This week I learned that a colleague had been fired. I hadn't seen him in a while because after the "reorganization" we were split up into different departments and he was in another part of the building. One of his friends told me at breakfast.
I was shocked. "Stu" had been with the company for a decade and everyone who knew him spoke well of him. His work was always of the highest quality. Now all of a sudden, after all these years, they decide that his work is subpar?
His friend told me that "Stu" had suspected for a while that this was coming and that he was being set up to fail. He was repeatedly called into the office and told he was making too many mistakes. When he asked to see these mistakes, they were unable to produce them. He said that he had not received any complaints from the quality control department which audits our work. Nonetheless, they fired him.
I have seen this happen over and over again with high seniority people and I just do not get it. Management cannot be that deaf, dumb and blind that they don't realize what this sort of thing does to the rest of us? That word will not get around?
When I first started working at this company it had a different name and different owners. It also had a reputation well outside its walls that it was not a good place to work for. In fact, I did not want to work there at all. I only went there because my unemployment was running out and I needed to start filling out applications. I never expected to get hired.
I soon found out all the stories I heard were true; in fact, it was even worse than what I had heard. Friday afternoons were the worst. At 4:00 all work stopped and everyone held their breath until 4:05 came. If you had not been called into the office by then you were "safe" for another week. Rumor had it that the head office had an "axe list" of names to be called on Fridays.
Eventually they went out of business due to the CEO's mishandling of funds and the new people took over. Oh, they promised so much. They would be our friends. We could trust them. No more atmosphere of fear. No more watching what you said or what you did or even who you were with. It was a breath of fresh air. Eventually most of the "old guard" dwindled away and all that were left were "new people" who hadn't experienced what it was like back in the bad old days.
But some of us are still around and we remember. And the whispering in the halls is that the old ways of management are making a comeback. Layoffs and staff reductions due to the economy are one thing, but when a person who has been there for decades gets walked out people start nervously looking at each other. When meetings are called unexpectedly and all but one person is present, people start looking at each other because that is when they do their dirty work.
And it makes absolutely no sense. In my business, the very LAST thing you want is disgruntled employees. Employees with an axe to grind. There are people out there, we are constantly reminded, who would like nothing better than to put us out of business because they don't agree with the kind of work we do. Then why on earth would you drive people into their arms, people who have inside knowledge that would be welcomed by these animal rights activists? Some of them, I hear, pay pretty good for that kind of information.
It's crazy.
I was shocked. "Stu" had been with the company for a decade and everyone who knew him spoke well of him. His work was always of the highest quality. Now all of a sudden, after all these years, they decide that his work is subpar?
His friend told me that "Stu" had suspected for a while that this was coming and that he was being set up to fail. He was repeatedly called into the office and told he was making too many mistakes. When he asked to see these mistakes, they were unable to produce them. He said that he had not received any complaints from the quality control department which audits our work. Nonetheless, they fired him.
I have seen this happen over and over again with high seniority people and I just do not get it. Management cannot be that deaf, dumb and blind that they don't realize what this sort of thing does to the rest of us? That word will not get around?
When I first started working at this company it had a different name and different owners. It also had a reputation well outside its walls that it was not a good place to work for. In fact, I did not want to work there at all. I only went there because my unemployment was running out and I needed to start filling out applications. I never expected to get hired.
I soon found out all the stories I heard were true; in fact, it was even worse than what I had heard. Friday afternoons were the worst. At 4:00 all work stopped and everyone held their breath until 4:05 came. If you had not been called into the office by then you were "safe" for another week. Rumor had it that the head office had an "axe list" of names to be called on Fridays.
Eventually they went out of business due to the CEO's mishandling of funds and the new people took over. Oh, they promised so much. They would be our friends. We could trust them. No more atmosphere of fear. No more watching what you said or what you did or even who you were with. It was a breath of fresh air. Eventually most of the "old guard" dwindled away and all that were left were "new people" who hadn't experienced what it was like back in the bad old days.
But some of us are still around and we remember. And the whispering in the halls is that the old ways of management are making a comeback. Layoffs and staff reductions due to the economy are one thing, but when a person who has been there for decades gets walked out people start nervously looking at each other. When meetings are called unexpectedly and all but one person is present, people start looking at each other because that is when they do their dirty work.
And it makes absolutely no sense. In my business, the very LAST thing you want is disgruntled employees. Employees with an axe to grind. There are people out there, we are constantly reminded, who would like nothing better than to put us out of business because they don't agree with the kind of work we do. Then why on earth would you drive people into their arms, people who have inside knowledge that would be welcomed by these animal rights activists? Some of them, I hear, pay pretty good for that kind of information.
It's crazy.
