Sloths as coworkers (wages, hire, hours, supervisor)
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We are a little over an hour from DC. DC is within our service area.
There's customer care/client care roles in this area (NoVa/DC/MD burbs) paying around 50k, many pay at least 40k. And even in Frederick or Anne Arundel and those places you compete vs DC area employers.
So I manage a plumbing company. Besides myself, we have two call center employees. One is very part time by her choice. She leaves every day for a few hours. She has been here for years.
The other has been here about 6 months. She is a sloth. S...l....o...w.... in everything she does. I move really fast all the time. I actually do two positions in 40 hours. I can answer 4 calls to her one. I fly to get lunch and zip back. She takes forever. I guess it is her personality. I don’t have time for it... we are hiring a replacement. Well that’s the plan. So far every scheduled intervyhas been a no show or cance.
The accountant says it is her personality. I have tried to explain that she needs to get faster. I have gotten downright angry. My boss has yelled at her.
What is it that makes some people slow? It is a call center. Speed is a requirement. I can’t fit in a third job. Sadly most employees are crap. I am tired of trying to train.
If your boss has yelled at her, and she's been there 6 months and doesn't perform adequately, why not let her go? He (or you) could tell her, her 6 months' probation is up, and she didn't make the cut. Has she had a performance evaluation?
Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with some employees, or what's wrong with some managers or companies.
I've witnessed some employees who worked very hard and got more work adding up on them from some manager. And there were some employees who worked very unproductively, and the manager took some duties off from them and added up on the hard and fast working ones.
And there were employees who called in sick all the times, even a few long sick leaves, and they still have their job. I understand that they are protected by the FMLA. And there were employees who rarely or never called in sick and worked hard, and it seemed like the manger thought they were strong and healthy, so they needed to do more, and they never got any bonus or reward.
With all my observations for a long time, I see that it's like the reward for working hard is more work. I expressed that opinion with some of my trusted co-workers, and they said it seemed so true.
That's the management or the employer's problem. They don't want to reward or want to save money from rewarding the good workers, and they cannot do anything with the slow/lazy and sick employees because there's the FMLA.
Oh, man, I could tell you stories! I had a manager, who seemed to favor the incompetent employees, and thought the competent, efficient, hard-working ones were slackers. I suspect, he liked the slow ones, because they made him look good by comparison, but the bright, industrious ones .... you get the idea. He also was intimidated by a just-out-of-college grad, because she lied on her resume, and said she had office experience at Harvard and Yale, so he thought she was really brainy. He let her get away with all kinds of leaves during her probationary period; basically anything she asked for, she got.Then she quit at the end of her probation.
I could go on and on. Eventually it became obvious to his higher-ups, that he was the one who was a slacker, so they cut his job to part-time. At least someone was paying attention.
OK, OP, back to you. Maybe you'll get lucky with the brand-new hire, if s/he shows up. Keep us posted.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 05-17-2019 at 07:55 PM..
Yesterday I asked her to call two customers and it never happened, she was only there until lunch when she had personal drama through snap chat and had to leave.
She is a terrible fit for what she needs and she has done zero to attempt to do what is needed. She will probably be without a job within the next two weeks. Unless she finds away to accomplish the job.
I have 3 techs today with only enough appointments for two of them. That is directly because she was not on the phone calling customers due and booking appointments. Totally not acceptable.
I would have wrote her up for not doing what you asked or at least given her a written warning. Just more leverage to fire her with. Snapchat is another issue for another thread, but totally not acceptable.
If your boss has yelled at her, and she's been there 6 months and doesn't perform adequately, why not let her go? He (or you) could tell her, her 6 months' probation is up, and she didn't make the cut. Has she had a performance evaluation?
I would have wrote her up for not doing what you asked or at least given her a written warning. Just more leverage to fire her with. Snapchat is another issue for another thread, but totally not acceptable.
Write ups have no effect. She will tell you she will do better and then not... I do the hard part and give her lists of people in specific areas to schedule and she crosses them off without calling them.
It is just frustrating. Do what you are paid to do...
I would suggest your employer come up with a set disciplinary policy, and put it in writing, and have everyone read and sign it. Create a point system for every infraction with termination being the result if employees either rack up a certain amount of points, or reach zero from a set amount of points they start off with. Where I work you start with 40 and every infraction is 8 points off, plus penalties like spoken warning, written warning, meetings with management, etc. Hitting zero means termination. The most serious infractions, like HIPPA violations, mean instant termination.
I would suggest your employer come up with a set disciplinary policy, and put it in writing, and have everyone read and sign it. Create a point system for every infraction with termination being the result if employees either rack up a certain amount of points, or reach zero from a set amount of points they start off with. Where I work you start with 40 and every infraction is 8 points off, plus penalties like spoken warning, written warning, meetings with management, etc. Hitting zero means termination. The most serious infractions, like HIPPA violations, mean instant termination.
Well how do you write an infraction for “she isn’t fast enough” especially since OPs boss believes it’s her nature and not deliberate?
Yesterday I asked her to call two customers and it never happened, she was only there until lunch when she had personal drama through snap chat and had to leave.
She is a terrible fit for what she needs and she has done zero to attempt to do what is needed. She will probably be without a job within the next two weeks. Unless she finds away to accomplish the job.
I have 3 techs today with only enough appointments for two of them. That is directly because she was not on the phone calling customers due and booking appointments. Totally not acceptable.
You said you're the manager, you're responsible.
Don't keep blaming her. You know she can't/won't do the job.
And I find it extremely unusual that your plumbing company doesn't have enough work without cold calling. What's up with that? Do they do enough advertising? Have good ratings?
Maybe you could have her do more social media promotion type work since the calling isn't her forte.
We have had such workers. Thankfully they were temps and we got rid of them.
But yes, we had three who were very slow when it came to speed. I don't claim to be a speed demon, but I can clip almost as fast as some of the asian workers and you'd better believe they are super fast. For chuckles the boss put them on a three worker job. Making window locks...By lunchtime they were backed up with 300 shots not done. The machine runs two full sets every 54 seconds....so you can see how bad it was.
The drawback is that four parts HAD to have metal inserts put in while hot. Otherwise they were not useful. He used this reason to terminate them. We now use that job when possible to weed out the slow pokes....Has been very useful a lot and now with summer coming, we are making more of them and we'll weed out more soon I suspect.
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