Its nice when someone ELSE gets fired

[CaptainChewbacca]

So, I have a co-worker/supervisor who nobody likes. Well, had, but that's getting ahead of the story. First of all, she works from home on disability, so she can't come into the office and I've never actually met her.

She micromanages, she circumvents procedure, she makes sure projects go only through her, and she delays report reviews. One of my co-workers (a cool guy) finally took a report away from her that was almost two years overdue. This is the woman who accused me of trying to trap her because I cced my boss on an email between the two of us.

And now, she's fired. The regional VP fired her directly, after being cced on a massive argument between her and the rest of the office on a project we were doing. She disagreed with the other project managers, and thoguht she knew better. Guess again.

So, no more crazy-never-met-her-micromanaging-busybody!

HOOOOOORAY!

[Big Phil]

What do you do for a living? I don't know how somebody could function as a manager without interacting (in person) with their staff.

[CaptainChewbacca]

What do you do for a living? I don't know how somebody could function as a manager without interacting (in person) with their staff.

I'm an environmental consultant. She's one of many 'senior manager/reviewers' at my office, there's plenty of people that I do interact with who are senior to me.

[Kodiak]

And now, she's fired. The regional VP fired her directly, after being cced on a massive argument between her and the rest of the office on a project we were doing. She disagreed with the other project managers, and thoguht she knew better. Guess again.

So, no more crazy-never-met-her-micromanaging-busybody!

HOOOOOORAY!

Would it be possible to see the e-mail argument? I'd award bonus internets for hilarity.

[General Zod]

And now, she's fired. The regional VP fired her directly, after being cced on a massive argument between her and the rest of the office on a project we were doing. She disagreed with the other project managers, and thoguht she knew better. Guess again.

So, no more crazy-never-met-her-micromanaging-busybody!

HOOOOOORAY!

Would it be possible to see the e-mail argument? I'd award bonus internets for hilarity.

I'd imagine that would violate any numerous kinds of NDA clauses and other fun confidentiality agreements Chewie has signed.

[CaptainChewbacca]

And now, she's fired. The regional VP fired her directly, after being cced on a massive argument between her and the rest of the office on a project we were doing. She disagreed with the other project managers, and thoguht she knew better. Guess again.

So, no more crazy-never-met-her-micromanaging-busybody!

HOOOOOORAY!

Would it be possible to see the e-mail argument? I'd award bonus internets for hilarity.

I'd imagine that would violate any numerous kinds of NDA clauses and other fun confidentiality agreements Chewie has signed.

While quite hilarious to read, it would INDEED be grounds for my immediate dismissal, as its a correspondance between my office, two separate county agencies, the state environmental fund, and two federal regulators.

Also, it really won't make any sense unless you're actually IN the industry. I'll sum it up though;

Regulators: You've got a problem here. There's contaminated soil, and the last tests you did were inconclusive.

FiredLady: We'll just do the test we did last time, only bigger and more widespread!

Manager1: Uh... not only did that test require 70 continuous hours of monitoring, it blew a quarter of our budget.

FiredLady: I know, right? This time we'll spend more money to get a better result!

Manager2: Uh... there's no guarantee that spending the rest of our budget this way is even going to give results, let alone results we want.

FiredLady: I've been doing this 30 years! I know what I'm talking about.

Manager1: Really? Because I'd think you would have seen the failure of the first test coming if that were true.

Manager2: Yeah, what was the deal behind that again?

FiredLady: You just didn't implement all my recommendations, it would've worked the way I wrote it originally.

Me: Your original plan would have caused a massive explosion in central modesto if I hadn't pointed out that you were injecting dangerous chemicals into three separate wells that were less than two feet apart.

FiredLady: Well SHEESH! That's why I send you things to review and implement. You havn't been around too long, so you don't know how things work.

MyBoss: Hey, FiredLady, have you been calling your co-workers to ask them questions about the audits we had a month ago?

FiredLady: Nope, just doing my work and minding my own business.

Manager1: She called me.

Manager2: She called me.

Me: I, uh... havn't been here long enough to have work that needs auditing.

FiredLady:

MyBoss: Hey... you wanna have a conference call with the regional VP and the head of HR?

FiredLady: ....

And that's pretty much how it went. Now they're trying to fire her, but she's not answering her phone.

