What do you do?
- Thread starter Alkorin
- Start date
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
- 5,472
- 272
I just think it's fucked that there isn't legislation in place to protect workers from that type of shit.
Wall o'text ahoy!
Wall o'text ahoy!
In any case, we're going through an ugly termination situation right now. A project manager that's worked for us for 9 years snapped on our purchaser one day, over some stupid, petty shit. He's always treated people poorly and had a temper. Problem is, we've never really documented it, it's always been dealt with verbally. We're a small company with only 6-7 office employees other than my bro and I, so that's just how things have been operated. So he snapped on the purchaser one morning (yelling and screaming at him, poking him in the chest with his finger, getting right in his face etc), my brother told the two of them to avoid each other for the next 24 hours and he'd deal with them the next day. Sure enough, the dumb fuck goes right after the purchaser again the next morning, for more petty, stupid shit, doing the same thing (getting in his face, yelling, denigrating him).
Our purchaser has been around for 6-7 years, and is a much better employee. He gets along with people and does a good job. The PM has always been a fucking asshole, frequently has conflicts with other employees, and is not well liked by other contractors we work with, clients that we work for, and so on. The purchaser basically said "it's him or me" before going home for the day after the second blow up. We told him to stay away from the office for a couple days while we "dealt" with the situation (blow-ups happened on a Wed/Thurs). The PM also left for the day on Thursday, then called on Friday morning and told my brother he wasn't coming in because the purchaser was a loose cannon and he was concerned that he was going to attack him physically (they're both big guys, probably be an even fight), and that he wanted the purchaser written up. By that point we'd talked to everyone in the office, most of whom had either overheard or seen parts of one or both conflicts, and basically everyone said "the PM went after him, the purchaser certainly didn't back down, but it was 90% the PM initiating it. Oh and by the way, I can't stand the PM, he treats me and everyone else like shit." So my brother told the PM that the purchaser certainly wouldn't be getting written up, to take Friday and the weekend to think about his actions, and we'd talk on Monday. The PM said that he would, and that he had an appointment with his doctor on Monday, and he'd be in after that.
Sure as shit, Monday rolls around and we get an email from the PM's wife saying that his doctor instructed him to take a 4 week medical leave for stress. She called later that day to talk to my bro, and basically told him more info than she should have: the PM had some minor to medium health issues over the past couple years (started with chest pains, nothing was ever conclusive, then those went away and became stomach problems, high blood pressure etc), she'd had cancer a couple years back but her prognosis was good (remember, Canada, no bills for that, just lost wages, and she's still employed), that the PM might have stress problems but that she didn't think it was primarily work related because she's known him her whole life and he's always been wound that tight, they have money problems (he makes well over 100K per year plus significant bonus, has a company vehicle fully paid for and no personal vehicle), and so on. At that point my bro and I decide that we don't have much choice but to get rid of him; he's bad for morale and the company, wasn't even a very good PM in the first place (terrible with numbers and money and scheduling, but he was a decent enough tradesman so that side of things he was okay at), and so on.
We talk to our lawyer about the situation and get his advice. If we were to have laid him off with no cause whatsoever, given his long term employment he'd be entitled to 12-15 months wages and benefits, assuming he couldn't find a job in that time. He'd have to show that he was looking, and if he were to find something, we'd be off the hook other than the difference in what his knew job was paying him vs what we were. However he felt that even without a history of disciplinary infractions that his actions were egregious and threatening enough that we'd have at least a decent case to terminate him for cause, if it ever got as far as a judge. So the strategy laid out for us was to give him several letters, after he was cleared to return to work health wise (we continued to pay his salary in the mean time while he was on a leave, despite not being obligated to, because we're nice guys like that). The first basically laying out that he is being terminated with cause for his most recent blow ups, especially for specifically ignoring my brother's instruction to avoid contact with the other employee. You get nothing, get the fuck out. The second and third letters were an offer to rescind the first letter in return for giving him a payout package of 4 months salary if he dropped any further action against us. He gets to keep that full 4 months even if he finds a better paying job tomorrow (doubtful).
