My best employee quit because I wouldn’t let her go to college graduation
askamanager.org
askamanager.org
I told her it is actually better this way, to have an early eject from bad company, than to sink in, get involved and invested just to realise its a bad place to be, but despite that, she took a bad hit. Such things sucks a lot.
(London)
A lot of times, you can spot a bad company/manager just from reading the job advert but sometimes you don't know until you actually come in and start asking questions. Good companies that have nothing to hide will generally gladly answer all your questions or at least explain to you the legal reasons about why they can't answer specific questions.
If a company kicks you out because you're asking too many questions, it's a REALLY good thing for you! (you saved yourself years of misery) This type of behaviour is actually a filter which employers use to weed out confident applicants - These kinds of employers want feeble, subservient employees who don't question the rules - They don't want the kinds of employees who will demand holidays or ask for raises.
I thin you were right. This is a dodged bullet.
...Which is also a strong reason why you should always avoid using/making/doing anything personal on your employer's laptop/equipment.
Still the behaviour of the company after she raised concern clearly shows she is better off not working there.
Am I misunderstanding something, or isn't this the definition of a salaried position?
> second one about losing all intellectual rights to ANYTHING done/written/created ANYTIME and ANYWHERE (including things not related to company's business and/or technology in own spare time, holidays and so on).
This also seems extremely standard (at least it's in every employment contract from the big tech companies), and probably exists more so to protect the company from extreme circumstances than anything else (although I am not a lawyer).
I dont know where are you coming from, but one person being able to demand unlimited amount of unpaid work from another person is called slavery, not salaried position, in my book.
> This also seems extremely standard (at least it's in every employment contract from the big tech companies), and probably exists more so to protect the company from extreme circumstances than anything else (although I am not a lawyer).
Perhaps it is standard, but I think one should NOT sign contracts that are requiring or enforcing something to what one dont want to agree, as simple as that. We're quite involved in open source projects, activities around teaching women how to program, we're thinking about creating a foundation tied to these activities... All this would be impossible or much, much, much complicated with such contract signed, and also simply stupid, if done with full awareness of what is that she'd sign.
Plus it says she's the employee with the lowest seniority, but worked 6 years there, that's hardly believable, the whole thing is hardly believable.
There are certainly trolls out there who could conjure such a story just for the heck of it, but I also believe there are people out there who would do this for real.
Also, some companies don't hire very often, so the seniority part is not the biggest red flag.
The fact that a concert was concidered more important than a graduation ceremony "because cost" might be the biggest red flag for me.
That was my gut reaction too. It's essentially a call center.
Also, I have a hard time believing that the type of person/manager that would handle a situation in such an inhumane manner (the sociopathic boss) would paint themselves in such an obvious bad light. Two different personality types.
It would have been slightly more believable if the girl (orphan?, dozens of foster homes, homeless, best employee by far, graduates against all odds by working nights, made-for-tv Lifetime Sepcial...) had written it.
Additionally it felt like a twist, I was waiting for this to be a mid-manager issue, where the mid manager didn't have the power to give the permission, not that they just decided to deny the two hour gap themselves and wanted them to apologize and come back.
1. Exceptions are hard. While I don't believe in rules that can never be broken/circumvented in these types of situations you, as a manager, need to be aware that one exception will lead to having to make more exceptions. That is, to me, one of the skills of a good manager, being able to make exceptions when needed and give a good argument for not giving exceptions when not possible.
2. Empathy is critical. A manager without empathy (in the sense of being able to understand something from the other person's point-of-view) is generally not a good manager of people. The manager that is asking the question did obviously not understand how important the graduation was to the employee.
3. Don't rationalise punishment (meaning, calling the person afterwards just to make sure they understand how wrong they are and how right you are) with concern in your own mind. A good manager needs to examine and understand their own motivations for doing something.
4. Don't be afraid to admit your own mistakes as a manager. I'm pretty sure you can salvage this situation by meeting with the person, apologizing and probably giving them a well-deserved raise (since it was your best employee). You do not lose by doing that, it is not a competition.
5. Don't foster a culture where people will not help each other out. I find it very strange that a person that is a very good employee and that has helped other people numerous times (according to the question) has such a hard time finding someone to help them out. It could be because of the employee of course, but she should have been recognized in front of the team for her willingness to help out long before this.
If you assume that about this story, it's pretty shocking and worthy of some discussion, so you might upvote it. I thought it was real for the first few paragraphs and my jaw was on the floor. It's a pretty obvious fake though.
Yea that's my problem - this used to be true - but not recently - now it's like reddit without the memes.
That said, I do struggle to understand how some stuff whooshes to the front page, and other equally interesting stuff just gets ignored...
Hey, I got fired for taking off to get married on a Saturday one time.
cf: reddit.com
1. I have failed to train the manager properly, and need to consider whether that's because I'm a bad manager or the environment is such that it's time to leave; and
2. If I have spent some effort with my team and this manager to prevent such idiocy, the manager who made the decision needs to be either demoted or fired.
This is a more common scenario in customer service than it should be. The fact that seniority was the only criteria is an indicator that it's not a good environment. The fact that this manager thinks she needs to lecture the woman who quit on "professionalism" (especially for the reasons stated) is an indication that it's a terrible environment.
But I'm inclined to believe this is someone trolling "ask a manager." In what customer service job does someone with six years' tenure have lowest seniority?
I don't know the site this is on. Is it a reliable one? If not, I bet this is a marketing stunt.
I'm not 100% sure that this is one, though - there are some red flags but I've definitely had managers I could imagine doing this. And I can see the point in printing the letter even if you think it's not real but that someone out there might do the same thing for real.
The whole thing is fiction, plain and simple.
1. For treating the employee like that
2. For building a team in a way that prevented such a request from being accommodated
3. For still thinking that the "problem" here is with the employee who quit
"Best employee": the one that will cater to every demand of the boss
"Six years": she was the one that put up with most of the BS because she was studying
Once she graduated, putting up with this situation wasn't necessary anymore
I hope this is fiction.
When a negotiation fails, it's not unusual for the purchaser (or employer in this case) to be more upset than the seller.
If she's a quality employee that just graduated college, it stands to reason she'll be able to find more gainful employment...
But one has to wonder if this is just an elaborate troll.