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Hate this so hard
At the end of last year, I was promoted to supervisor of the sales staff. I basically did this already (I'm pretty much the assitant manager) but their my primary focus now. I was helping train a new employee and keeping an eye on an existing employee, Jane, who is good in theory, but seems to have some issues with customer communication.
I have been working my butt off to help Jane and fix her problems and we seemed to be making progress, but in the process we've had some issues too. Today is Jane's day off and one of her customers called saying that she was promised a call from Jane last Tuesday and she still hasn't heard anything.
I spoke to Jane about the issue with this customer on Tuesday and she told me she had called the customer and taken care of it that morning (I was out for a doctor's appointment). Now it appears that she bald faced lied to me about speaking to the customer.
I am livid, but also heart broken. I know I can't save people from themselves, but I'm certain that she is going to be fired and I hate that. I really do like her as a person, but she has f*cked up so many times, I don't know what else to do. And lying is just plain unacceptable.
This is going to ruin my week. Hate.hate.hate.this.
Re: Hate this so hard
Managing people can be the most rewarding and most horrible thing, at the same time. I've had to terminate quite a few people in my 9 years with my company, and it's never easy. Even with the people I don't like, I still have a tough time. And when it's someone who you like, and have invested a lot of time and energy with, it feels super personal when they fail.
When I first started working as a manager, I kept trying to rehab employees who were nice people, but just not right for the job. I finally realized that, although it hurt them (and sometimes me) to let them go, it hurt the rest of my team and my customers to let them stay and let the problems continue.
Big hugs!
That is just sucksville... very sorry!
I wish you lots of luck and a week that goes by FAST!
The worst part is I KNOW she can do the job properly. She's just . . . not. We've given her a million warnings, you'd think she'd be on her best behavior. And yet . . .
Thanks, guys. It's good to know I'm not the only one. The thing is, I know I'm good at this. Me managing the sales team was supposed to be a good thing because I'm also the lead sales rep . . . so I know what it's like to deal with a-hole customers. But things keep blowing up in her face and it can't always be the customer's fault. In fact, it can't be because we're in customer service.
Ugh, ugh, ugh. I appreciate the hugs and kind words. My manager seems to want to give her another chance, but we'll see how he feels after he sees the string of e-mails indicated major failure on her part. If the owner gets wind of this, she's dead.
Do you have a performance improvement plan process there?
Here the employee get's a "here's what you need to improve by date x and onward" memo that ends with "or else." They are met with every week to discuss their progress. If they don't improve or they fall of the wagon...it's curtains. It brings the better ones in line and helps offload the bad ones.
We do in a way. She had a review in February where we went over all her problems with the manager and discussed ways to improve. Every week I meet with her regarding her outstanding orders and anything in process and I check in day-to-day to see what she's working on. It just seems that she's been lying to me. She says she's called people or e-mailed them and it looks like that's may not be true.
Even though I know better, and should have learned (more) from my previous experiences, that is exactly what happened to me last year. A manager who worked for me, who was a super nice, smart, capable guy just stopped doing his job. He started lying to me about little things, saying that he'd done them, or making up false reasons why he hadn't. It just kept getting worse and worse, and I just kept trying to motivate him and help him to improve his performance. When I finally wrote him up, and put him on plans and actions (like Aria mentioned), he decided to step down to an hourly role with much less responsibility because he knew he was going to get fired. I should have written him up 6 months before I actually did, and my team and I struggled because I didn't. And it was no fun for that manager, either.
Anyway, I would push to put her on formal plans, with a set date that she needs to improve EVERYTHING by, or else she will be terminated.
GL, sweets!