So we met with him after work last week after he was cleared to return (his leave had been extended another 2 weeks, so he received 6 weeks salary while on leave). Sure enough, he showed up in his wife's car, not his company truck, probably because he knew he was going to get fired and not have a ride home after we took his keys. In any case, he was actually pretty passive as we explained our decision and gave him the letters in a sealed envelope. We told him that he could keep driving the truck while he considered his options, and that he had a week to get back to us.
He got back to us yesterday, and has demanded a full 12 months salary payable in a lump sum, plus his truck in lieu of his bonuses. His bonus was always clearly identified in writing as being year to year based upon company and personal performance, and also was expressly void should he stop working for the company for any reason whatsoever. He'd keep that full 12 month's salary, no matter how quickly he found a new job. So basically he's asked for the full amount he might be entitled to,had he been terminated for no reason whatsoever and been completely unable to find a job elsewhere.
When we offered him 4 months, our hope was that he'd come back, ask for 6, we could shake hands and walk away. But this asshole, who has always been so fucking greedy (because he's fucking terrible with money, he's gone bankrupt before), thinks he's going to get a full year vacation off of us and thinks he did nothing wrong. At this point, I'm almost of the mind to rescind our original offer, tell him the termination for cause letter stands, return the truck in 24 hours, and go fuck yourself. I know for a fact that this asshole can't afford to be off work for more than a month or two, let alone to pay a lawyer a large retainer to try to fight this out for months or years in court. And even if he did have the resources to do that, there's a very good chance that a judge will agree that he was fired for cause because of his behaviour. Everyone we spoke to in our office said they'd have no problem signing affidavits stating that the PM initiated the incident, was physically confrontational, and was otherwise creating a poisonous work atmosphere because of the way he treated people in general.
On top of all that, several fuck-ups on projects have now come to light since he's been gone. In one case, he instructed site personnel to improperly install the chimney on a couple very large boilers, because he was too fucking lazy to order a proper metal to plastic venting adapter collar. Instead he told them to just heat caulk around the join, since they were different sizes. Sure enough that caulking failed, and the fucking boilers were venting directly in to the mechanical room, which is in the parkade of an apartment building. Someone could have been fucking killed by CO poisoning because that idiot didn't want to order a couple parts.
Ugh, I wanted to get rid of this asshole years ago because he was always a bad person, and was never a very good PM, but my bro thought he could control him and keep an eye on his screwups. It's not easy to find good mechanical PMs here, but given where we're at now, it's obvious we should have gotten rid of him years ago.
Our purchaser has been around for 6-7 years, and is a much better employee. He gets along with people and does a good job. The PM has always been a fucking asshole, frequently has conflicts with other employees, and is not well liked by other contractors we work with, clients that we work for, and so on. The purchaser basically said "it's him or me" before going home for the day after the second blow up. We told him to stay away from the office for a couple days while we "dealt" with the situation (blow-ups happened on a Wed/Thurs). The PM also left for the day on Thursday, then called on Friday morning and told my brother he wasn't coming in because the purchaser was a loose cannon and he was concerned that he was going to attack him physically (they're both big guys, probably be an even fight), and that he wanted the purchaser written up. By that point we'd talked to everyone in the office, most of whom had either overheard or seen parts of one or both conflicts, and basically everyone said "the PM went after him, the purchaser certainly didn't back down, but it was 90% the PM initiating it. Oh and by the way, I can't stand the PM, he treats me and everyone else like shit." So my brother told the PM that the purchaser certainly wouldn't be getting written up, to take Friday and the weekend to think about his actions, and we'd talk on Monday. The PM said that he would, and that he had an appointment with his doctor on Monday, and he'd be in after that.
