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.