24 ms·

How I Fire People

156 points by michaelleland 14y ago

asparagui 14y ago
Summary: Cover your ass. Here are the author's ideas, rewritten without the pollyannaish nonsense: Step 1: Have a gigantic book of employee guidelines. At any point in time, you should be able to pick an employee and find something you can write them up for. Have the employee sign a piece of paper on day 1 that they are aware of the book. Step 2: Before you fire the employee, make sure you've written him up more than once. Lay your groundwork a week or two in advance. Find something else, and do the paperwork from step one. You don't fire an employee for walking in on the VP banging a secretary, it's because he wasn't filing his TPS reports properly. Step 3: When actually firing somebody, have a witness + a recording device in the room. This protects you from sexual harassment lawsuits. Step 4: Explanations: Blame the economy. If that doesn't work, blame the phases of the moon. Anything you want, but not something that is grounds for a wrongful termination suit.
- ph0rque 14y ago
  Nice summary of what my reaction was after reading this post. I especially like the parts of the excerpt that basically said, "we may fire you for any of these things, or something else entirely".
  - GoodIntentions 14y ago
    >> or something else entirely "making eye contact with your betters" "choosing the wrong religion" "whatever else I feel like, but can't write down without getting sued?"
- TylerE 14y ago
  For extra credit, compare and contrast this approach to the US justice system.
- thetrb 14y ago
  I also especially liked this: Part of the Employee Handbook: "Reasons for termination include but are not limited to the following: [...] • Other reasons not listed here" And then his comment: "As you can see, these are clear boundaries" Yeah, very clear boundaries there: You can be fired for anything, including "reasons not listed here".
  - vacri 14y ago
    It is actually a pretty clear list. It's listing a number of things clearly. It's also saying that the list is not closed, because anything can happen and you can't predict everything. What if an employee decides to splash paint on all the cars in the car park? Unlikely, but possible, and it's stupid to try and come up with every such possibility, because you'll never hit them all. The list hits the most common issues and lays them out clearly.
    - phillmv 14y ago
      It's easy. My employee handbook, should I ever get to that stage, shall read: 1) Be honest. 2) Don't be a dipshit. 3) If you have a problem with something, ask.
      - vacri 14y ago
        As your number of staff increases, you'll find that you need to be more explicit. Real world people are complex creatures, and managing them isn't simple. What defines 'being a dipshit', for example? For some, it's being a pedant. For others, it's being slow to learn. Others think it's about obnoxiousness. Besides, rules like "fraudulent timesheets are a fireable offense" make it explicitly clear that 'we check these things', and avoid the 'but I didn't know it was wrong' excuses that you will hear with enough employees, commonsense be damned.
        phillmv 14y ago
        True but such is life. You make up for it by always giving people a chance first. You never fire on the first sign of dipshittiness.
- gaius 14y ago
  It is quite insidious. Consider: We told the veterans to help the new people whenever they could, but none of the old heads really wanted to be bothered But that contravenes: Employees will try to increase productivity in operations whenever possible. He's got them all over a barrel.
  - TylerE 14y ago
    It's Catch-22! If they don't help, they're not trying to increase productivity. If they DO help, their OWN productivity will suffer, and if they are truly in, say, the 10%, they are probably more productive than a newbie will ever be.
  - run4yourlives 14y ago
    To be fair, he fully sees the error of the former situation and takes blame for that personally. I don't think he was trying to do this on purpose.
    - MaxGabriel 14y ago
      He takes the blame, but he also realizes the cause of the problem and does nothing: "particularly given that we keep track of everyone’s output and any time spent teaching new people would reduce the build total of the teacher."
      - notJim 14y ago
        Yeah, that really stood out to me. He claimed to want to train the new people, but also said he couldn't afford the loss in productivity. You can't have it both ways.
  - umjames 14y ago
    The problem is that the boss needs a way to tell if that help is falling on deaf ears. If the help isn't having a sufficiently positive effect, then you have someone who is not qualified to do the work. Is the boss really interested in making his team stronger all-around (not just a few star employees), or does he just not want to have to deal with answering questions from new hires who might be struggling? I'm in this position right now. I'm not being conceited, but I am in the role of the highly-productive employee. My boss hires people (or we acquire new team members as the result of a company organizational change). Either way, before the new team members start, my boss inevitably asks me to make sure they can do the job. I've never seen anyone in my department fired due to incompetence. Whenever a team member has questions/problems, they almost always end up getting sent to me. It has gotten to the point where I now have to head a weekly developer meeting that is really just a glorified question and answer session. The problem is that my team members are never weaned off of my help. My boss doesn't seem to care about this. I've overheard him say to people, who were trying to figure things out without having to ask me for help, to just ask me. I understand that it's more important to my boss to just get things done, but that creates an unnecessary dependency on me. I'm not scalable. Hire better employees or take a hands-on approach to training, but don't keep sending them to me all the time. I can understand why the author's top employees didn't want be bothered with helping those who were struggling. You don't want to be in a position where you have to do your job plus some/most/all of someone else's.
- laughinghan 14y ago
  I'm not sure what you're saying. All of his ideas, even "rewritten without pollyannaish nonsense", seem to me like essential components of firing someone the right way. Could you contrast these steps with how you believe people should be fired? Summary: Cover your ass. Certainly doing the right thing is one way to cover your ass. Step 1: Have a gigantic book of employee guidelines. At any point in time, you should be able to pick an employee and find something you can write them up for. Have the employee sign a piece of paper on day 1 that they are aware of the book. Are you saying it's better not to have clear employee guidelines or not to make sure they know them? Step 2: Before you fire the employee, make sure you've written him up more than once. Lay your groundwork a week or two in advance. Find something else, and do the paperwork from step one. You don't fire an employee for walking in on the VP banging a secretary, it's because he wasn't filing his TPS reports properly. Are you saying it's better not to wait for repeat offenses, or better not to have clear reasons for firing? I have no idea where you got this "VP banging a secretary" interpretation. He's talking about his furniture company of 6 carpenters, for goodness sake. Step 3: When actually firing somebody, have a witness + a recording device in the room. This protects you from sexual harassment lawsuits. It only protects you from sexual harassment lawsuits if you don't sexually harass them. It also only protects you from any other kind of lawsuit for wrongful behavior if you don't behave wrongfully. Isn't it a good thing for them to not sexually harass employees? Step 4: Explanations: Blame the economy. If that doesn't work, blame the phases of the moon. Anything you want, but not something that is grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Is it better to have no reason, or not to explain to the employee that there were external factors in the decision, or to lie that there were no external factors? Or are you saying external factors never dominate and blaming them is always lying? Of course you shouldn't fire some one for reasons that would be grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Because those would be wrongful terminations! You seem to be narrowly interpreting his attempts to do the right thing as just attempting to cover his ass. I don't see where you got this, he repeatedly agonizes over doing firing the right way. Could you explain what you think he'd do differently if he were actually a good boss, as opposed to just trying to cover his ass?