Sure as shit, Monday rolls around and we get an email from the PM's wife saying that his doctor instructed him to take a 4 week medical leave for stress. She called later that day to talk to my bro, and basically told him more info than she should have: the PM had some minor to medium health issues over the past couple years (started with chest pains, nothing was ever conclusive, then those went away and became stomach problems, high blood pressure etc), she'd had cancer a couple years back but her prognosis was good (remember, Canada, no bills for that, just lost wages, and she's still employed), that the PM might have stress problems but that she didn't think it was primarily work related because she's known him her whole life and he's always been wound that tight, they have money problems (he makes well over 100K per year plus significant bonus, has a company vehicle fully paid for and no personal vehicle), and so on. At that point my bro and I decide that we don't have much choice but to get rid of him; he's bad for morale and the company, wasn't even a very good PM in the first place (terrible with numbers and money and scheduling, but he was a decent enough tradesman so that side of things he was okay at), and so on.
We talk to our lawyer about the situation and get his advice. If we were to have laid him off with no cause whatsoever, given his long term employment he'd be entitled to 12-15 months wages and benefits, assuming he couldn't find a job in that time. He'd have to show that he was looking, and if he were to find something, we'd be off the hook other than the difference in what his knew job was paying him vs what we were. However he felt that even without a history of disciplinary infractions that his actions were egregious and threatening enough that we'd have at least a decent case to terminate him for cause, if it ever got as far as a judge. So the strategy laid out for us was to give him several letters, after he was cleared to return to work health wise (we continued to pay his salary in the mean time while he was on a leave, despite not being obligated to, because we're nice guys like that). The first basically laying out that he is being terminated with cause for his most recent blow ups, especially for specifically ignoring my brother's instruction to avoid contact with the other employee. You get nothing, get the fuck out. The second and third letters were an offer to rescind the first letter in return for giving him a payout package of 4 months salary if he dropped any further action against us. He gets to keep that full 4 months even if he finds a better paying job tomorrow (doubtful).
So we met with him after work last week after he was cleared to return (his leave had been extended another 2 weeks, so he received 6 weeks salary while on leave). Sure enough, he showed up in his wife's car, not his company truck, probably because he knew he was going to get fired and not have a ride home after we took his keys. In any case, he was actually pretty passive as we explained our decision and gave him the letters in a sealed envelope. We told him that he could keep driving the truck while he considered his options, and that he had a week to get back to us.
He got back to us yesterday, and has demanded a full 12 months salary payable in a lump sum, plus his truck in lieu of his bonuses. His bonus was always clearly identified in writing as being year to year based upon company and personal performance, and also was expressly void should he stop working for the company for any reason whatsoever. He'd keep that full 12 month's salary, no matter how quickly he found a new job. So basically he's asked for the full amount he might be entitled to,had he been terminated for no reason whatsoever and been completely unable to find a job elsewhere.
When we offered him 4 months, our hope was that he'd come back, ask for 6, we could shake hands and walk away. But this asshole, who has always been so fucking greedy (because he's fucking terrible with money, he's gone bankrupt before), thinks he's going to get a full year vacation off of us and thinks he did nothing wrong. At this point, I'm almost of the mind to rescind our original offer, tell him the termination for cause letter stands, return the truck in 24 hours, and go fuck yourself. I know for a fact that this asshole can't afford to be off work for more than a month or two, let alone to pay a lawyer a large retainer to try to fight this out for months or years in court. And even if he did have the resources to do that, there's a very good chance that a judge will agree that he was fired for cause because of his behaviour. Everyone we spoke to in our office said they'd have no problem signing affidavits stating that the PM initiated the incident, was physically confrontational, and was otherwise creating a poisonous work atmosphere because of the way he treated people in general.
On top of all that, several fuck-ups on projects have now come to light since he's been gone. In one case, he instructed site personnel to improperly install the chimney on a couple very large boilers, because he was too fucking lazy to order a proper metal to plastic venting adapter collar. Instead he told them to just heat caulk around the join, since they were different sizes. Sure enough that caulking failed, and the fucking boilers were venting directly in to the mechanical room, which is in the parkade of an apartment building. Someone could have been fucking killed by CO poisoning because that idiot didn't want to order a couple parts.
Ugh, I wanted to get rid of this asshole years ago because he was always a bad person, and was never a very good PM, but my bro thought he could control him and keep an eye on his screwups. It's not easy to find good mechanical PMs here, but given where we're at now, it's obvious we should have gotten rid of him years ago.