[Kodiak]

And that's pretty much how it went. Now they're trying to fire her, but she's not answering her phone.

"If I don't pick up the phone they can't fire me!"

I love it when people get what's coming to them

I'm not sure I understand what happened there with the audits and stuff, but I guess it's a combination of her not doing her job and then lying about it?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Her lying to the boss and being difficult/obstructionist on any project she didn't agree with were the main things.

Oh, and that phone thing doesn't work. We're sending a registered letter, she'll get it monday.

[Ubiquitous]

How can you fire someone for having an argument over email? At my company we have a very specific framework that we have to follow if we want to let someone go. I couldn't imagine working an a company where a boss could come along and summarily fire you if you were involved in an argument over a project.

Maybe you just worded your post very badly, but it seems like this person may have grounds to file for unfair dismissal.

edit - And WOOOO there! You were going to fire her over the phone? Without any grounds for defending herself? This is sounding worse by the minute. I'm glad I live in a country/work for a company that will at least allow me to defend myself if my job is on the line for matters of conduct.

[Kodiak]

edit - And WOOOO there! You were going to fire her over the phone? Without any grounds for defending herself? This is sounding worse by the minute. I'm glad I live in a country/work for a company that will at least allow me to defend myself if my job is on the line for matters of conduct.

Since she works from home on disability, perhaps the only contact she has with her supervisors in by phone? It may be over an hour for them to drive to her house just to fire her.

[General Zod]

How can you fire someone for having an argument over email? At my company we have a very specific framework that we have to follow if we want to let someone go. I couldn't imagine working an a company where a boss could come along and summarily fire you if you were involved in an argument over a project.

Maybe you just worded your post very badly, but it seems like this person may have grounds to file for unfair dismissal.

edit - And WOOOO there! You were going to fire her over the phone? Without any grounds for defending herself? This is sounding worse by the minute. I'm glad I live in a country/work for a company that will at least allow me to defend myself if my job is on the line for matters of conduct.

Are you sure you're reading the same post? Constantly delaying projects, reports and screwing up audits sounds like clear grounds for dismissal to me.

[CaptainChewbacca]

How can you fire someone for having an argument over email? At my company we have a very specific framework that we have to follow if we want to let someone go. I couldn't imagine working an a company where a boss could come along and summarily fire you if you were involved in an argument over a project.

Maybe you just worded your post very badly, but it seems like this person may have grounds to file for unfair dismissal.

Firstly, I'm not the one firing her. Secondly;

Her lying to the boss and being difficult/obstructionist on any project she didn't agree with were the main things.

How'd you get that she was fired over an argument?

edit - And WOOOO there! You were going to fire her over the phone? Without any grounds for defending herself? This is sounding worse by the minute. I'm glad I live in a country/work for a company that will at least allow me to defend myself if my job is on the line for matters of conduct.

She works from home. On disability. Two hundred miles away. Heck, I've been working here almost a year, and I've never met her.

This firing isn't out-of-the-blue, she's been on the shit list for a few months now, since people have begun realizing just how difficult she's being. She has been directed by our boss to shape up and be a team player, but the fact that she was caught lying, and that this final email argument played out in the inbox of the regional VP meant she was just confirming for him everything people had been saying about her for the past few years.

If you have one person in your office who three senior managers REFUSE to deal with because of her difficult personality, the problem probably isn't them.

[Vendetta]

And that's pretty much how it went. Now they're trying to fire her, but she's not answering her phone.

"If I don't pick up the phone they can't fire me!"

You'd be surprised just how long that works for. I've known two instances of people who have gone long term AWOL from my workplace who took months to actually fire because they simply wouldn't turn up for the disciplinary meetings, and were suspiciously absent whenever a home visit was tried.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Fortunately, the woman at my company is rather agorophobic, so she's not going anywhere.

[Pelranius]

Was the only reason she was able to get away for so long with this was because of her seniority (30 yrs sounds like a lot of time).

[Ariphaos]

Huh, I just had a discussion with a client of mine a couple weeks ago whose friend had just done a review-audit of a business, basically pointing one lady out and saying "You need to fire this person, she's being an obstructionist."

[CaptainChewbacca]

Was the only reason she was able to get away for so long with this was because of her seniority (30 yrs sounds like a lot of time).

