How an Eleven-Day Employee Became a Total Pain in my Ass.

JoeDirt and being employed for eleven days

JoeDirt started working at DeltaHouse and stopped working less than two weeks later. We fired him.

Here’s my story. SuperHippie came in every other day for eleven days and went, “Where the hell is JoeDirt?” I’d check my voice mail and he had the following excuses in the eleven days…

• His father had a heart attack.
• His basement flooded.
• His wife got fired from her job.
• His father went back to the hospital.
• He had a court date.

SuperHippie, PlantGuy, and I decided that there was no way that a new employee could be this unlucky. This was going to be a trend. So we decided that eleven days of a guy who made it to four of the first nine days that he was supposed to work was plenty for us. He is becoming a lot more trouble than he’s worth. Not to mention that he made about half of the widgets that he said he could.

Thank you and good night.

Or for Wipeout fans (the ultimate stress-reliever show), good night, and big balls.

We canned him.

His side of the story. His dad had a heart attack. We’re bastards. And we knew about the court date. He can’t help if his basement flooded and if his wife got fired. But these are things that needed his attention.

Now, how much thought did I give to an employee that lasted about the length of a spring break road trip? Zero.

Then it was a month later.

I saw the letter on PainInTheAss’s desk, addressed to “Prezdent of DelltaHaus” from JoeDirt.

Here’s the exchange I had in my head…

MoralVHRG: “Let it go to TheBoss, he’ll read it, and toss it.”
EvilVHRG: “Let’s think self-preservation, he’s going to read it, and bug you about it. And might even give you sh!t about the way it went down.”
MoralVHRG: “The guy worked here for eleven days, who cares?”
EvilVHRG: “He will. Watch! Take the envelope and shred it, no one will know.”
MoralVHRG: “That’s illegal. You can’t do that.”
EvilVHRG: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

TheBoss showed me the letter about three hours later.

JoeDirt explained his side of the story. I explained that he worked here for eleven days, and was covered under no laws.

JoeDirt invited TheBoss for lunch to discuss a position in the office that he saw was available. I openly wonder who’d pay for that lunch.

He points out that he felt that like we didn’t give him a fair shake. I point out that in nine working days, he couldn’t make it to five of them, and walked out on the job on one day (which was the one we decided would be his last day).

He points out that he thought the job was higher up on the chain. I point out that with the amount of grammatical errors he has in this letter you’ll never be able to understand an email he wrote if we gave him a supervisor job.

JoeDirt spelled my name way wrong in the letter and called me “PRHG”. I wondered why he didn’t just write this in crayon to TheBoss.

TheBoss wanted a full report, in an email, of what his employment entailed.

I delivered it. TheBoss read it and accepted it. I need the support of PlantGuy and SuperHippie in order to get it.

What frustrated me was TheBoss doubting me in favor of an employee who called me “PRHG” in the letter and worked at “DelltaHaus” for eleven days.

Then a few months later, the same letter showed up. Complete with being addressed to “Prezdent of DelltaHaus” from JoeDirt.

I shredded it.

Why FutureStar is going to leave

FutureStar and I were talking about her work. FutureStar works with Beak. Beak has been at DeltaHouse for a long time, and she's finally exiting to let FutureStar (who is destroying Beak's output), do the job her way. FutureStar can't wait to be able to do her job without Beak's beak-ness interfering.

Beak's greatest hits include: giving her opinion when it isn't asked (and having it count), asking for a company event to be done (and not showing up to it), and disagreeing with what you say if it sounds wrong (even if it is correct). FutureStar was fired up to be to do the job her way.

Until...

TheBoss informed FutureStar that Beak is going to be used as a consultant. The look on FutureStar's face said everything... I'M SO QUITTING WHEN THE ECONOMY TURNS.

That's the sad thing.

Yes, we should all be happy to even have a job, the economy sucks, and people are losing jobs left and right. But guess what, when the economy turns better and job markets get better, the employees that you are dumping extra work that they didn't sign up for , not giving raises to, not developing, didn't recognize for their effort, and assumed were happy with how things are going are going. Are going to go. Out the door to another job.