jtbigwoo 14y ago
But in my defense, training workers is extremely expensive for a small shop like mine. I would have had to assign one of my better guys to the task full time for there to be any hope of success, and I simply could not afford to do that. We are eating our seed corn.
- cldrope 14y ago
  This kind of thought process that you've pointed out above is probably the biggest cancer of the industry to be honest. What happened to apprenticeship? Better your hiring practice or stop hiring cheap. Also I'd wager with such an absurdly wrong mindset they still use software to filter resumes, which often kills chances for good talent to get through because you've placed some arbitrary value on your time OVER the added value of good recruitment and staffing.
- prodigal_erik 14y ago
  Your rivals (whether they make competing products or merely use their success to bid against you for employees) net most of the benefit from your training investment when your trainees aren't going to spend the majority of their career with you. Vocational training becomes a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good when there's no mutual expectation of longevity and loyalty. We're eating each others' seed corn.
  - dpritchett 14y ago
    Your trainees might stick around for decades if you offered a superlative work arrangement.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    Your rivals (whether they make competing products or merely use their success to bid against you for employees) net most of the benefit from your training investment when your trainees aren't going to spend the majority of their career with you. Great, then the issue is to figure out "how do we create an environment and culture where people will stay here for a very long time?"
  - 14y ago
mike626 14y ago
Alternate titles... Paul Downs: Dreadful Employer Paul Downs Cabinetmakers: The Dickensian Workshop Reborn!
jcc80 14y ago
This has some good points and the guy doesn't seem too arrogant or that he enjoyed letting people go. But, I just don't think I could ever write an article about firing people. Actually, maybe it's just the title that bothers me - but from what I understand, the author may not get to pick those for editorials.
rondon1 14y ago
When you treat adults like this they will not like or respect you and will want you to fail. Any time this boss makes a mistake his employees will make him pay. "Oh yeah we can't work this week because the boss told us to throw away our safety glasses. Yes, we saw the UPS truck run into the river that probably had the new safety glasses on them. But we are supposed to do what the boss says"
m104 14y ago
The best teams I've ever worked for had this set of common traits: 1) On the offer day, potential employees were told there were high expectations and no fixed rules to govern what that meant. There was leniency in some cases, but manager/supervisor judgement was the only rule that mattered. No handbooks or rule sets. 2) All new team members were automatically assumed to be terminated within a month or so. This was usually true. Any new employee that didn't pull their weight, sat around waiting for someone to tell them what to do, or lied in any way was terminated. 3) Human mistakes (fat fingers, brain farts, etc.) were reprimanded internally but covered, responsibility-wise, by the manager or supervisor externally. (I got this treatment at least once a year...) 4) Repeated or dumb mistakes meant being terminated, usually within the same business day. (I saw this happen many times. Not fun but then again they were dumb or repeated mistakes.) 5) Lots of communication within the team. Supervisors and managers were always available or actively participating in the projects. In other words, there were high expectations and they were strictly enforced, with nowhere to hide mistakes or divert responsibility. Or, more bluntly, "we want to work with adults, not children". Sounds harsh perhaps, but these were the best teams I've ever worked for and no one who stayed for more than 6 months felt used, abused, or anything other than lucky to be working with fine people. When long-time employees left, it was to start their own businesses or go back to school and there were always a few tears in the parting days. Now, if you read in some book or learned in a training course that you need to cover your butt legally at all times, give everyone plenty of chances to do the right thing, and take everybody's situation into consideration before taking disciplinary action, your teams are going to start sucking. Why? Because all of those things are the opposite of management. Those things are what you do to avoid management. This whole article, to me, says "boy, it'd be so much easier to run this business if I didn't have to actually run this business". Here's a hint: If your strategy for managing a team or community or whatever is "people should do the right thing and we should give them every opportunity to do that", then your team's problems aren't actually your team's problems.
- rnemo 14y ago
  I agree with most of your post, except: "2) All new team members were automatically assumed to be terminated within a month or so. This was usually true. Any new employee that didn't pull their weight, sat around waiting for someone to tell them what to do, or lied in any way was terminated." Quite frankly this just sounds like whomever is in charge of hiring in these teams does a shit job of it. If, during an extended interview or round of interviews, a person cannot manage to get enough of an idea about how a candidate is going to mesh with the team that new hires often last less than 30 days, that person should not be hiring. If that person also does the firing as well they shouldn't be allowed near personnel management whatsoever, and their overall ability to lead should be questioned.
cldrope 14y ago
That article gave me cancer. It seems like it wants to be different than other businesses but is not. As soon as you say "And other reasons not listed here" you just made your list useless. Having a huge book of rules makes it feel like an unwelcome, draconian workplace. Just hire smart, trust your workers and fire them when they don't meet obvious role expectations or act inappropriate.
spaghetti 14y ago
Sounds like Paul spent a considerable amount of time focusing on negative things. While it's necessary for employers to protect themselves I hope an equivalent amount of time is spent on positive things. For example if Paul spent as much time on creative training videos for new employees as he did on filming termination meetings he would perhaps have a more lucrative business. It's the perpetual focus on the negative that's just lame.
- vacri 14y ago
  So you're saying that creating a creative training video is as simple as propping a camera on a desk and hitting record?
  - spaghetti 14y ago
    You're right that creating a training video has a larger up-front cost than simply recording a meeting. However when the long-term effects are taken into account the trade off is probably favorable. Something like a training video that in theory helps the employees and makes them feel supported will probably pay off more for the business in terms of increased employee satisfaction than something shockingly negative and dissonant like video-taping an employee being fired.
    - vacri 14y ago
      A couple of problems with your comments. The first is that it's not an either/or, you can have both. The second is that recording the dismissal isn't going to cause that much of a problem when it comes to morale, because the person affected is no longer working there. Another issue is that recording the meeting protects both parties from later fabrications made by the other; the dismissed employee could make it a condition that a copy is given, or set up their own recording easily, given smartphones today. Recording a meeting which involves emotional distress is not 'shockingly negative and dissonant'. It's wise for both parties, just like having a witness is. I was recently made redundant, and although we didn't record the meeting, my employer advised who their witness would be, and allowed me to choose one of my own. The idea is to have a more neutral record for backup than the two main parties at an emotional time, and a video recording assists just like having a witness does.
