Never Fired anyone until today.

mbalbritton

mbalbritton

#@$%!
Joined
Mar 22, 2005
Location
Lakeland, FL
I had to fire a guy this morning. I've never had to do that before. Sucks because I really liked the guy. He worked hard, he hustled, he just didn't get it together. I'd give him a set of instructions and I'd get the deer in headlights looks too many times. Or things would get done wrong/not how I told him. And no real leadership skills in managing a crew of temps.

Good work ethic, always early, never complained, hustled. So, that sucked to do.
 
hate it for you man, but he seems like he just wasn't a good fit so he may find a better fit elsewhere, who knows may be better for everyone involved
 
Many years ago when I was managing restaurant's I hired and fired many. When I hired them I told them all that the only way to loose your job working for me was
1. you quit
2. you do not show up for work when scheduled
3. you do not do your job as it is outlined
4. you are dishonest

So it wasn't often that I regretted my choice to end someone's employment.
If it was a matter of not doing their job (performance issue, be it lack of skill or lack of drive) I give them a oral warning, then a written warning, a final warning, and then termination. No one could never say they didn't see it coming.
 
I've fired quite a few, it's never really easy...unless the person is just that worthless. As I've been moved to different positions and changed jobs, usually the first thing I'm tasked with is cleaning up the head count. That look you get from a guy that has been doing that job for longer than you've been alive, but just isn't as sharp and can't keep up physically anymore...has a way of etching itself in your memory. But as mentioned above, I usually try to give plenty of warning, so there are no questions, no surprises and no one can be blamed but them. I also keep a log on employees, daily for new hires, only screw ups for other employees. The logs are for any sort of legal ramifications. I've had guys come back telling me I'm racist and I fired them because they were 1/96th Cherokee and guys tell me I discriminated against them because of disabilities they have that no one knew about, etc etc. Regardless, on the human level, it's really tough on you, because you just took the food off the table for some guy's kid...but it's not your fault they failed and it's your job to make the hard decisions.
 
I've only had to fire a couple of people in the past, sucks unless they really screwed themselves. Never had to fire anyone I actually liked though.
 
mbalbritton said:
I had to fire a guy this morning. I've never had to do that before. Sucks because I really liked the guy. He worked hard, he hustled, he just didn't get it together. I'd give him a set of instructions and I'd get the deer in headlights looks too many times. Or things would get done wrong/not how I told him. And no real leadership skills in managing a crew of temps.

Good work ethic, always early, never complained, hustled. So, that sucked to do.
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That's rough. Unfortunate that you had to let someone go that actually wanted to work (i.e showed hustle). It's a little late now, but was there something that he was good at that would have been a task that he could have been assigned instead? Some people are great workers, but lousy managers, so perhaps by putting him in a position where he had to manage temps, it was above his level, but the actual work would have been more his speed?

I always seemed to get stuck with employees that were fully capable, but just didn't want to work. Opposite problem.
 
Not really. Our operation here is pretty small. 8 full time people including the bosses. I'm the Production Manager, and we brought him on to be the Warehouse Supervisor. Our Warehouse work is Temp work. All he could've have done was drop down to a temp worker through an agency from full time employee.
 
Man...it sucks.
I thought I needed to climb the ladder like so many young guys. By 23 I was in management and by 30 I had a dozen managers and 200 indirect reports under me. Finally I took a side step in my career into a different avenue totally and I couldn't be happier. (this sounds harsh but I dont want my day to be dictated by someone else's sick kid or head cold that they cant work through)

Ive been through the gamut of emotions. I was young, brash and brazen and got off on the power of terminating someone (sounds harsh now, but in retrospect that was true then), I reached a level of callousness about where I felt nothing...and by the time I got out of management (some say just when I may have finally STARTED figuring it out) I began to feel that by firing someone I was admitting that I was a failure at training that person or in screening and hiring.

For his sake I hope you had talked about it enough that he knew it was coming. I never wanted to surprise someone with a termination. If it is done properly you can look at them and say, "you know why we are here don't you"..I got to say man.