And it's moments like this that they'll point to when you ask, "Why would you leave?"

Things that the workforce is tired of hearing...

• The economy isn't the greatest right now.
• We need you to do HR, PR, AR, QA, AP, sales calls, customer services, and plunge the toilet. Because we laid off everyone that does those things.
• You are lucky to have a job.
• We can't give you a raise, a review, training, or any help.

The funny part about me, is that I'm playing my hand like I'm totally committed to the extra work and the company. But as soon as I can, I'm done.

Ghosts haunting DeltaHouse

Here's a look at what DeltaHouse is like now. We are at about 50% of the amount of employees that we were when we were rocking and rolling. We've been steadily letting people go. But when it happened nobody was super-shocked.

Until the last time. We finally cut muscle and bone. The cuts were shocking to most Deltas. And I supposed I'd be shocked too, if I did help plan it. My favorite is that one of the employees that was cut started their own blog. And every day they talk about how much they are shocked that they were cut. And how people are calling them to ask for guidance. And they even dropped my favorite line, "frankly, I don't know how DeltaHouse is going to survive without me." We are doing just fine.

But for others, they were cut, and they won't go away...

They pop-in just to visit. To get lunch with an old co-worker friend. To see how things are going.

I really don't get it. But so far this week at DeltaHouse there have been not one, not two, not three, but FOUR ghosts.

Ghosts, to my new readers, are people who have been fired, have quit, or have been laid off.

Now, if (please, oh please, WHEN) the day comes that I leave DeltaHouse, and move to the status of ghost, you can bet your last dollar that I'm NEVER returning the DeltaHouse. Ever. I don't care if I left something gold-plated, they can keep it.

But our ghosts were in the past few days. Just to hang out and see how things were going, visiting friends, and catching up.

I think they are looking for any new faces so they can be mad that we didn't hire them back.

But I can't kick them out (I mean yes, I could, but still). That would put me just short of Darth Vader on the bad guy list.

And I guess they are looking for the community or work that they work sorely missing since they were laid off (that's what many of them were). But I just can't see the logic.

An open letter to Mordac

Hi Mordac --

I call you Mordac because I've named you after the Dilbert character who serves as the preventer of information services. This only scratches the surface to describe what you do to our company.

First things first, I'm 95% sure that I know more about computers than you do. The HR guy at a company should be at your mercy, but I only manage to involve you when I can smell smoke coming from my computer because you might have a fire extinguisher.

Here is what the IT guy at a company is supposed to do.

• Make sure that computers at DeltaHouse take less than 35 minutes to boot up in the morning (FAIL, mine takes 42, which is why I never shut it down).
• Answer questions that the other people in the office in a nice and courteous manner (FAIL, which is why they ask me instead).
  
• Make sure that my computer gets backed up (CHECK, but doing this during a time when I might not be in the middle of a critical project would help).
• Not look constipated and confused all the time (FAIL, you look like you are either looking some bizarre genre of adult movie, or that you are trying to read the Korean instructions on how to assemble furniture).
• Get the management team computers flipped out every few years (FAIL, mine's three years old).
  

Here are things that you tend to do, and my suggestions of how to deal with it...

• Belittle anyone who has a computer problem who isn't TheBoss (pretend everyone is the boss).
• Offer business advice when not asked for it (you wouldn't be working at DeltaHouse if half the sh!t you spewed worked; shutting the f*ck up, would be my suggestion).
• Keep DeltaHouse at Windows 2000 and Office 2003 software (this is in addition to continue planning, but never actually launching the new intranet. How about getting the company out of the dark ages... and perhaps... even training for it).
• Call me out for doing my job (do me a favor and when you have a problem with the VHRG, ask me first instead of copying TheBoss and half the office because you misread something the handbook.)
  

By the way, all of us know that you spy on all the stuff that we send via email and look at online. And don't think I'm not going to mess with you over that one day. One well-placed, well-written email, and I know I can give you a heart attack.

Sincerely,
VHRG

I'm on Twitter now!