jrockway 14y ago
Why would an employee consent to being recorded and signing a piece of paper acknowledging the misbehavior? I certainly wouldn't, if only to irritate the person firing me.
- protomyth 14y ago
  That's what the witness is for.
  - nooop 14y ago
    To hit the employee until he signs?
    - protomyth 14y ago
      to make it irrelevant if s/he signs or not at the exit interview
- koenigdavidmj 14y ago
  Severance.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    I don't think low-level cabinet assemblers get severance when being fired for incompetence.
    - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
      I'm sure that this stunt has been tried in the software industry too.
- paulhauggis 14y ago
  exactly. I would laugh in my bosses face if they gave me something like this to sign.
Cyranix 14y ago
I also write a short acknowledgment form that the employee will sign and that confirms what happened. It makes clear that the employee was responsible and that the reason for the firing has been explained. When I was fired from my first programming job, my boss took this approach. I was inexperienced and frankly quite shocked -- there had been no warnings, and the reason cited was laughable* -- so I ended up signing it. I've come to realize that I despise the practice. It asks a person who is feeling vulnerable to increase their own shame, doing nothing productive for either party. I always thought I was a careful person when it came to contracts and such, but this was a real lesson in keeping one's guard up even when taken by surprise. * Namely, that I didn't deliver projects in a timely manner. Normally this would have been good cause, but instead of looking to more significant factors (bickering bosses making major changes to requirements on a daily basis, unstable platform for development, etc.) they considered the problem to be fundamentally attributable to my slow typing speed of ~70wpm.
- Bobby_Tables 14y ago
  They need these sort of things to cover their bases in case the real reason for firing you isn't something they'd want to explain to anyone outside the company. (At least that was the case the one time I was fired.)
- Arelius 14y ago
  What motivation does an employee, who is getting fired, have to sign the acknowledgment form?
  - MattRogish 14y ago
    I've heard (never seen it done, or worked for a place that did this) that they withhold a last paycheck, severance, whatever until you sign. Probably not legal but it is pretty compelling at a very shocking time.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      If a company has such poor ethics that they'd think about witholding a last paycheck, what makes you think signing is going to prevent it from happening anyways?
Harkins 14y ago
"One of the hard lessons The Partner taught me is this: the health of the business is more important than the well being of any one employee." What, really, is the purpose of your business? And what makes it more important than the well-being of an actual person? I don't take issue with the firings recounted (well, at least the carefully-documented public reasons he provides), but what could make this statement true? I read it and can't find a charitable interpretation.
- jdminhbg 14y ago
  An unhealthy business would result in layoffs for multiple employees, for one thing.
- vacri 14y ago
  A business is made up of a number of actual persons. Firing one can significantly improve the well-being of the remaining actual persons. He even recounts this in the article, with the guy lying about his timesheeet causing such a problem with other employees that they say 'him or me' - it has to be pretty distressing before most people get to that stage.
- ChristianMarks 14y ago
  He doesn't mention the soft lesson The Partner taught him: the health and financial well-being of the executives is incomparably more important than the company and--not that this rises to the level of concern--the well-being of any one employee or the entire lot of them for that matter.
- philwelch 14y ago
  A business exists for the benefit of its customers, and so do the jobs at that business. The health of a good business is a reflection of how well it serves its customers--and I'd say the kind of business that is healthy despite failing its customers is not only probably evil, but more likely than not needs to fire a lot of people, starting at the top.
sanj 14y ago
We told the veterans to help the new people whenever they could, but none of the old heads really wanted to be bothered, particularly given that we keep track of everyone’s output and any time spent teaching new people would reduce the build total of the teacher. You get what you measure. One possible way to fix this is to have a fraction of the improvement of a new worker accrue to the teacher.
EternalFury 14y ago
You read this and you never want to work for anyone, ever again. I am no peasant in your Feudal system.
- ChristianMarks 14y ago
  Here here!
alan_cx 14y ago
Not a hard rule or anything, but I tend the view the need to fire people as a failure of recruitment. The wrong person was hired. Smart clauses in contracts are pointless if you hire the wrong people. If you hire the right people, you don't need them.
- philwelch 14y ago
  If you fire well enough, you don't have to worry so much about recruitment. You can either fire well or hire well, ideally both, but it can't be neither.
orbitingpluto 14y ago
Oddly enough, many of the expectations listed are not at all desirable. The following, quoted from the article, got me into trouble at a workplace: • Employees will try to increase productivity in operations whenever possible. Big no-no when management does not want to learn or is afraid of being left behind. (I ended up cutting half of my work week by retweaking stuff.) • Employees will use tools, jigs, and the facility in general in a manner that minimizes wear and maximizes utility and safety. In some of my tweaks I heavily cut down on use of paper and electricity. Also a big no-no for some reason. (Again, mostly because the steps above required learning.) • Employees will operate machines and tools in a safe manner at all times. Ever been told to fix something and you don't think it's safe? I go with, "If it's so safe, why don't you put your hand in there?" That usually shuts them up and brings them back to a reality where worker safety is a concern. • Employees are expected and encouraged to maintain clear and open communication with management about unsafe or inefficient situations in the shop. Attempts at disclosing severe security issues landed a firewall between me and the president. To this day the issue is still not fixed at the branches where I did not work. • Employees are expected to keep an accurate time sheet, broken down by job and activity. This time sheet will be used for production metrics as well as for payroll purposes. This is an issue because then they would actually have to pay you for the overtime that you have been working. Ever been told to not include overtime hour work in your reports and only do it orally? • Tardiness or absenteeism This is my favourite. A manager would often intercept me at a strategic location where he had arranged a clock to be set fifteen minutes AHEAD and where I would be told I was late. I had great fun choosing implausible alternate paths as he would try to do this regularly. • Falsification of time and/or job time sheets Now this one is why I actually quit. They regularly wanted me to cut an hour here and there off of the 'grunt' workers timesheets. (Archaic timesheet system written in a computer language you have never heard of, guaranteed.) I had issues with doing this. • Behavior that is insulting, bothersome, or obnoxious to others This post may qualify...
- jemfinch 14y ago
  It's not quite clear what point you're trying to make here. This is a lot of text, and it's clear you intended to contribute to the discussion: can you clarify what you sought to contribute?
obie 14y ago
