shown the patience of Job with her. You’re doing nothing wrong. And if I remember right from the stereo thread, you’ve been documenting this all.
Also, this is not a young woman right? Isn’t she 40ish?
It wouldn’t matter if she’d been talking about a worker in the very same company. Gossiping about coworkers to other coworkers is extremely unprofessional.
Maybe not an offense to be fired for all by itself, but added to this particular woman’s (or any other worker who behaves the way she does) general behaviour yes.
People like Joan thrive on drama and there’s no chance in hell that she’ll go silently into the night. I’m sure you’re on this, but if you do fire her, be prepared to change passwords, door locks, remove authorization from her badge, IMMEDIATELY. This chick has serious issues and she’s a pro at justifying her own deplorable behavior. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I have a feeling that this isn’t the last we’ll be hearing of Joan.
I don’t know, she sounds like her bark is worse than her bite. She threatened legal action when her car hit a telephone pole and the company wouldn’t pay her deductible, but never pursued it. She strikes me as the kind of person who has gotten her way in life by throwing tantrums and having people back down to placate her. When that doesn’t happen, she grumbles and bitches but ultimately gives up. She might SAY she’s going to sue, but would she really? I guess Maureen will have to give us all the breaking details on it…
I think what PunditLisa is saying is that there are other bad things besides suing: petty vandelism and thrft by someone who has been around long enough to know the ropes can be very annoying and very expensive.
Yes, not to mention getting into files and databases and trying to screw them up. We had one employee do this after being fired when the admin didn’t delete his access before leaving for the weekend. Among other things, he deleted all the files off our shared drive, which would have been devastating had they not been backed up. It was easily fixed by IT, but the intent to fuck everyone because he had been let go was still there. The irony is that he was fired for not being “management material.” Had he shown more of that spunk while he was on probation, he would probably still have a job.
