Adult Daycare: Dealing with Employees

Recently I gave an employee a new job description. A 50% change in job duties as I needed half a body in other areas. She did not like it. Went to the union. You can't do that. Yes I can. No you can't. Ok, the alternative is being made redundant. You wouldn't do that. But I did. She was walked out. Ain't no cure for stupid.
 
I just had a people manager confess to me that he doesn't manage people well. He had always delegated performance management to his boss. He doesn't believe he needs to manage budget. He doesn't believe he needs to talk to customers because he's in the back office and it's someone else's job. Moreover, he told me he's not good at managing the people so he does the bare minimum on those things.
 
Fwiffo said:
I just had a people manager confess to me that he doesn't manage people well. He had always delegated performance management to his boss. He doesn't believe he needs to manage budget. He doesn't believe he needs to talk to customers because he's in the back office and it's someone else's job. Moreover, he told me he's not good at managing the people so he does the bare minimum on those things.
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Back office, he's an accountant? No special qualities needed other than get the invoices out right first time, follow-up on payments and get the accounts done on time. If you need a creative accountant get some shady dodgy geezer in. All positions don't need a people manager. After all, number crunching is as boring as working on the line in a factory.

Meanwhile, my young protégé has turned up at a new competitor of ours. Some Middle Eastern/Pakistani outfit now with an office in London. As often with these enterprises they'll soon relocate to Luton and then vanish back into the desert sands. But not before they've got their very western daughter/niece/son UK residency.
 
Pimpernel Smith said:
Back office, he's an accountant? No special qualities needed other than get the invoices out right first time, follow-up on payments and get the accounts done on time. If you need a creative accountant get some shady dodgy geezer in. All positions don't need a people manager. After all, number crunching is as boring as working on the line in a factory.

Meanwhile, my young protégé has turned up at a new competitor of ours. Some Middle Eastern/Pakistani outfit now with an office in London. As often with these enterprises they'll soon relocate to Luton and then vanish back into the desert sands. But not before they've got their very western daughter/niece/son UK residency.
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There needs to be a people manager for every team. That's like saying an army doesn't require officers.

He has customers. Even if he is in Finance his customers are the other departments in the company.

Is he still your protege after the betrayal?
 
Fwiffo said:
Is he still your protege after the betrayal?
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No betrayal, he left for love, after his girlfriend gave him the ultimatum to move back to Germany with her, or end the relationship. Now he's back in Blighty with all his dreams of a career in the space industry over. I did warn him, but he didn't listen. Such is life.
 
Pimpernel Smith said:
No betrayal, he left for love, after his girlfriend gave him the ultimatum to move back to Germany with her, or end the relationship. Now he's back in Blighty with all his dreams of a career in the space industry over. I did warn him, but he didn't listen. Such is life.
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That's romantic. I'm not sure I did anything in my career because of 'love'. Although perhaps that's why I'm unmarried.
 
One of my staff today said when I'm out of the office for a week that fewer things happen. I asked what that means. He said I'm not here to push them and the pace slows.
 
This is good. I need to lay off someone who doesn't report to me.
 
I terminated my first person at this new company I joined. First of many I suppose...
 
Was at a symposium this week in Milan and sadly the sartorial discipline of wearing decent shoes looks like becoming a dead art form. Even key speakers sporting Ecco type crap with their suits. The homage Rolex was also much on display with the younger crowd. You can gesticulate all you want so we can't zero in on the logo on the face, it's the brutal forged thickness out of radioactive stainless steel from India or China that gives it away.

I also noticed that many speakers thought nothing of running over their allotted 20 minutes and so extended the day well beyond the scheduled finish which dented my participation in the cocktail hours.
 
Pimpernel Smith said:
Was at a symposium this week in Milan and sadly the sartorial discipline of wearing decent shoes looks like becoming a dead art form. Even key speakers sporting Ecco type crap with their suits. The homage Rolex was also much on display with the younger crowd. You can gesticulate all you want so we can't zero in on the logo on the face, it's the brutal forged thickness out of radioactive stainless steel from India or China that gives it away.

I also noticed that many speakers thought nothing of running over their allotted 20 minutes and so extended the day well beyond the scheduled finish which dented my participation in the cocktail hours.
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Rolex is from China or India? I have a Rolex from my grandfather by way of my father. Stainless steel. I only wear it on special occasions though.
 
One of my managers came to the office with a plain white t-shirt and a pair of jeans. The shirt barely covers his gut. I almost thought it was an under shirt but no that was his shirt for the day.
 
Fwiffo said:
One of my managers came to the office with a plain white t-shirt and a pair of jeans. The shirt barely covers his gut. I almost thought it was an under shirt but no that was his shirt for the day.
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Did you send him home to change?
 
I once had a bloke turn up in a dirty T shirt, torn trackie daks and thongs. I sent him home to change.
 
Last week I had to terminate my executive admin as part of a company wide reduction exercise. This week she e-mailed my work e-mail address from her personal one to remind me that she had finished something and left it at her desk for me to pick up.
 