"Nothing is more heartbreaking than realizing that a worker who is trying his hardest can’t cut it." So true. I've had to fire a few people that met that criteria and it's really difficult to do. In a startup situation, it might be advantageous to discontinue the full-time relationship but allow them to continue working part-time at their leisure (or according to some schedule) in exchange for continuing to vest their equity, but no cash.
- CrLf 14y ago
  That reads much like "but we can still be friends". Yeah, right.
mossinthehole 14y ago
So the people this guy fired were given expectations up front, and then clearly told why, by their boss, that things weren't working out? I wish I was given that luxury when I was let go from my last job...
swdunlop 14y ago
I find appalling the number of comments about how horrible this man must be to layout his expectations for employees. Obviously, he should just tell people to "do stuff" and pay them out of sheer gratitude that they might. In my very mercenary heart, I extend the 30-day principle as a two way principle. If at any time I decide my employer/employee is irredeemably unsatisfactory, I consider it my duty to break it off. The hard part is knowing when something is irredeemable and unsatisfactory. Having well defined responsibilities and expectations makes sure both sides know the parameter space. Communicating with the other guy is key, too. Looks like this fiend is doing both -- more power to him.
inopinatus 14y ago
This Paul is the antithesis of every great boss I've ever worked for. He writes a bunch of Barnum statements, any of which are subject to the sole interpretation of a despot and most of which are broad enough to cover almost any behaviour. It's an entirely negative framing of people management and defines a corporate culture of fear. I'd never sign up for it, but then again, I've always had the luxury of choosing my employer. Moreover, firing on this kind of basis is knucklehead stuff. It's easy. You steel your heart, cite a rule and pull the trigger. If you want a challenge, trying making public sector jobs redundant. The resulting press coverage, union hardball and politicking will blow your mind.
jnazario 14y ago
actually i quite like this piece. the hardest day as a first time manager i ever had was when i had to let someone go in a RIF. he had done nothing wrong other than be the last guy hired in the team. i hadn't been the best manager to him (i've since invested myself a lot of learning management), and so i felt like i doubly let him down. letting people go is hard, for almost any reason, and i think this piece captures that. i don't agree with everything he writes (i'm a big fan of training and setting people up for success), but the two big highlights for me are holding people accountable to clear expectations of performance, and "him or me." while the latter sounds awful, like some jerk is putting the manager in the middle and forcing a choice, the fact is that the team and ultimately the company will suffer if problem employees persist. management always seems like tyranny before you get into it, arbitrary and capricious. while we all see bad managers from time to time who reinforce that stereotype, good managers demonstrate the opposite, that management is anything but fickle tyranny, or even power. it's responsibility.
robomartin 14y ago
On the other hand, at-will employment == no need for a reason (or employee handbook). From Wikipedia: "any hiring is presumed to be "at will"; that is, the employer is free to discharge individuals "for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all," and the employee is equally free to quit, strike, or otherwise cease work." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment I'm not a lawyer, but, my gut feeling is that if you are in an at-will jurisdiction the easiest way to fire is to simply do a "I regret we have to let you go" firing with no explanations. Why do I say this? Because opening your mouth beyond that could open you up for liability and the labor department is as anti-business as can be. I had a really bad experience with a sales guy I hired some time ago. The standard deal was 90 days probation. We signed a very detailed contract upon employment that spelled out the terms. The contract was authored by my attorney and was fully legal in California. The basics of it were that he would get an advance on commissions as part of his weekly pay. This is common practice with sales people. In order to provide them with a minimum stable income you state their base pay and then negotiate an advance on future commissions. The idea is that once they start selling they pay you back for the advance. In this case, the advance was $1,000 per week. Put another way, he owed me $1,000 per week and had to pay it back out of future sales commission. It's a trust relationship: I give you money you have not earned trusting that you'll work hard to repay it and actually earn beyond that. To clarify, this sales person was not getting paid $1,000 per week. His weekly paycheck included a base salary plus the $1,000 advance. Well, he sold a net total of $0 in six months of employment. I should have let him go at the 90 day period but that would have been the holiday season and, back then, I was a sucker for not doing that to people with families. I've been on the receiving end of loosing my job at the end of the year and just didn't want to do that to others. Fucking sap I was. I had a stern talk with him and wished him happy holidays. Once back he didn't sell a thing for three more months. I let him go and gave him a full explanation as to why. I also did the math and figured out that he owed me nearly $26K in unearned commissions. Keep in mind, this was a loan, from me to him, based on the agreement that he would pay it back as he started to earn commissions from sales. Again, being a fucking sap, I told him that I would simply not pay him his last two weeks and be done with it. That amounted to recovering just a few thousand dollars. A couple of months later I find myself in a hearing at the Labor Board. Contract in hand, I assume that this is a done deal. I produced the signed multi-page contract. He admitted to knowing all about it and understanding the terms. I presented a balance sheet showing the math and that he owed me over twenty thousand dollars but was willing to call it even and move on. We would hear the decision within two weeks of the hearing. Two weeks later I get a letter ordering me to pay him $5,000! I consulted with my attorney. He said that we could go after the labor board for failing to honor a legally binding contract and win. However, he said, this is going to cost you far more than $5,000. Ten times that much, if you are lucky. "Pay the guy and move on". So I did and learned a few very valuable lessons. This, BTW, to get a little political, is one of the ways votes are bought in this country. We hear of corrupt regimes in other countries. It's the same here, but with different techniques. In this case, the Democratic party ensures voter loyalty by playing games like this one (favoring labor, unions, government workers, etc.). That guy, the ace sales guy, will remember the extra five grand he got at my expense and will bend over backwards to support the party who got him that. The problem is that they don't understand (voters and party) that they are destroying jobs. President Obama is a cool guy, but if someone from another planet were to draw conclusions based on his speeches they'd conclude that the only important people in the US are "teachers, police, fireman and construction workers", or, put another way "unions, unions, unions, and unions". Crock of shit. Having a manual might be a good idea. An even better idea is to have a good relationship with your attorney. In some industries you will need him/her often. Thankfully this was a corner case for me. I've never had other issues with the people I've hired. Most professionals are exactly that, responsible and hard working pros. I am quite liberal with my relationship with those who work for me when we all behave as responsible pros. For example, one time I encouraged my marketing manager to take a paid week off to go see a band she loved in the UK. That paid week did not come out of her vacation time. I paid for it because she was doing a good job and thought it'd be nice to show my appreciation this way. I am happy to say that I have many examples like that.
Xipe 14y ago
Nordstrom's Employee Handbook sound both much better and much clearer.

