… OK, I tried the Live Journal thing and it wasn’t really for me (I like having my readers and fans). I’ll re-post the old posts. I think I’m going to stop being paranoid, and I also think I’m going to stop writing EVERY day. Two/three times per week.
And I’m going to delete the previous day’s blog post. Just to avoid anything that might bite me.
Anyway, I’m been taking time off from like, work, blogging, whatever to think about what my next move is. I had an interview with a company and the first question out of the person’s mouth forced me to give this answer: “uh……. er……… well………… hmmmmmmmmm” Needless to say, “smoldering train wreck” was the phrase that could be use to best describe the rest of the interview.
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I’m half-thinking about discontinuing the blog. What I’m afraid of is the wrong person might find this, sniff me out, and then my employment with DeltaHouse gets destroyed (which would be exactly the worst thing in the world in this economy).
Right now, I’m taking a little evasive action and eliminated the easy-find of the old posts on the right side. So you’ll have to work a little to find my greatest hits. What I don’t want is the wrong person finding this and going, “Hey, I remember a story like that,” then reading some more and then going, “WAIT, THAT’S VHRG!” And that’s the end of me. I don’t need that.
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By the way, whoever suggested Google Analytics (and there was more than one person), THANK YOU! People actually read this thing, very cool!
I got a phone call from an employee who was screaming at me about our health insurance. I stayed on the line with him for about ten minutes. Tried to explain how the insurance works, he was very under-informed. Then he start comparing DeltaHouse to his old company. Then he yelled at me some more. Then I tried to explain the point of why he paid insurance premiums (what he got for his money). Then he yelled at me some more.
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SuperGruff has a difficult job. He has the highest demanded widgets in the plant. Customers pay extra to get moved up in the schedule at the last second. Cigarette takes the calls, looks for SuperGruff. If he can’t find SuperGruff, he’ll just redirect the schedule on the floor, and then tell SuperGruff later… or sometime forget. And then SuperGruff gets pissed off!
So about once a week, SuperGruff is in my office.
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One of the things I’ve been doing a lot of lately is talking to friends about legal kinda stuff. I’ve had to explain a few employment laws here and there. The problem arises when someone assumes a law and then act on it, and we have… well… this situation.
Chaw just got married, and instantly had a lot of wife drama. He kept missing work. After enough warnings, he got the hint. But a few weeks after that he calls into work FMLA. The message basically said something, like this…
Today, I almost snapped. Today, I came this close to pounding one of my employees into oblivion (or at least pounding him until several other employees jumped into the fray, pulled me off the guy, and the cops came to take me away).
Here’s what happened.
I’m sure that for the dozen or so readers that I have there is a collective, “YAY!” that just happened.
I’ve decided to stop looking for a new gig for the next 12-16 months.
But at sixteen months, I’ll be looking. Not only looking, but looking hard. Like, kick-down-the-door-screaming,-”show-me-the-money!” hard.
And the reason is not the economy.
It started with a conversation with TheWife about a job interview that I did have.
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Two friends have recently found themselves jettisoned from employment. Both have asked me, without asking me, what I’d do if I found myself unemployed. I wrote one of them this email. Enjoy!
1) Apply for unemployment.
2) Take a look at your finances for things you can cut to save money short term.
Every once in a while, I think about why I have to be such a hard ass in my job. And stories like this happen and I go, “Oh wait a second, this is why!!!”
TwoFace quit DeltaHouse. That fact needs to be made crystal clear. He hated a policy/discipline write-up we had to do with him. And decided to take his widget making ability out the door without another job to go to. And thus leaving us in the dust crying and crying and crying and crying as the company collapsed around us while we were without his widget-making abilities.
The Walking Emergency
This is the guy that comes huffing and puffing into the office… it’s an emergency! He knows what the big meeting is really about. He is afraid of any meeting that he did not call. He heard the rumor. He talks about the implications of everything with everybody and anybody. He generally looks like he’s about to have a heart attack while relaying the crucial news. “We changed toilet paper brands.” “A bird made it into the lobby!” “The girl in accounting got a haircut!” “The meeting has been moved to a bigger conference room!” Time spent actually working: 31%.
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This is part where I win!
