How do you deal with irresponsible employees without feeling bad?
I work at a staffing agency mainly staffing for warehouse workers where it’s not very skilled and requires minimum high school diploma. I really need to stop recruiting people from my parent’s business with flyers of job openings because I swear it makes him lose customers. The ones I recruited I found were here illegally falsifying documents, ran out on me during a drug test, had horrible attendance, etc. Don’t get me wrong, few are good. But then the bad ones are too embarrassed to show their face or angry that I ended their assignment for their horrible work ethic!
One worker has a bad habit of never returning my phone calls even after I left messages for a week regarding important details and showing up to my work unannounced during my meetings and appointments with no respect to my time. I told him to please call beforehand and to return my call.
He didn’t listen. Second time he didn’t respond to my messages and showed up announced again and had stupid excuses. I’m tired of his excuses! He could’ve called like I said and I know phone isn’t an issue since he was practically on his phone the whole time I ha him sign paperwork!
His problem is he takes no responsibility whatsoever and sees himself as innocent.
He didn’t show up to his first day in the second job I got him. Two hours later I call to find out what happened. He was clueless and said he didn’t know what time to be there after I confirmed twice, then he said he was sick and was going to call…two hours after orientation on first day…really?! I don’t believe him. I lectured him about how important it was to leave me messages as I explained our policy twice before and told him its against our policy to work with “No Call No Shows” and he got really upset. Started saying I was mean, rude, that’s no way to talk to a customer, and again putting the blame on me and taking no responsibility. Saying he was sick and wasn’t going to kill himself at work…even though I saw him two days before…
Sick? Fine, just don’t wait to have me call you two hours later after start date. It’s so hard to believe anyone’s sick because so many people tend to call off their second day and think it’s ok to take an extra day vacation.
I feel bad I made him feel bad but deep down inside I know I’m not at fault. I hate being seen as the bad guy and I can’t believe how people spin things around to make them feel guilt free.
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11 Answers
Honestly, if you hate being seen as the bad guy then you current position might not be fit for you. Any position where you have some authority over other employees is going to require a certain degree of not giving a fuck about being the “bad guy”.
I just second guess myself like maybe I was too hard on them but then I get reassurance from coworkers I’m not wrong. Injust really hate when people think they’re innocent. I think my problem with this person is I kind of know them.
I was a very demanding boss, without any regrets. I want results, but if you produce I would go all out for you too. The only way we are going to produce high end results is if we both go all out for each other. I hired an administrative assistant that had never been allowed to think for herself. I pushed her hard to think. I got some tears, but after a while she became an amazing worker. If you let people know they can trust you to have their backs, they will produce for you. But if they don’t produce, under those conditions, let them go.
The really big question here is why would you feel bad.
If they are not meeting your standards of employment, they have no moral claim to their paycheck.
Respectfully, you may be as much of a problem to YOUR business as they are.
If people can’t follow instructions, skip drug tests and generally are not doing the work they’re paid for, it can put other employees at risk and it is unreasonable to the other staff because it creates more work and a more stressful environment. It’s also not acceptable to employ people who aren’t providing the service the customer expects and needs. I have people working for me and while they might be nice people, if they’re not doing their job, I ensure I’ve provided sufficient and appropriate guidance and training and if they don’t improve, they’re gone. It’s not fair for the people at the other end of the chain to leave them in place.
After reading about that “employee’s” behavior, I wonder why you even tolerate it for a minute. (I didn’t really understand the part about recruiting at your parents’ business but that doesn’t sound like a good idea.) It sound like you need practice in setting boundaries.
I just set flyers on the counter where there’s other ads I don’t see why that would be a boundary issue?
You indicated that it was a problem but I was speaking more generally about boundaries with bad hires.
If you don’t want to be the bad guy, then don’t. Your emotions are clearly getting the better of you. Be realistic about how much emotional energy you’re investing in people as it appears to be causing anger. Work at hiring smart, identify qualities that good employees have and hire more people like them. Change your recruiting approaches. Flyers clearly aren’t working – try something new. For example, offer referral bonuses to staff who refer workers who make it through a 90 day probationary period. A wise person once told me that you “teach people how to treat you”, teach them well. Good luck.
@josie is totally correct about this one. You made the policies clear, the policies were broken, ...consequences.
If you lay out the policies clearly then let the policies do the work for you.
In a real sense it is not your decision, and you are not to blame. Don’t make it seem like you have a choice because in a real sense you don’t: in order to provide the service, you need people who follow policy. People who don’t follow policy have disqualified themselves and are FIRED. It is that simple.
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