Time to Fire Bad Employees

The federal story of security guards sleeping, texting or doing their job poorly seems to be typical of what we’ve been hearing lately. A train crashed? Subway problem? Security breaches? Odds are that it was because of an employee error. We are even hearing that the manager of the Disney World monorail was off site – at the local Perkins pancake restaurant literally phoning in his job.

The fact that some employees are slacking off is not unusual. It happens. What is appalling is that they are still employed. Think about it. This is an employers market as the unemployment rate is closing in to 10%. Now is the time for employers to fire bad employees as there would be a long line of people who would love to take their place.

I never understood or could tolerate slackers at work. The ones who spent half the morning talking about what they did the night before or cooking and eating breakfast or even putting on their makeup and curling the hair. Then they while away the work hours on the internet, or on the phone, or running errands. And of course they are always gone before the minute hand gets to five o’clock. You would think, though, in today’s environment of high unemployment that these folks would put in a little bit of effort for fear that they might lose their jobs. But nope, they continue to go through their day doing as little as possible.

Case in point was my cable guy who stopped by on Saturday to replace my cable box. The cable man started to grumble that he had seven jobs to do that morning when the rules were you shouldn’t have more than three or four in a four hour period. Having just started this blog I was surprised to hear him echo what I had recently written. For he complained that most of the other workers barely completed three jobs in as many hours whereas he does nearly twice as many. And because he is faster then management gives him the jobs that the slackers weren’t going to get around to doing because they were so slow.

Ah yes. The eternal complaint of the efficient worker – if you show you can do something faster than others than they simply pile on more work and end up expecting more from you than from everybody else. And heaven forbid if the good employee should question aloud if they can get all this extra work done. Because that would then elicit a remark that use to really anger me. For if you wonder if you can get the heavy load of work completed then someone will invariably say what are you worrying about, of course you will finish it because you have always gotten it done before. As if somehow you magically do the work without taking into account the 12 hour days and six or seven days you have to work in order to complete the job by the deadline. And then management wonders why they can’t hold on to good employees.

Anyway, there is no excuse for companies to be riddled with slackers, inefficient workers or incompetent employees today. Not when there are dozens of unemployed people who would be delighted to have the job and would actually work hard. Now I don’t usually complain to management when I am faced with a bad employee but I think I just might start to do so. If someone is so blasé that they continue to provide poor customer service or do a job inaccurately then that person should be given a wake up call. Tell their manager when you get bad service. And if the employee is ultimately let go – oh well. At worst you are providing a job opportunity to someone who will appreciate having that job and at best you just might prevent another deadly accident.