If you are beginning to see a trend here, it is not by design, I assure you. In fact, in writing the blog, I never really sat there and figured out why I needed to vent. I just knew I did.
Thanks to DJ, Breanne, Jenn, HR Minion, and everyone else for reading this way to much, because of this reason. I actually figured out a few things about why I needed to vent in the first place. Here’s why…
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When I wonder if I have made a difference in the company, I debate myself a lot. On one side, I’m moving this place to a big-boy company. On the other side, I’ve let so much sh!t slide that sometimes I want to bang my head against a table. On one side, I’ve done so much; yet on the other, I have so much yet to do.
Wow, that almost sounded poetic… almost.
But not quite.
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TrainWreck is a total train wreck. She’s the person at your work that has made every wrong choice that someone could possibly make in life. She’s the type of person that makes you feel better about yourself by seeing her on any given day.
Anyway, I show up to work one day and TrainWreck is missing. After about five minutes, TheFuture walks into my office. (TheFuture gets his nickname because, dude looks like he’s from the future, way too stylish, etc.)
I didn’t think that this topic would have the legs that it does. But I’ve got a few other gems too… Oh! And a theory (that will come at the end - that’s called “a tease”).
* I was at a career fair when a wife walks up to my booth with hubby in tow (toe? Like I’ve said, I’m an above-average write, but not a good writer.). She handed me his resume. I asked him questions about his resume that she answered. I asked her if her husband could talk. She said yes. And I said, let him do it. He said about ten words in the rest of the conversation I had with his wife.
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Dave, DJ, and Jackie: this is for you…
I replied to a reply from Dave on my Confessions of an HR Manager post on HRM Today. And the last line was semi-cryptic without an example. And this came to mind.
CokeMachine applied to be one of our widget makers. He interviewed well, decent resume, so we decided to add him. But, being that he was not employed at the time we offered, we decided to payroll him through a temp service. He’d have to have a background check and take a drug test, and then he’s good to go…
… until he failed the drug test…
… for coke…
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I’m a TV junkie. I’ll pick up ten new shows a year (though I am quick to cut that to about four), in addition to the ten or so that I watch. Yes, I should read books (that’s what lunch is for, for me). But I need intellectually devoid TV to wind down.
One of the shows I’ve picked up is Life on Mars on ABC. I like cop shows, a lot! Not CSI, or Law and Order, though. I LOVED NYPD Blue when it was on. I like a mix of drama with the cases and the cops.
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CharlieBrown, one of our widget kings came into my office.
CharlieBrown: “We have a drug policy here, right?”
VHRG: “CharlieBrown, you don’t even drink, you’ve got nothing to worry about. But yes!”
CharlieBrown: “I was answering a question that Bong had, and I couldn’t help to smell marijuana on his breath.”
VHRG: “You’re sure about this?”
CharlieBrown: “Oh yeah. What are you going to do about it?”
VHRG: “Well, I’m going to investigate it, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll tell you what happened.”
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This one isn’t a story, it’s an introspective for those who want to bail now, I get it.
DeltaHouse isn’t doing well. To what degree, I’m not sure. I know our numbers are 20% down from last year, but that shouldn’t mean super dire straights, right? We have the staff to support the numbers. I’m not hiring. And we’re doing, what I’ll call “surgical”, layoffs (as opposed to just blocks of “you’re fired!”).
The WidgetKing and I are as decent friends as an HR person can allow himself to be with someone. We have Clerks-movie-esque conversations pretty regularly where there is minimal room for breaks in conversation between my comment and his response.
WidgetKind needed to fire TheFace. TheFace has this face he makes when he works that looks like extreme concentration (or something else… we’ll just go with concentration and move on). Anyway, after a warning or two, WidgetKing came to me saying it was time for TheFace to go.
JoeDirt started working at DeltaHouse and stopped working less than two weeks later. We fired him.
Here’s my story. SuperPilot came in every other day for eleven days and went, “Where the hell is JoeDirt?” I’d check my voice mail and he had the following excuses in the eleven days…
• His father had a heart attack.
• His basement flooded.
• His wife got fired from her job.
• His father went back to the hospital.
• He had a court date.
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