She's only been with my company 6 years. No, she stuck around so long because she DID produce, and because she operated rather 'in the dark' where my boss never quite knew what she was up to. She never sent emails, and only communicated by phone, so it was very hard to doccument what she was working on.

[Pelranius]

Was the only reason she was able to get away for so long with this was because of her seniority (30 yrs sounds like a lot of time).

She's only been with my company 6 years. No, she stuck around so long because she DID produce, and because she operated rather 'in the dark' where my boss never quite knew what she was up to. She never sent emails, and only communicated by phone, so it was very hard to doccument what she was working on.

Weird, sounds almost as if she was a corporate spy or someone who was working two full time jobs at once. Though spies usually try to be sociable.

[Edi]

Employee protection laws in the US are significantly less forceful than in Europe, but based on the behavior described, it would not have saved her ass even here. Back before my father retired, he had to deal with some cases of difficult employees like this and he didn't look at that sort of asshattery at all. Had she been working for him, she'd have been fired years ago.

[Temjin]

Lucky bastard.

At my last job, I was runner for Lifetouch photos in the packaging department. My job was basically getting photos ready to be packaged, and doing whatever else needed doing, including troubleshooting.

And day shift counterpart was completely incompetent. Sometimes, at least half my day was spent fixing her fuckups. And whatever I didn't catch and fix, I got blamed for. Why? Because the bitch was actually blaming me for her fuckups! Since we didn't really have a supervisor in the evening, the day (and overall) supervisor didn't have a clue what was really going on. Thankfully, everyone else knew she was an incompetent dishonest bitch, and the supervisor eventually did catch on.

But she was never fired. See, she had two children to support, and the supervisor took pity on her. Meanwhile, the day after my evening shift partner called in sick and I had to do both our jobs alone (including fixing bitch's mistakes), I had a talking to from the super saying I wasn't working fast enough. Even though I was keeping up with everyone I was supposed to. Day after that was the day I quit.

I better stop, since I could spend all day happily telling everyone everything I had to put with.

EDIT: Another reason I was told from someone on why she wasn't fired, was because she did her job fast. Probably because she did her job half assedly.

[CmdrWilkens]

Having done a small bit of performance related firing myself I cn say that it looks like they tok every step neccessary. They, from Chewie's words, had already given indication of poor performance and/or company policy violations. Then when an actual policy violation and/or performance violation (budget related performance, interfering with co-workers, and lying to the boss) comes up it would be more than enough to consider termination. For an employee the state by state laws vary but for the most part once the decision has been made by HR/ER then the employee has no recourse to retain the job (most employment in the US is "at will"). Now the employee is free to sue for wrongful termination but if Chewie's company keeps anywhere close to solid records then she wouldn't have much of a case.

[Ubiquitous]

Oh boy. I conducted a dismissal yesterday and it took me 8 days to fully complete the process, in which time the employee was suspended, interviewed, suspended again, re-interviewed, suspended again, other people interviewed, then re-interviewed, suspended again and finally dismissed once the investigation was fully completed [with Union reps and note takers present at all time and a paper train 50+ pages long]. And that was for something totally clear cut since it was gross misconduct! The disabled lady in the OP ... well, I can think of a few things she can consider for her appeal:

-Was her poor performance due to a 'skill' or 'will' problem? Was any attempt made to performance manage this long serving member of staff?
-Was she the victim of bullying due to her disability? Did her location off-site lead to her being at a disadvantage [clearly it has since she didn't even get a chance to defend her self from the accusations in person as the employer couldn't be arsed to even visit her to sort things out].
-Has she been treated equally due to her disability [clearly she hasn't since she was going to be fired over the phone. Not even a suspension/investigatory meeting/disciplinary meeting held!]
-Has she been offered the same training as everyone else in the company? Has her boss supplied training to try and resolve her current performance issues [performance can be technical or emotional].{Clearly this isn't the case as the employer couldn't even be arsed sending someone to her house to fire her, let alone train her}.

I am simply astounded that your company failed to follow due process ... when dealing with a fucking disabled person. You never, ever, ever sack a disabled person without being extremely careful and by-the-book! Let me guess - the person who sacked her is a 60 year old troglodyte who votes Republican and worships Henry Ford right?