156 points by michaelleland 14y ago

Summary: Cover your ass. Here are the author's ideas, rewritten without the pollyannaish nonsense: Step 1: Have a gigantic book of employee guidelines. At any point in time, you should be able to pick an employee and find something you can write them up for. Have the employee sign a piece of paper on day 1 that they are aware of the book. Step 2: Before you fire the employee, make sure you've written him up more than once. Lay your groundwork a week or two in advance. Find something else, and do the paperwork from step one. You don't fire an employee for walking in on the VP banging a secretary, it's because he wasn't filing his TPS reports properly. Step 3: When actually firing somebody, have a witness + a recording device in the room. This protects you from sexual harassment lawsuits. Step 4: Explanations: Blame the economy. If that doesn't work, blame the phases of the moon. Anything you want, but not something that is grounds for a wrongful termination suit.

ph0rque 14y ago
Nice summary of what my reaction was after reading this post. I especially like the parts of the excerpt that basically said, "we may fire you for any of these things, or something else entirely".
- GoodIntentions 14y ago
  >> or something else entirely "making eye contact with your betters" "choosing the wrong religion" "whatever else I feel like, but can't write down without getting sued?"
TylerE 14y ago
For extra credit, compare and contrast this approach to the US justice system.
thetrb 14y ago
I also especially liked this: Part of the Employee Handbook: "Reasons for termination include but are not limited to the following: [...] • Other reasons not listed here" And then his comment: "As you can see, these are clear boundaries" Yeah, very clear boundaries there: You can be fired for anything, including "reasons not listed here".
- vacri 14y ago
  It is actually a pretty clear list. It's listing a number of things clearly. It's also saying that the list is not closed, because anything can happen and you can't predict everything. What if an employee decides to splash paint on all the cars in the car park? Unlikely, but possible, and it's stupid to try and come up with every such possibility, because you'll never hit them all. The list hits the most common issues and lays them out clearly.
  - phillmv 14y ago
    It's easy. My employee handbook, should I ever get to that stage, shall read: 1) Be honest. 2) Don't be a dipshit. 3) If you have a problem with something, ask.
    - vacri 14y ago
      As your number of staff increases, you'll find that you need to be more explicit. Real world people are complex creatures, and managing them isn't simple. What defines 'being a dipshit', for example? For some, it's being a pedant. For others, it's being slow to learn. Others think it's about obnoxiousness. Besides, rules like "fraudulent timesheets are a fireable offense" make it explicitly clear that 'we check these things', and avoid the 'but I didn't know it was wrong' excuses that you will hear with enough employees, commonsense be damned.
      - phillmv 14y ago
        True but such is life. You make up for it by always giving people a chance first. You never fire on the first sign of dipshittiness.
gaius 14y ago
It is quite insidious. Consider: We told the veterans to help the new people whenever they could, but none of the old heads really wanted to be bothered But that contravenes: Employees will try to increase productivity in operations whenever possible. He's got them all over a barrel.
- TylerE 14y ago
  It's Catch-22! If they don't help, they're not trying to increase productivity. If they DO help, their OWN productivity will suffer, and if they are truly in, say, the 10%, they are probably more productive than a newbie will ever be.
- run4yourlives 14y ago
  To be fair, he fully sees the error of the former situation and takes blame for that personally. I don't think he was trying to do this on purpose.
  - MaxGabriel 14y ago
    He takes the blame, but he also realizes the cause of the problem and does nothing: "particularly given that we keep track of everyone’s output and any time spent teaching new people would reduce the build total of the teacher."
    - notJim 14y ago
      Yeah, that really stood out to me. He claimed to want to train the new people, but also said he couldn't afford the loss in productivity. You can't have it both ways.
- umjames 14y ago
  The problem is that the boss needs a way to tell if that help is falling on deaf ears. If the help isn't having a sufficiently positive effect, then you have someone who is not qualified to do the work. Is the boss really interested in making his team stronger all-around (not just a few star employees), or does he just not want to have to deal with answering questions from new hires who might be struggling? I'm in this position right now. I'm not being conceited, but I am in the role of the highly-productive employee. My boss hires people (or we acquire new team members as the result of a company organizational change). Either way, before the new team members start, my boss inevitably asks me to make sure they can do the job. I've never seen anyone in my department fired due to incompetence. Whenever a team member has questions/problems, they almost always end up getting sent to me. It has gotten to the point where I now have to head a weekly developer meeting that is really just a glorified question and answer session. The problem is that my team members are never weaned off of my help. My boss doesn't seem to care about this. I've overheard him say to people, who were trying to figure things out without having to ask me for help, to just ask me. I understand that it's more important to my boss to just get things done, but that creates an unnecessary dependency on me. I'm not scalable. Hire better employees or take a hands-on approach to training, but don't keep sending them to me all the time. I can understand why the author's top employees didn't want be bothered with helping those who were struggling. You don't want to be in a position where you have to do your job plus some/most/all of someone else's.
laughinghan 14y ago
I'm not sure what you're saying. All of his ideas, even "rewritten without pollyannaish nonsense", seem to me like essential components of firing someone the right way. Could you contrast these steps with how you believe people should be fired? Summary: Cover your ass. Certainly doing the right thing is one way to cover your ass. Step 1: Have a gigantic book of employee guidelines. At any point in time, you should be able to pick an employee and find something you can write them up for. Have the employee sign a piece of paper on day 1 that they are aware of the book. Are you saying it's better not to have clear employee guidelines or not to make sure they know them? Step 2: Before you fire the employee, make sure you've written him up more than once. Lay your groundwork a week or two in advance. Find something else, and do the paperwork from step one. You don't fire an employee for walking in on the VP banging a secretary, it's because he wasn't filing his TPS reports properly. Are you saying it's better not to wait for repeat offenses, or better not to have clear reasons for firing? I have no idea where you got this "VP banging a secretary" interpretation. He's talking about his furniture company of 6 carpenters, for goodness sake. Step 3: When actually firing somebody, have a witness + a recording device in the room. This protects you from sexual harassment lawsuits. It only protects you from sexual harassment lawsuits if you don't sexually harass them. It also only protects you from any other kind of lawsuit for wrongful behavior if you don't behave wrongfully. Isn't it a good thing for them to not sexually harass employees? Step 4: Explanations: Blame the economy. If that doesn't work, blame the phases of the moon. Anything you want, but not something that is grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Is it better to have no reason, or not to explain to the employee that there were external factors in the decision, or to lie that there were no external factors? Or are you saying external factors never dominate and blaming them is always lying? Of course you shouldn't fire some one for reasons that would be grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Because those would be wrongful terminations! You seem to be narrowly interpreting his attempts to do the right thing as just attempting to cover his ass. I don't see where you got this, he repeatedly agonizes over doing firing the right way. Could you explain what you think he'd do differently if he were actually a good boss, as opposed to just trying to cover his ass?