McCheese
SW: Sean, CW: Crone, GW: Wizardhawk
- 6,895
- 4,277
They didn't really think it through when they told me not to work out my 2 weeks. I was the only one in the company who knows the administrator log-in information for our website, for example, among other things that I handled completely on my own. I was responsible for a lot of odds-and-ends that people took for granted (and most didn't even realize I did), so I imagine they'll start running into them pretty soon.
- 16,454
- 7,468
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
- 24,813
- 32,293
Why? You basically quit when you give your two weeks notice. Why should there be a law that you keep gettig paid after you quit?
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
- 5,472
- 272
Because you're extending a courtesy to your employer in giving that notice so they can accommodate your leaving, and they in return are stiffing you out of two weeks wages that you'd otherwise have earned. Even as an employer, that seems like a dick move to me, and something that should be legislated against.
Cad
scientia potentia est
- 24,548
- 45,624
I don't think it should be legislated against, and I'm on your side with this. I think its self-correcting in that the employees will all just quit without notice if they do that, which is fine.
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
- 24,813
- 32,293
Yeah me too.
But I hate to tell you along the gulf coast, NJ, and the state of WA and probably lots of other places in my industry it was regular industry practice where I have visited for work. If you worked in the refinery industry (and the chemical plant industry along the gulf coast as well) if you put in your notice it was day over and you got paid up to the point you left that day. Went for everyone from operators, workers in the field, process engineers etc...I personally don't work on site and like I mentioned above I don't know anyone on our end that has put in a 2 weeks notice going back to about 1983. But the industry we service they sure do.
It was probably put in place originally to combat the huge number of job hoppers who would work turnaround after turnaround instead of staying on a job.
I did a turnaround in February and I deisgned a new furnace for the Exxon refinery here and the lead engineer who was in charge of all furnace projects put in her notice to move to Shell. I called her to get some info on the day she did so and she said she wasn't getting paid so she wasn't answering questions. Hear it often enough to know it's pretty much the standard. She was lead engineer over an entire department as well as project manager for turnarounds which is where the real money is spent.
But I hate to tell you along the gulf coast, NJ, and the state of WA and probably lots of other places in my industry it was regular industry practice where I have visited for work. If you worked in the refinery industry (and the chemical plant industry along the gulf coast as well) if you put in your notice it was day over and you got paid up to the point you left that day. Went for everyone from operators, workers in the field, process engineers etc...I personally don't work on site and like I mentioned above I don't know anyone on our end that has put in a 2 weeks notice going back to about 1983. But the industry we service they sure do.
It was probably put in place originally to combat the huge number of job hoppers who would work turnaround after turnaround instead of staying on a job.
I did a turnaround in February and I deisgned a new furnace for the Exxon refinery here and the lead engineer who was in charge of all furnace projects put in her notice to move to Shell. I called her to get some info on the day she did so and she said she wasn't getting paid so she wasn't answering questions. Hear it often enough to know it's pretty much the standard. She was lead engineer over an entire department as well as project manager for turnarounds which is where the real money is spent.
Xequecal
Trump's Staff
- 11,559
- -2,388
Heh, I got you beat on this one, I once had a company make me pay to ship my own stuff back to me. It was a 1-year temp job and a week before the contract was over they just deactivated my keycard over the weekend and on Monday I couldn't get into the building. Security just told me I wasn't authorized to be on the property anymore. I tried to call my boss and he didn't pick up. Complete radio silence. Since it was a week before I was done I figured they had just let me go early, but I still had a locker full of stuff in there. It took a lot of phone calls before I got someone that actually went to where I worked in the building and asked questions. Apparently, letting someone go a week early isn't uncommon for them, they don't want people stealing/sabotaging shit on their last week knowing they're not going to be coming back. What normally happens in this case is they would call the temp agency representative that got me the job, my representative from the agency would tell me what's up, then I'd tell him what belongings I still had in there and he would go and get them. However, for some reason they couldn't reach him, so they just decided to go with this. I was then informed that I had two weeks to mail them my name tag, keycards, and a check for $15 to pay for Fedexing the contents of my locker back to me, or they were just going to throw it all away.