Hey Readers! Check out my tweets on twitter.com/VHRG. I'm post stuff that too short for a blog post, my all-time favorite links, and random thoughts. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Yes, I'll still post here, but I'll take a pass tonight.

Four Lawsuits from the Future

Any HR person goes to enough legal update seminars to hear about lawsuits that have happened within the past year. And the shocking results prove that stupid people can continue to be stupid and remain employed.

So I’m trying to break out the crystal ball and see what the future of lawsuits look like. Here’s four that I’m waiting for…

A single (legally unmarried), healthy employee with no kids sues because she/he feels like - or has been ordered to - stay late at work while less-than-healthy, married, and employees that are parents get to leave work at 5pm.

A non-smoking employee sues their employer because the smoking employee gets paid the same, yet gets to take six ten-minute smoke breaks per day while the non-smoker works. Damages: 250 hours of pay (per year this has gone on), plus interest.

An employee getting fired sues for damages because – while not eligible for FMLA – would have been within three months, and they get fired.

A salaried, healthy employee sues for back wages because an FMLA co-workers misses an average of 10 hours of work per week, and the healthy-salaried employee has been having to make up for it. No raise. No promotion. Just more work. More hours.

Taunting the WidgetKing

The WidgetKing and I are as decent friends as an HR person can allow himself to be with someone. We have Clerks-movie-esque conversations pretty regularly where there is minimal room for breaks in conversation between my comment and his response.

WidgetKind needed to fire TheFace. TheFace has this face he makes when he works that looks like extreme concentration (or something else… we’ll just go with concentration and move on). Anyway, a few chat about TheFace’s performance – with no results, WidgetKing came to me saying it was time for TheFace to go.

I asked him if he wanted me there when he did it.

WidgetKing: “No.”
VHRG: “No?”
WidgetKing: “It’s not necessary.”
VHRG: “It’s not necessary?”
WidgetKing: “I can handle it myself.”
VHRG: “You can handle it yourself?”
WidgetKing: “CUT IT OUT!”
VHRG: “Fine, you sure?”
WidgetKing: “Yes.”
VHRG: “My boy’s all grows up! When are you doing it?”
WidgetKing: “Five o’clock.”
VHRG: “OK, I’ll hang behind and get a report of the aftermath. Let’s practice.”
WidgetKing: “Practice what?”
VHRG: “Practice what you are going to say.”
WidgetKing (uber-serious): “TheFace, we’ve talked about your performance in the past couple of months. I’m not seeing improvement, and I think it is best for all involved if today is your last day.”
VHRG: “Perfect! Go forth, and do battle.”

(at 5:15pm WidgetKing resurfaces)

VHRG: “How did it go?”
WidgetKing: “I didn’t do it.”
VHRG: “What?!?!?!”
WidgetKing: “I couldn’t.”
VHRG: “Why?!?!?!?!”
WidgetKing: “He said he was really working on something, and he thought he was making progress.”
VHRG: “YOU WIMP!”
WidgetKing: “What?”
VHRG: “If he hadn’t figured it out after two disciplinary talks, do you really think this is magically going to turn around?”
WidgetKing: “Uh…”
VHRG: “Let me ask you this, do you think he’s going to make it?”
WidgetKing: (after a pause) “Well…”
VHRG: “That’s a ‘no’!”
WidgetKing: “Maybe he will turn it around.”
VHRG: “And maybe I will go to The Olympics for curling. You wimp! You should have canned him. Now you gave him false hope.”
WidgetKing: “What?”
VHRG: “He thinks you two are cool now! You should have kicked him in the nuts, and it would have ended better. You sent him mixed signals. If you can him soon… like… tomorrow, or the end this week, he’s going to be really pissed.”
WidgetKing: “I’ll fire him next week.”
VHRG: “Is that your code for giving him a neck rub?”
WidgetKing: (groans)
Up until TheFace got fired, I pretty much waited for every meeting with WidgetKing’s closed doors, and stood in the door window, and made TheFace’s face.

WidgetKing got that deer-in-headlights look the first few times I did that. Then he became great at discreetly flipping me the bird.

TheFace must’ve taken the hints from WidgetKing, he wound up leaving about two weeks later.