I feel like there are only 2 things I cant fix as a leader. I cant fix stupid and I cant fix lazy, if someone is intelligent and hard working I can work with them.

Based on 8 years of interaction on line and a very few interactions, I am sure you made a thoughtful and conscious decision. If he was in the wrong role, rest assured you freed him up to find an opportunity where he will be more successful.

Dont beat yourself up over it.
 
Ron said:
Man...it sucks.
I thought I needed to climb the ladder like so many young guys. By 23 I was in management and by 30 I had a dozen managers and 200 indirect reports under me. Finally I took a side step in my career into a different avenue totally and I couldn't be happier. (this sounds harsh but I dont want my day to be dictated by someone else's sick kid or head cold that they cant work through)

Ive been through the gamut of emotions. I was young, brash and brazen and got off on the power of terminating someone (sounds harsh now, but in retrospect that was true then), I reached a level of callousness about where I felt nothing...and by the time I got out of management (some say just when I may have finally STARTED figuring it out) I began to feel that by firing someone I was admitting that I was a failure at training that person or in screening and hiring.

For his sake I hope you had talked about it enough that he knew it was coming. I never wanted to surprise someone with a termination. If it is done properly you can look at them and say, "you know why we are here don't you"..I got to say man.

I feel like there are only 2 things I cant fix as a leader. I cant fix stupid and I cant fix lazy, if someone is intelligent and hard working I can work with them.

Based on 8 years of interaction on line and a very few interactions, I am sure you made a thoughtful and conscious decision. If he was in the wrong role, rest assured you freed him up to find an opportunity where he will be more successful.

Dont beat yourself up over it.
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You hit the nail on the head of several points there. He did know it was coming, and I like to think I can train a monkey to do anything in my warehouse, but he lacked leadership. I tried to drill that home and he knew he was under observation for job performance. I've also taken something away from this as a learning experience for me. Already working on a better job expectation guideline that I can hand the new guy so he knows what's expected.

I hate to send a good guy packing, but it all comes back to me when the shit's not getting done in the warehouse.
 
livetorun said:
99% of people dont get fired, they fire themselves.
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I don't agree with this at all. many times there are extenuating circumstances that

A) Management is too arrogant to acknowledge there is a problem, and instead of finding and fixing the actual problem, they find someone to blame and use that as their out, happens all the time, and the problem never really gets fixed, it just festers until there is another fall guy.

B) there is a problem that has been addressed with lower management, but they haven't informed the higher ups and the problem that causes the actual dismissal is actually a symptom and not the cause. Only AFTER the person is dismissed it is actually apparent where the true problem is as the person dismissed was the one doing more than their share to keep the process going taking up slack for those that aren't. The mistakes the person made that caused them to be let go were a result of taking on more responsibility than they were able to handle.

Not always is the correct person let go, just the person who appeared from the distant view of the office to be the problem because they were the one that made the mistake (everyone knows an effective manager never leaves their desk to actually see what is really happening on the floor :rolleyes: )

When a place of employment has a high turn over of employees, is it the people that are doing the work, or the people that manage them that are at fault ?

High turn over cost $$$, constantly having to train/retrain and certify new hires is much more expensive than keeping folks and training them properly, or making the process more efficient and user compatable. Never did understand why that is such a hard concept to understand.

I see this a LOT in my day to day travels from job site to job site.

I've seen whole operations have complete employee turn over in 9mos (or less) management to floor sweeper, replaced. The basic operation never seems to improve.
 
I don't know about anything other than the auto repair business, but I expect to fire them and I am pleasantly surprised when I don't have to. So many BS artists looking for better pay for less work.
 
Blkvoodoo said:
I don't agree with this at all. many times there are extenuating circumstances that

A) Management is too arrogant to acknowledge there is a problem, and instead of finding and fixing the actual problem, they find someone to blame and use that as their out, happens all the time, and the problem never really gets fixed, it just festers until there is another fall guy.