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
- 24,813
- 32,293
I hung it up Friday. Didn't even ask for two weeks pay or give two weeks notice. I just told them I couldn't commute to town any longer and I wasn't move to town. Of course we got our yearly bonus Friday which was approximately 40% of my gross regular salary as it is every year. They called this morning and asked if I was interested in doing some contract work and just send them the drawings. It's win/win, at least for me.
Crone
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
- 9,709
- 3,211
40% bonus? Oh hell ya. I thought my 9.3% I get Friday as a profit sharing bonus was good. haha!
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
- 24,813
- 32,293
Well they call it a bonus but it's not really based on profit or anything like that. Basically it's how much effort you put forth in the year. The guy I replaced made 20%, but he pretty much ended his career and retired early when he found out how much the general manager made and his was a LOT less and he asked the owner about it. The guy I replaced was the estimator and all he did was estimate and 75% of our stuff is on contract so for 3/4 of the year we don't bid on anything, and that's all he could do.
I replaced him became the estimator, but I aslo did structural steel design, field measurement, programmed the new CNC equipment at work, went to the contract meetings, and knew the 20 year old software they use. So that was the bonus difference. It's supposed to be applied to your personal 401k since the company doesn't offer one. Even still with the bonus I could fully fund mine and have lots left over.
My dad retired from there and when he retired he made close to his yearly gross salary in his bonus, been that was for 40+ years. I know the guy that runs the shop and the general manager make more in bonus than they do in salary and I've known them all my life. But the company pays very well, and we are the only game in town - and we know it. I did contract work for them for the last 20 years before I went to work there full time. I just can't handle living there. It was a good place to work, owner hadn't laid anyone off in 45 years and that's saying stomething thru the last downturn and the total oil collapse in the early 80's when 3/4 of the other companies not only laid off but went out of business.
I replaced him became the estimator, but I aslo did structural steel design, field measurement, programmed the new CNC equipment at work, went to the contract meetings, and knew the 20 year old software they use. So that was the bonus difference. It's supposed to be applied to your personal 401k since the company doesn't offer one. Even still with the bonus I could fully fund mine and have lots left over.
My dad retired from there and when he retired he made close to his yearly gross salary in his bonus, been that was for 40+ years. I know the guy that runs the shop and the general manager make more in bonus than they do in salary and I've known them all my life. But the company pays very well, and we are the only game in town - and we know it. I did contract work for them for the last 20 years before I went to work there full time. I just can't handle living there. It was a good place to work, owner hadn't laid anyone off in 45 years and that's saying stomething thru the last downturn and the total oil collapse in the early 80's when 3/4 of the other companies not only laid off but went out of business.
Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
- 44,949
- 94,000
Borzak
Bronze Baron of the Realm
- 24,813
- 32,293
I was actually in town visiting my parents when my dad said they had an ad in the paper. They didn't know I was looking to get a full time permanent job.Sounds like a damn good place to work.
Sometimes it's not what you know, but who you know. In your case, you seem to have both. Nice work.
This was the ad in the paper (and linkedin but I had never looked)
structural steel detailing
layout/design
estimating
project management
CNC operation
production control
I sent my resume in and the owners son was reviewing them. I had never met him, my contact being the guys who had been working there for 40 years or close to it. His son only started there since my dad retired. I thought they were hiring for a new office or department. They only have 15 people in the office.
The fun part was the owner talking about how they found someone who fit the ad perfectly lol. He didn't have a clue who I was or my dad until his dad told him. I would have loved to have been there for that conversation.
Tarrant
<Prior Amod>
- 15,572
- 9,022
About to finish out week two at the new job, I'm ranked 5th in the region at my position for sales out of 28. Seems like a decent start to the month thus far and even more so for someone completely new to this business. Really digging the totally new environment and still learning a lot. The hours are longer than I'd like but them's the breaks in retail.