Making someone redundant over here is a long drawn out process and you have get permission from a judge and prove that you are not making money in your audited accounts. A nightmare. The more they tinker with the system to ensure a larger portion of the work force are employed as permanent staff the worse it becomes and less and less people are employed as staff than ever before. In the time the politicians started to try and improve things, an additional 10% of the work force are working temporary or as freelancers.
 
Just had an email from an ex-colleague after 7 years and had to reply, names have been changed to protect the guilty:

QUOTE
Hi
Sorry for not keeping in touch. Miss your emails, always interesting.
Hope you and your family are all well.


Response
Fri 4/19/2019 6:27 PM

You mistake me for somebody else. Someone with the same name got done over and at the decisive moment all his so called friends deserted him. Over the years some have come back to ask for favours. One even asked for a fake contract to support a mortgage application. This is a prick who didn't have the balls to invite me to his wedding. He also said that you had deals going on with the now 25 stone Fat Bastard that is XXXX XXXXX. Which explains everything.

You couldn't even sign your email off with your name. So I will do the same.
UNQUOTE

Is it me, or is this shit normal once you get to a certain age and career experience?
 
Pimpernel Smith said:
Just had an email from an ex-colleague after 7 years and had to reply, names have been changed to protect the guilty:

This is a prick who didn't have the balls to invite me to his wedding. He also said that you had deals going on with the now 25 stone Fat Bastard that is XXXX XXXXX. Which explains everything.

You couldn't even sign your email off with your name. So I will do the same.
UNQUOTE

Is it me, or is this shit normal once you get to a certain age and career experience?
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I'm a little confused. You are pissed because you weren't invited to a wedding of a work colleague? Personally I'd rather not spend my personal time on the events involving people from work when I'm outside of work.
 
Fwiffo said:
I'm a little confused. You are pissed because you weren't invited to a wedding of a work colleague? Personally I'd rather not spend my personal time on the events involving people from work when I'm outside of work.
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Perhaps, I was little harsh on my old mucca. I may yet apologise, or not. But I would have expected he would have given me an update of his life, rather than expect me to instantly come up with some wit and tales of daring do.

I wasn't invited to an ex-colleague's wedding as he thought I was a little bit toxic at the time. Last year he asked me to make a phoney contract with him to support a mortgage application, but he of course would resign the next day.

I need to keep myself a little bit rare with these people.
 
Decided not to apologise to my old mucca. I mean, you haven't contacted someone since 2012 and the only thing you ask them is to entertain you with all the gossip and not giving an update of your own circumstances. Such is life, the older you get the less tolerance you are of less than impeccable behaviour amongst ex-work colleagues and so called friends.

Had an update about an ex-colleague of mine today. This was someone who was being groomed and one day was considered directorship material. He left the company to work for a completely different business involved with cars, but turned out he didn't fit in there after a very short time. He is now working as a carpet fitter with his brother and is ''enjoying it''. No disrespect to carpet fitters, but I would have thought such a career move not the career path of a graduate engineer. Back in the day, it would have been next to impossible to believe that someone in the top 8-5% education wise with a university degree in a hard science would have ended up as a carpet fitter. Strange days indeed.
 
I don't think level of education is indicative of how far up you climb in a corporate ladder or how successful you are professionally in the conventional sense. It certainly helps open doors or if you are in a skills or knowledge intensive field (mad scientist) it would help but there's rarely a direct correlation except for opening doors when it comes to organizational life. I know plenty of people who were successful in academia and have at best middling professional lives.
 
First round telephone screening interviews for a a vacant position on my team today. I could literally hear one of the candidates on the keyboard googling the question!
 
Dropbear said:
First round telephone screening interviews for a a vacant position on my team today. I could literally hear one of the candidates on the keyboard googling the question!
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How many more questions did you ask after that?
 
Dropbear said:
First round telephone screening interviews for a a vacant position on my team today. I could literally hear one of the candidates on the keyboard googling the question!
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Maybe he was actually multi-tasking and was writing an e-mail or file note while he was also having the phone interview with you?!
 
Fwiffo said:
How many more questions did you ask after that?
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I shortlisted to ten candidates for a 10 minute phone interview of two questions. Top three candidates get in-person interviews.

His interview was done in about six minutes.

Journeyman said:
Maybe he was actually multi-tasking and was writing an e-mail or file note while he was also having the phone interview with you?!
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That would be kinda impressive, though his answer sounded like it was coming straight off Wikipedia.
 
Journeyman said:
Maybe he was actually multi-tasking and was writing an e-mail or file note while he was also having the phone interview with you?!
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At least that is better than one telephone interview candidate who confessed he was in an underground garage because he needed to take the call discretely from work. He excused the occasional background noise of running vehicles and said he was pacing around the garage. As the screening went on I could hear him panting and losing his breath as he struggled to reply.
 
Dropbear said:
I shortlisted to ten candidates for a 10 minute phone interview of two questions. Top three candidates get in-person interviews.

His interview was done in about six minutes.
.
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Good man.
 