jtbigwoo 14y ago

But in my defense, training workers is extremely expensive for a small shop like mine. I would have had to assign one of my better guys to the task full time for there to be any hope of success, and I simply could not afford to do that. We are eating our seed corn.

cldrope 14y ago
This kind of thought process that you've pointed out above is probably the biggest cancer of the industry to be honest. What happened to apprenticeship? Better your hiring practice or stop hiring cheap. Also I'd wager with such an absurdly wrong mindset they still use software to filter resumes, which often kills chances for good talent to get through because you've placed some arbitrary value on your time OVER the added value of good recruitment and staffing.
prodigal_erik 14y ago
Your rivals (whether they make competing products or merely use their success to bid against you for employees) net most of the benefit from your training investment when your trainees aren't going to spend the majority of their career with you. Vocational training becomes a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good when there's no mutual expectation of longevity and loyalty. We're eating each others' seed corn.
- dpritchett 14y ago
  Your trainees might stick around for decades if you offered a superlative work arrangement.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Your rivals (whether they make competing products or merely use their success to bid against you for employees) net most of the benefit from your training investment when your trainees aren't going to spend the majority of their career with you. Great, then the issue is to figure out "how do we create an environment and culture where people will stay here for a very long time?"
- 14y ago

mike626 14y ago

Alternate titles... Paul Downs: Dreadful Employer Paul Downs Cabinetmakers: The Dickensian Workshop Reborn!

jcc80 14y ago

This has some good points and the guy doesn't seem too arrogant or that he enjoyed letting people go. But, I just don't think I could ever write an article about firing people. Actually, maybe it's just the title that bothers me - but from what I understand, the author may not get to pick those for editorials.

rondon1 14y ago

When you treat adults like this they will not like or respect you and will want you to fail. Any time this boss makes a mistake his employees will make him pay. "Oh yeah we can't work this week because the boss told us to throw away our safety glasses. Yes, we saw the UPS truck run into the river that probably had the new safety glasses on them. But we are supposed to do what the boss says"

m104 14y ago

The best teams I've ever worked for had this set of common traits: 1) On the offer day, potential employees were told there were high expectations and no fixed rules to govern what that meant. There was leniency in some cases, but manager/supervisor judgement was the only rule that mattered. No handbooks or rule sets. 2) All new team members were automatically assumed to be terminated within a month or so. This was usually true. Any new employee that didn't pull their weight, sat around waiting for someone to tell them what to do, or lied in any way was terminated. 3) Human mistakes (fat fingers, brain farts, etc.) were reprimanded internally but covered, responsibility-wise, by the manager or supervisor externally. (I got this treatment at least once a year...) 4) Repeated or dumb mistakes meant being terminated, usually within the same business day. (I saw this happen many times. Not fun but then again they were dumb or repeated mistakes.) 5) Lots of communication within the team. Supervisors and managers were always available or actively participating in the projects. In other words, there were high expectations and they were strictly enforced, with nowhere to hide mistakes or divert responsibility. Or, more bluntly, "we want to work with adults, not children". Sounds harsh perhaps, but these were the best teams I've ever worked for and no one who stayed for more than 6 months felt used, abused, or anything other than lucky to be working with fine people. When long-time employees left, it was to start their own businesses or go back to school and there were always a few tears in the parting days. Now, if you read in some book or learned in a training course that you need to cover your butt legally at all times, give everyone plenty of chances to do the right thing, and take everybody's situation into consideration before taking disciplinary action, your teams are going to start sucking. Why? Because all of those things are the opposite of management. Those things are what you do to avoid management. This whole article, to me, says "boy, it'd be so much easier to run this business if I didn't have to actually run this business". Here's a hint: If your strategy for managing a team or community or whatever is "people should do the right thing and we should give them every opportunity to do that", then your team's problems aren't actually your team's problems.

rnemo 14y ago
I agree with most of your post, except: "2) All new team members were automatically assumed to be terminated within a month or so. This was usually true. Any new employee that didn't pull their weight, sat around waiting for someone to tell them what to do, or lied in any way was terminated." Quite frankly this just sounds like whomever is in charge of hiring in these teams does a shit job of it. If, during an extended interview or round of interviews, a person cannot manage to get enough of an idea about how a candidate is going to mesh with the team that new hires often last less than 30 days, that person should not be hiring. If that person also does the firing as well they shouldn't be allowed near personnel management whatsoever, and their overall ability to lead should be questioned.

cldrope 14y ago

That article gave me cancer. It seems like it wants to be different than other businesses but is not. As soon as you say "And other reasons not listed here" you just made your list useless. Having a huge book of rules makes it feel like an unwelcome, draconian workplace. Just hire smart, trust your workers and fire them when they don't meet obvious role expectations or act inappropriate.

spaghetti 14y ago

Sounds like Paul spent a considerable amount of time focusing on negative things. While it's necessary for employers to protect themselves I hope an equivalent amount of time is spent on positive things. For example if Paul spent as much time on creative training videos for new employees as he did on filming termination meetings he would perhaps have a more lucrative business. It's the perpetual focus on the negative that's just lame.

vacri 14y ago
So you're saying that creating a creative training video is as simple as propping a camera on a desk and hitting record?
- spaghetti 14y ago
  You're right that creating a training video has a larger up-front cost than simply recording a meeting. However when the long-term effects are taken into account the trade off is probably favorable. Something like a training video that in theory helps the employees and makes them feel supported will probably pay off more for the business in terms of increased employee satisfaction than something shockingly negative and dissonant like video-taping an employee being fired.
  - vacri 14y ago
    A couple of problems with your comments. The first is that it's not an either/or, you can have both. The second is that recording the dismissal isn't going to cause that much of a problem when it comes to morale, because the person affected is no longer working there. Another issue is that recording the meeting protects both parties from later fabrications made by the other; the dismissed employee could make it a condition that a copy is given, or set up their own recording easily, given smartphones today. Recording a meeting which involves emotional distress is not 'shockingly negative and dissonant'. It's wise for both parties, just like having a witness is. I was recently made redundant, and although we didn't record the meeting, my employer advised who their witness would be, and allowed me to choose one of my own. The idea is to have a more neutral record for backup than the two main parties at an emotional time, and a video recording assists just like having a witness does.

jrockway 14y ago

Why would an employee consent to being recorded and signing a piece of paper acknowledging the misbehavior? I certainly wouldn't, if only to irritate the person firing me.

protomyth 14y ago
That's what the witness is for.
- nooop 14y ago
  To hit the employee until he signs?
  - protomyth 14y ago
    to make it irrelevant if s/he signs or not at the exit interview
koenigdavidmj 14y ago
Severance.
- jrockway 14y ago
  I don't think low-level cabinet assemblers get severance when being fired for incompetence.
  - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
    I'm sure that this stunt has been tried in the software industry too.
paulhauggis 14y ago
exactly. I would laugh in my bosses face if they gave me something like this to sign.

