This is what I do now every time we fire someone.
They always apply for benefits it seems. There is always a hearing.
We win the hearings but it is a PITA...
After this I went out and appologized to the crew that witnessed it. It has
been years since I lost my cool like that. They were all seemingly delighted
that the guy is now gone.
In all my years of firing people, many dozens, perhaps as many as 100, only 1
was a situation where I regretted it afterwards. The guy was following along
with some dishonest activity by a coworker and did not stand up to him. He
truly did not deserve to lose his job. All the rest of them I typically say to
myself afterwards: “should have done this long ago”.
Also, batting 0000 for having formal disciplinary meetings result in a
permanent change of behavior. I guess we do them for evidence in the certain
to be unemployment benefits hearing...
(BTW, the the tale below, this was a truck we bought at Richie Brothers a
couple of weeks ago and had not yet got a duplicate key made).
From: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2020 11:36 AM
To:
Subject: xxx
Put this in xxx personnel file.
Thursday last week a company truck was parked here at the company by xxx. He
did not put the key back in the key box. It is the only key we had for that
truck and that truck is a critical vehicle.
This morning (7/13/2020) a group of employees were out on the back lot working
on a project and I walked up and asked them who was last to drive the red
truck. They indicated it was xxx. I asked where the key was, he was very non
committal. Essentially shrugging his shoulders. I told him that it must be
between the truck and the office key box, did he walk that route and look for
it. Nope, he said, he went and did some other things after parking the truck.
I asked him if he went to those other areas and looked for the key. Nope...
Didn’t seem to care. Had a defiant attitude.
So I said that in times like these, an owner of the equipment is always happy
to hear, “hey chuck, sorry, I f**ked up”. That was met with no response.
I repeated it a second and third time. I started laughing and turned to his
supervisor. His supervisor xxx said “hey dude, you need to say those words to
Chuck”. xxx mumbled some semblance of the phrase but immediately followed it
with an energetic “you didn’t apologize to me for putting the orange drums
against my truck”.
xxx, from day 1 parked first in the bookkeeper’s parking stall, we asked him to
park out with the other employees. He then parked in our loading dock blocking
us from using it. We had a talk about that. He finally parked with the rest
of the employees but on the edge of a drive forcing everyone to swing wide
around his truck and preventing us from taking larger trucks in that parking
lot. I put up some orange construction barrels to block off the area where I
didn’t want any one to park. That was OK for a day or two but then I came to
work and the barrels were in the dirt and xxx had parked on the far end again.
I put the barrels in front and to the side of his truck and called his
supervisor to have him inform xxx that that corner of the parking lot is a no
park area.
So this morning when xxx defiantly proclaimed that he was owed an apology I
lost my cool, I told him that it was my parking lot and I could do what I
wanted. That in the future he could leave his truck at home and catch a ride
with someone else. I also said that he may have just lost his job.
I came back to the office to cool off. Called a manager (xxx at 10:20 am) that
was out sick this morning. He said that xxx had not changed much since our
last formal disciplinary meeting, so he is fine for xxx to be gone. I called
xxx (at 10:26 am) and told him to tell xxx to clock out and go home. We then
decided to make this permanent.
>From day one xxx was aloof. Telling his co-workers he knew more about our
>business than we did. One of our employees quickly asked to to be paired up
>with xxx. We never asked for specifics. It may have some racial tension.
>xxx would refuse to sit at the table when we had company meetings. He would
>show up late and either not come into the meeting room or stand away from the
>rest of us.
He decided to put a water tank on a truck and drive it over I-80 to a job site.
He was not asked to put the tank on, the tank was not put on in a safe manner
and when queried about it he said that Ben McCown and xxx wanted it done. To
the contrary Ben told him not to put the tank on as it would not be safe and
xxx said that he never talked to xxx about it and felt xxx was lying.
We have one formal, signed, disciplinary record in the file covering many of
these argumentative and attitudinal issues.
He was fired for cause this morning.
Open insubordination officially but the culmination of a long series of events
as they usually are.
11:30 am 7/13/2020
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