Occasionally, I will take on a temporary hire on behalf of a client as one off if they don't have the HR in country. I knew it was all going to go wrong when I was sent his email address which was nothing to do remotely with his own name and he called himself an ''unlimited'' job title. And then suddenly I get an email from his boss saying that this guy was going to leave and we needed to have a teleconference straight away. Turns out this guy didn't want to issue timesheets and thought he was above having to pay either tax in The Netherlands or in the USA as he was a American citizen. They started going on about his agreement with their company Bahrain office and we needed to honour this.

I told them they needed to employ him through their Bahrain office and don't darken my door with such dodgy tax evading characters in the future. Goodbye.
 
I'm taking a general all employee course on fraud awareness.

These were telltale indicators of someone who will commit fraud at work:

1. Living beyond your means
2. Financial difficulties
3. Having a close association with vendor/customers
4. Control issues, or unwillingness to share responsibilities
5. Family problems
6. Wheeler-dealer attitude

Apparently if you exhibit one of these traits the chances of you committing fraud goes up substantially. What if you're like me and half of it applies to you?

Also someone decided it would be fun to present this Game of Thrones style. As I have never watched the television show it is completely beyond me. Who is the master of coin?
 
^Interesting - I've worked with a number of people who satisfied a few of those criteria.

One of my former colleagues was in charge of a database that recorded all of our contract arrangements with legal service providers (ie private law firms that were contracted to us) and insisted on controlling it herself. She and her husband both drove Euro cars, but when one broke down, she had to apply for a new credit card to pay for the repairs as they had no money to pay for it, even though they both had decent jobs. Hmmmm....

Then again, that seems to be how most people live the lives nowadays.
 
I passed the quiz with a 70 percent score without really paying attention. To be honest it was hard to follow when it says, "Like taking the Oath of the Night Watch, our code of conduct...."

What's the oath of the night watch? This is like a Buddhist chap trying to understand biblical allusions in a text.
 
Fwiffo said:
I'm taking a general all employee course on fraud awareness.

These were telltale indicators of someone who will commit fraud at work:

1. Living beyond your means
2. Financial difficulties
3. Having a close association with vendor/customers
4. Control issues, or unwillingness to share responsibilities
5. Family problems
6. Wheeler-dealer attitude

Apparently if you exhibit one of these traits the chances of you committing fraud goes up substantially. What if you're like me and half of it applies to you?

Also someone decided it would be fun to present this Game of Thrones style. As I have never watched the television show it is completely beyond me. Who is the master of coin?
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In my business sector, we had research that said most people, practically everyone will go for a fraud that gives them 2.5 or 2.7 of their yearly salary. That's not initiated by them, that's a beta-cucks price to sell themselves to someone's who's initiated a fraudulent scheme.

The other one missing from that list is 7. Degenerate gambler. Big one that, at least according to my security clearance. Lots and lots of questions on your gambling habits. Really detailed.

I've come across loads and loads of fraud over the years. The risk if caught is minimal, you will work again and no one will press charges as they don't want to hurt share price, or market perception from the clients.

Several spring to mind: the one with the pedo in Brazil, the Kashagan Project managers who made the Panama Papers yet drove 20 year Fiats, Interserve the mini-Enron in the early 2000's, the dapper bowtie wearing financial controller who never returned from a weekend trip to London because he had been arrested for ripping off his last employer. And then there's the false credentials.....

One of the best is the company who bribed a number of Statoil employees with hookers, cocaine and sports cars. These idiots started to turn up to their offices with their Porsche's. One of the directors of the company committed suicide the other did his time and continued with his business in Norway, despite living in the UK and you would think he would had too much shame to continue operating in Norway. Not this chap.

You need to be really thick skinned to go all the way.

Journeyman said:
^Interesting - I've worked with a number of people who satisfied a few of those criteria.

One of my former colleagues was in charge of a database that recorded all of our contract arrangements with legal service providers (ie private law firms that were contracted to us) and insisted on controlling it herself.
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That type of shenanigans proves difficult to manage and control, you're only ever one bad flu bought away from being caught.
 
Pimpernel Smith said:
In my business sector, we had research that said most people, practically everyone will go for a fraud that gives them 2.5 or 2.7 of their yearly salary. That's not initiated by them, that's a beta-cucks price to sell themselves to someone's who's initiated a fraudulent scheme.

The other one missing from that list is 7. Degenerate gambler. Big one that, at least according to my security clearance. Lots and lots of questions on your gambling habits. Really detailed.

I've come across loads and loads of fraud over the years. The risk if caught is minimal, you will work again and no one will press charges as they don't want to hurt share price, or market perception from the clients.

You need to be really thick skinned to go all the way.
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Luckily gambling is a vice I have never indulged in. I remember reading about a dapper older gent who was a serial fraud artist. He would move into flats and then find every which way to getting out of paying rent. Somehow he lived a charmed life until he ran out of excuses and left to swindle another landlord. If that were me I'd be losing what's left of my hair in bed every night afraid someone was going to come evict me and dump me on the street.
 
I found out the gossip on why one of my counterparts in another region was fired: he was sleeping with several of his subordinates.

In-person interviews for my open position tomorrow, though I’m not super excited about any of the candidates. I may waste a morning and then re-post the position.
 
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