Cyranix 14y ago

I also write a short acknowledgment form that the employee will sign and that confirms what happened. It makes clear that the employee was responsible and that the reason for the firing has been explained. When I was fired from my first programming job, my boss took this approach. I was inexperienced and frankly quite shocked -- there had been no warnings, and the reason cited was laughable* -- so I ended up signing it. I've come to realize that I despise the practice. It asks a person who is feeling vulnerable to increase their own shame, doing nothing productive for either party. I always thought I was a careful person when it came to contracts and such, but this was a real lesson in keeping one's guard up even when taken by surprise. * Namely, that I didn't deliver projects in a timely manner. Normally this would have been good cause, but instead of looking to more significant factors (bickering bosses making major changes to requirements on a daily basis, unstable platform for development, etc.) they considered the problem to be fundamentally attributable to my slow typing speed of ~70wpm.

Bobby_Tables 14y ago
They need these sort of things to cover their bases in case the real reason for firing you isn't something they'd want to explain to anyone outside the company. (At least that was the case the one time I was fired.)
Arelius 14y ago
What motivation does an employee, who is getting fired, have to sign the acknowledgment form?
- MattRogish 14y ago
  I've heard (never seen it done, or worked for a place that did this) that they withhold a last paycheck, severance, whatever until you sign. Probably not legal but it is pretty compelling at a very shocking time.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    If a company has such poor ethics that they'd think about witholding a last paycheck, what makes you think signing is going to prevent it from happening anyways?

Harkins 14y ago

"One of the hard lessons The Partner taught me is this: the health of the business is more important than the well being of any one employee." What, really, is the purpose of your business? And what makes it more important than the well-being of an actual person? I don't take issue with the firings recounted (well, at least the carefully-documented public reasons he provides), but what could make this statement true? I read it and can't find a charitable interpretation.

jdminhbg 14y ago
An unhealthy business would result in layoffs for multiple employees, for one thing.
vacri 14y ago
A business is made up of a number of actual persons. Firing one can significantly improve the well-being of the remaining actual persons. He even recounts this in the article, with the guy lying about his timesheeet causing such a problem with other employees that they say 'him or me' - it has to be pretty distressing before most people get to that stage.
ChristianMarks 14y ago
He doesn't mention the soft lesson The Partner taught him: the health and financial well-being of the executives is incomparably more important than the company and--not that this rises to the level of concern--the well-being of any one employee or the entire lot of them for that matter.
philwelch 14y ago
A business exists for the benefit of its customers, and so do the jobs at that business. The health of a good business is a reflection of how well it serves its customers--and I'd say the kind of business that is healthy despite failing its customers is not only probably evil, but more likely than not needs to fire a lot of people, starting at the top.

sanj 14y ago

We told the veterans to help the new people whenever they could, but none of the old heads really wanted to be bothered, particularly given that we keep track of everyone’s output and any time spent teaching new people would reduce the build total of the teacher. You get what you measure. One possible way to fix this is to have a fraction of the improvement of a new worker accrue to the teacher.

EternalFury 14y ago

You read this and you never want to work for anyone, ever again. I am no peasant in your Feudal system.

ChristianMarks 14y ago
Here here!

alan_cx 14y ago

Not a hard rule or anything, but I tend the view the need to fire people as a failure of recruitment. The wrong person was hired. Smart clauses in contracts are pointless if you hire the wrong people. If you hire the right people, you don't need them.

philwelch 14y ago
If you fire well enough, you don't have to worry so much about recruitment. You can either fire well or hire well, ideally both, but it can't be neither.

orbitingpluto 14y ago

Oddly enough, many of the expectations listed are not at all desirable. The following, quoted from the article, got me into trouble at a workplace: • Employees will try to increase productivity in operations whenever possible. Big no-no when management does not want to learn or is afraid of being left behind. (I ended up cutting half of my work week by retweaking stuff.) • Employees will use tools, jigs, and the facility in general in a manner that minimizes wear and maximizes utility and safety. In some of my tweaks I heavily cut down on use of paper and electricity. Also a big no-no for some reason. (Again, mostly because the steps above required learning.) • Employees will operate machines and tools in a safe manner at all times. Ever been told to fix something and you don't think it's safe? I go with, "If it's so safe, why don't you put your hand in there?" That usually shuts them up and brings them back to a reality where worker safety is a concern. • Employees are expected and encouraged to maintain clear and open communication with management about unsafe or inefficient situations in the shop. Attempts at disclosing severe security issues landed a firewall between me and the president. To this day the issue is still not fixed at the branches where I did not work. • Employees are expected to keep an accurate time sheet, broken down by job and activity. This time sheet will be used for production metrics as well as for payroll purposes. This is an issue because then they would actually have to pay you for the overtime that you have been working. Ever been told to not include overtime hour work in your reports and only do it orally? • Tardiness or absenteeism This is my favourite. A manager would often intercept me at a strategic location where he had arranged a clock to be set fifteen minutes AHEAD and where I would be told I was late. I had great fun choosing implausible alternate paths as he would try to do this regularly. • Falsification of time and/or job time sheets Now this one is why I actually quit. They regularly wanted me to cut an hour here and there off of the 'grunt' workers timesheets. (Archaic timesheet system written in a computer language you have never heard of, guaranteed.) I had issues with doing this. • Behavior that is insulting, bothersome, or obnoxious to others This post may qualify...

jemfinch 14y ago
It's not quite clear what point you're trying to make here. This is a lot of text, and it's clear you intended to contribute to the discussion: can you clarify what you sought to contribute?

obie 14y ago

"Nothing is more heartbreaking than realizing that a worker who is trying his hardest can’t cut it." So true. I've had to fire a few people that met that criteria and it's really difficult to do. In a startup situation, it might be advantageous to discontinue the full-time relationship but allow them to continue working part-time at their leisure (or according to some schedule) in exchange for continuing to vest their equity, but no cash.