B) there is a problem that has been addressed with lower management, but they haven't informed the higher ups and the problem that causes the actual dismissal is actually a symptom and not the cause. Only AFTER the person is dismissed it is actually apparent where the true problem is as the person dismissed was the one doing more than their share to keep the process going taking up slack for those that aren't. The mistakes the person made that caused them to be let go were a result of taking on more responsibility than they were able to handle.

Not always is the correct person let go, just the person who appeared from the distant view of the office to be the problem because they were the one that made the mistake (everyone knows an effective manager never leaves their desk to actually see what is really happening on the floor :rolleyes: )

When a place of employment has a high turn over of employees, is it the people that are doing the work, or the people that manage them that are at fault ?

High turn over cost $$$, constantly having to train/retrain and certify new hires is much more expensive than keeping folks and training them properly, or making the process more efficient and user compatable. Never did understand why that is such a hard concept to understand.

I see this a LOT in my day to day travels from job site to job site.

I've seen whole operations have complete employee turn over in 9mos (or less) management to floor sweeper, replaced. The basic operation never seems to improve.
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Can't disagree with any of that. I don't think and I certainly hope that's not my issue. :beer:
 
nctom said:
I don't know about anything other than the auto repair business, but I expect to fire them and I am pleasantly surprised when I don't have to. So many BS artists looking for better pay for less work.
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It seems like most of the auto repair work force is this way, and I think thats partially the fault of flat rate. Zig Ziglar had a story he called the "railroad story" that covered that wonderfully. http://www.sellingfearlessly.com/2012/09/24/zig-ziglars-railroad-story/


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I have an interesting perspective on this issue b/c of my place of employment, I bring this up just for thought and hopes it doesn't take this thread off track...

I'm a Fed civilian in a place that is mostly highly-trained people and support staff, a mix of Feds and contractors.
As most folks know, unfortunately it is very difficult to fire Fed employees. There are tons of rules and restrictions and literally piles of paperwork required. You actually can't fire somebody for incompetence, that is considered a management failure for (1) hiring the wrong person and (2) not finding something to match their skill set. You can only fire them if you can prove they are willingly, intentionally not doing their job AND you have lots of documentation of it. This is the result of many years of lawsuits and the idea of a common management rules for a million people forcing "fairness" for the lowest common denominator.
Yeah it sucks and its a bunch of BS, no need for the obvious bitch-session :bounce2: .
But the point is... we are really sensitive to this, and at least in our group we assume that any hire is potentially a hire for life... could be stuick w/ this guy a long time... So we are super-critical of and conservative about any potential "civie" hires.
Instead, we tend to use contractors for support staff (since they are the most likely to become bored and poor performing but least likely to leave voluntarily). Then when we need to replace them we can at least tell their supervisor or change the contract :D. And for higher-up positions, we bring people in as post-docs or contract researchers for a while as a try-out before trying to hire (of course there's a hiring freeze now so its kind of irrelevant).

So it's unlikely I'll ever have to really deal with this personally in this job, we either pawn slackers off on other groups, or let their contractor boss do the dirty work. Yep pretty cold, but it allows me to just worry about my own job and keep us running lean and mean.
 
What sucks too is firing someone who has 3 little kids (less than 6 y/o for all of them) and knowing that they have a drug problem. I wanted her to stay in her job to provide for her kids but she knew she made too many mistakes that could have cost a lot of people their job. I know firing her might not have been best for the kids but it was either her or the rest of the department including me. That was pretty rough on me especially since I've been to all 3 kids birthday parties over the past 4 years.
 
Here's one I come across all the time, kinda piggy backing off what blkvoodoo said...improper work distribution. You have guy 1 and guy 2. Guy 1 is always working long hours and only seems to get 50% of what you think he should be doing done, while guy 2 never has to work a minute beyond 5. To the naked eye, it appears guy 1 is just flat out struggling, while guy 2 must be the shining star of efficiency in the department. Truth be told, guy 1 showed he's fully capable of taking on anything that's thrown at him, he does it well, and it soon becomes his job...and before long he's doing the job of 2/3/4 different people. Then when you actually review what guy 2 does on a day to day basis, it's not much...and that's because his quality of work sucks and he doesn't have a clue what he's doing, and no one trusts his work. While I feel like firing someone on the spot for saying 'that's not my job'...in reality it might be better if you don't make them do the task...they might already be too overloaded, or would just suck at doing it.