Hope your employer has deep pockets Chewie, because this woman is going to clean you out. And the negative PR that this is going to generate will hopefully result in your entire senior management getting the sack, hopefully to be replaced by some people with less antiquated views on labour relations. In the mean time, enjoy the clusterfuck that is about to take place in your local media if this woman decides to appeal [and she will do, and she will win because you didn't follow due process and mainly because she is disabled and by God you don't fuck with disabled people in the workplace unless you have absolutely nailed the process. I am sure your CEO is going to just love your Regional VP for all of this. But hey the VP will probably be working for you Chewie once all of this is over so never mind eh? ].

[General Zod]

I am simply astounded that your company failed to follow due process ... when dealing with a fucking disabled person. You never, ever, ever sack a disabled person without being extremely careful and by-the-book! Let me guess - the person who sacked her is a 60 year old troglodyte who votes Republican and worships Henry Ford right?

Is there any reason you're assuming that she was fired instantly without any kind of due process whatsoever just because Chewie didn't explaining every step of the process in painstaking detail, or are you just being a kneejerking retard and didn't even bother reading anything in the thread at all once he mentioned she was disabled?

[CmdrWilkens]

Oh boy. I conducted a dismissal yesterday and it took me 8 days to fully complete the process, in which time the employee was suspended, interviewed, suspended again, re-interviewed, suspended again, other people interviewed, then re-interviewed, suspended again and finally dismissed once the investigation was fully completed [with Union reps and note takers present at all time and a paper train 50+ pages long]. And that was for something totally clear cut since it was gross misconduct! The disabled lady in the OP ... well, I can think of a few things she can consider for her appeal:

-Was her poor performance due to a 'skill' or 'will' problem? Was any attempt made to performance manage this long serving member of staff?
-Was she the victim of bullying due to her disability? Did her location off-site lead to her being at a disadvantage [clearly it has since she didn't even get a chance to defend her self from the accusations in person as the employer couldn't be arsed to even visit her to sort things out].
-Has she been treated equally due to her disability [clearly she hasn't since she was going to be fired over the phone. Not even a suspension/investigatory meeting/disciplinary meeting held!]
-Has she been offered the same training as everyone else in the company? Has her boss supplied training to try and resolve her current performance issues [performance can be technical or emotional].{Clearly this isn't the case as the employer couldn't even be arsed sending someone to her house to fire her, let alone train her}.

I am simply astounded that your company failed to follow due process ... when dealing with a fucking disabled person. You never, ever, ever sack a disabled person without being extremely careful and by-the-book! Let me guess - the person who sacked her is a 60 year old troglodyte who votes Republican and worships Henry Ford right?

Hope your employer has deep pockets Chewie, because this woman is going to clean you out. And the negative PR that this is going to generate will hopefully result in your entire senior management getting the sack, hopefully to be replaced by some people with less antiquated views on labour relations. In the mean time, enjoy the clusterfuck that is about to take place in your local media if this woman decides to appeal [and she will do, and she will win because you didn't follow due process and mainly because she is disabled and by God you don't fuck with disabled people in the workplace unless you have absolutely nailed the process. I am sure your CEO is going to just love your Regional VP for all of this. But hey the VP will probably be working for you Chewie once all of this is over so never mind eh? ].

You do realize something like 80% of the US labor force is non-union "at will" employment? If an employer is willing to pay your unemployment insurance claims they can fire you for farting at the wrong time. So long as the reason for termination is clearly stated, and supported by internally-consistent documentation, a wrongful termination lawsuit in a non-union job is virtually impossible to pull off. Moreover if the company has a misconduct policy (i.e. don't lie to your supervisors) then just her claiming she hadn't contacted certain individuals when she had is ground for disciplinary action which may not even result in a valid unemplyment insurance claim.

Simply put even with her being disabled its likely as not that Chewie's company isn't going to have more than the tiniest hiccup firing this lady.

[Darth Wong]

What "due process" is required? If the employer can provide a documented laundry list of reasons why the employee was dismissed, they don't need to provide any more "due process" than giving her two weeks notice and meeting any contractual obligations specific to her individual or collective employment contract, if any such document exists.

For a "problem employee" with no collective bargaining agreement in force that would get in the way, they could just compile a list of grievances against her (something they probably did over a period of time), and then kick her out the door. Especially if they held meetings with her and warned her at least once about the deteriorating situation beforehand.