The First Casualty

My next series of interviews was with QA and Training (Nothing really unusual here) and concluded with my PM closing supervisor. This guy was highly educated, and was within one month of completing his Masters Degree. He was a teacher a the local college during the day, and worked for us at night...

When I sat down to meet with him, the first thing out of his mouth, was that he wasn't happy, didn't like the job, and was aggressively trying to get a full time teaching job...

Fabulous! Another satisfied employee...


The other significant event during my first week of orientation was that the site was going through a pre-audit with account management (AM) in preparation for an onsite client audit the following week. To say the least, this was a big deal! The account manager (AM)was tearing through files, checking for evidence of a coaching, and trying to identify a solid performance management process.

During his research, he found evidence that a rep was caught releasing the line on customers. The coaching forms (monitors) were found, but guess what wasn't? The write-ups... The best part was that we didn't find just evidence of a single occurrence, it had happened 5 times...

Account Management gave the word to whack him...

Now here's my dilemma. The ink was not even dry on the deal so we officially did not assume control for another couple of weeks. So short term, the original company was calling the shots... I had some short dialogue with account management (AM) that I viewed it as a liability to term this guy when there was not one piece of signed documentation verifying he was coached or written up.

Account Management (AM) confirmed that it was an "Employment At Will State", and not to term him for releasing calls but to let him know that his services were just simply no longer needed. So not only did I have to term with guy with "0" documentation, but now I term him and not give him a reason why.

If you haven’t guessed yet, this is one of the guys my sup had been protecting...

I talked with his sup, "The Great Protector", and told him that we had to term his boy. By being protected by a member of management, and then having that protection snatched out from under him, I knew there was going to be some emotion. I asked him how this guy would react based on the circumstances... His sup (The Great Protector) said that if the rep received un-employment, his guy would be happy.
While we aggressively fight every unemployment case, I knew the circumstances of this term did not ensure a company victory. (Unemployment will continue to be a theme in upcoming issues)

The “The Great Protector” and myself pulled him into an empty training class.
He looks at us, at me, and asks,”So what's going on?”