While I'm still young in my management career, I like to think I can tailor my management style to each of my employees for their learning habits and best development. But as much of a hero as I am in my own mind, I'm as guilty as anyone dumping an important project on a star pupil or just saying screw it, it'll take me less time to do something than train someone or make a slacker carry their own weight.

At the end of the day, my philosophy, and I think the only thing you really can do, is offer up the resources so the guy can be successful, without holding his hand.
 
If everything pans out I'll be taking a supervisory roll very soon. I will have about 20 people under me with majority being union. In this atmosphere it really is a "fire yourself" situation. In some ways that relieves the pressure of having to make the hard decisions but then again you have to put up with slack asses that seem to scoot by. It will be an interesting learning experience for me.
 
UTfball68 said:
Here's one I come across all the time, kinda piggy backing off what blkvoodoo said...improper work distribution. You have guy 1 and guy 2. Guy 1 is always working long hours and only seems to get 50% of what you think he should be doing done, while guy 2 never has to work a minute beyond 5. To the naked eye, it appears guy 1 is just flat out struggling, while guy 2 must be the shining star of efficiency in the department. Truth be told, guy 1 showed he's fully capable of taking on anything that's thrown at him, he does it well, and it soon becomes his job...and before long he's doing the job of 2/3/4 different people. Then when you actually review what guy 2 does on a day to day basis, it's not much...and that's because his quality of work sucks and he doesn't have a clue what he's doing, and no one trusts his work. While I feel like firing someone on the spot for saying 'that's not my job'...in reality it might be better if you don't make them do the task...they might already be too overloaded, or would just suck at doing it.

While I'm still young in my management career, I like to think I can tailor my management style to each of my employees for their learning habits and best development. But as much of a hero as I am in my own mind, I'm as guilty as anyone dumping an important project on a star pupil or just saying screw it, it'll take me less time to do something than train someone or make a slacker carry their own weight.

At the end of the day, my philosophy, and I think the only thing you really can do, is offer up the resources so the guy can be successful, without holding his hand.
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Here is a tip for you.
Never promote Guy 1 to management. He cant manage his own work load, how will he ever manage the teams?

Taking on other people's work isnt a shining characteristic in my eyes.
Unless seagull management is the corporate culture.
 
Ron said:
Here is a tip for you.
Never promote Guy 1 to management. He cant manage his own work load, how will he ever manage the teams?

Taking on other people's work isnt a shining characteristic in my eyes.
Unless seagull management is the corporate culture.
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Thanks for tip, and I fully agree...definitely was a flaw of mine for a while...something I've worked hard on stopping. As a peon, it got me exposure, experience and a pat on the back from the 'big boys'. With each promotion I learned it just created dissention amongst my team, because I didn't 'trust them'...and it caused me to miss my own deadlines. It took me not working for a micro-manager to finally wise up.
 
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Ron said:
Taking on other people's work isnt a shining characteristic in my eyes.
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And this was another key point in termination. Lack of leadership is what that is. I'd be in the middle of giving him a set of instructions and I'd say something like; have a trash can here for this station...; and he'd leave me in mid sentence to get the trash can on the other side of the warehouse. I'd then have to tell him to wait for full instructions then tell the temp crew to "get the trash can to that station". That's probably why he was always seemingly hustling and working hard. He was doing it himself instead of managing others to do the work. Can't tell you how many times I had to point that out to him. In the end, I only have time to give you the same directions once or twice. I have shit to do myself! I spent too long shuffling papers preparing for jobs, then going back and managing the crews myself because we didn't have a warehouse supervisor. Finally we hired this guy to oversee production in the warehouse, but I still found myself back there having to manage things, or going over directions 3-4 times.
 
Another tip to remember: Your best employees don't always make the best managers.
 
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