CrLf 14y ago
That reads much like "but we can still be friends". Yeah, right.

mossinthehole 14y ago

So the people this guy fired were given expectations up front, and then clearly told why, by their boss, that things weren't working out? I wish I was given that luxury when I was let go from my last job...

swdunlop 14y ago

I find appalling the number of comments about how horrible this man must be to layout his expectations for employees. Obviously, he should just tell people to "do stuff" and pay them out of sheer gratitude that they might. In my very mercenary heart, I extend the 30-day principle as a two way principle. If at any time I decide my employer/employee is irredeemably unsatisfactory, I consider it my duty to break it off. The hard part is knowing when something is irredeemable and unsatisfactory. Having well defined responsibilities and expectations makes sure both sides know the parameter space. Communicating with the other guy is key, too. Looks like this fiend is doing both -- more power to him.

inopinatus 14y ago

This Paul is the antithesis of every great boss I've ever worked for. He writes a bunch of Barnum statements, any of which are subject to the sole interpretation of a despot and most of which are broad enough to cover almost any behaviour. It's an entirely negative framing of people management and defines a corporate culture of fear. I'd never sign up for it, but then again, I've always had the luxury of choosing my employer. Moreover, firing on this kind of basis is knucklehead stuff. It's easy. You steel your heart, cite a rule and pull the trigger. If you want a challenge, trying making public sector jobs redundant. The resulting press coverage, union hardball and politicking will blow your mind.

jnazario 14y ago

actually i quite like this piece. the hardest day as a first time manager i ever had was when i had to let someone go in a RIF. he had done nothing wrong other than be the last guy hired in the team. i hadn't been the best manager to him (i've since invested myself a lot of learning management), and so i felt like i doubly let him down. letting people go is hard, for almost any reason, and i think this piece captures that. i don't agree with everything he writes (i'm a big fan of training and setting people up for success), but the two big highlights for me are holding people accountable to clear expectations of performance, and "him or me." while the latter sounds awful, like some jerk is putting the manager in the middle and forcing a choice, the fact is that the team and ultimately the company will suffer if problem employees persist. management always seems like tyranny before you get into it, arbitrary and capricious. while we all see bad managers from time to time who reinforce that stereotype, good managers demonstrate the opposite, that management is anything but fickle tyranny, or even power. it's responsibility.

robomartin 14y ago

On the other hand, at-will employment == no need for a reason (or employee handbook). From Wikipedia: "any hiring is presumed to be "at will"; that is, the employer is free to discharge individuals "for good cause, or bad cause, or no cause at all," and the employee is equally free to quit, strike, or otherwise cease work." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment I'm not a lawyer, but, my gut feeling is that if you are in an at-will jurisdiction the easiest way to fire is to simply do a "I regret we have to let you go" firing with no explanations. Why do I say this? Because opening your mouth beyond that could open you up for liability and the labor department is as anti-business as can be. I had a really bad experience with a sales guy I hired some time ago. The standard deal was 90 days probation. We signed a very detailed contract upon employment that spelled out the terms. The contract was authored by my attorney and was fully legal in California. The basics of it were that he would get an advance on commissions as part of his weekly pay. This is common practice with sales people. In order to provide them with a minimum stable income you state their base pay and then negotiate an advance on future commissions. The idea is that once they start selling they pay you back for the advance. In this case, the advance was $1,000 per week. Put another way, he owed me $1,000 per week and had to pay it back out of future sales commission. It's a trust relationship: I give you money you have not earned trusting that you'll work hard to repay it and actually earn beyond that. To clarify, this sales person was not getting paid $1,000 per week. His weekly paycheck included a base salary plus the $1,000 advance. Well, he sold a net total of $0 in six months of employment. I should have let him go at the 90 day period but that would have been the holiday season and, back then, I was a sucker for not doing that to people with families. I've been on the receiving end of loosing my job at the end of the year and just didn't want to do that to others. Fucking sap I was. I had a stern talk with him and wished him happy holidays. Once back he didn't sell a thing for three more months. I let him go and gave him a full explanation as to why. I also did the math and figured out that he owed me nearly $26K in unearned commissions. Keep in mind, this was a loan, from me to him, based on the agreement that he would pay it back as he started to earn commissions from sales. Again, being a fucking sap, I told him that I would simply not pay him his last two weeks and be done with it. That amounted to recovering just a few thousand dollars. A couple of months later I find myself in a hearing at the Labor Board. Contract in hand, I assume that this is a done deal. I produced the signed multi-page contract. He admitted to knowing all about it and understanding the terms. I presented a balance sheet showing the math and that he owed me over twenty thousand dollars but was willing to call it even and move on. We would hear the decision within two weeks of the hearing. Two weeks later I get a letter ordering me to pay him $5,000! I consulted with my attorney. He said that we could go after the labor board for failing to honor a legally binding contract and win. However, he said, this is going to cost you far more than $5,000. Ten times that much, if you are lucky. "Pay the guy and move on". So I did and learned a few very valuable lessons. This, BTW, to get a little political, is one of the ways votes are bought in this country. We hear of corrupt regimes in other countries. It's the same here, but with different techniques. In this case, the Democratic party ensures voter loyalty by playing games like this one (favoring labor, unions, government workers, etc.). That guy, the ace sales guy, will remember the extra five grand he got at my expense and will bend over backwards to support the party who got him that. The problem is that they don't understand (voters and party) that they are destroying jobs. President Obama is a cool guy, but if someone from another planet were to draw conclusions based on his speeches they'd conclude that the only important people in the US are "teachers, police, fireman and construction workers", or, put another way "unions, unions, unions, and unions". Crock of shit. Having a manual might be a good idea. An even better idea is to have a good relationship with your attorney. In some industries you will need him/her often. Thankfully this was a corner case for me. I've never had other issues with the people I've hired. Most professionals are exactly that, responsible and hard working pros. I am quite liberal with my relationship with those who work for me when we all behave as responsible pros. For example, one time I encouraged my marketing manager to take a paid week off to go see a band she loved in the UK. That paid week did not come out of her vacation time. I paid for it because she was doing a good job and thought it'd be nice to show my appreciation this way. I am happy to say that I have many examples like that.

Xipe 14y ago

Nordstrom's Employee Handbook sound both much better and much clearer.