Manager’s Hot Seat
Case 11: Personal Disclosure: Confession Coincidence?
The Meeting
K: Hi Janeen, how are you doing today?
J: Hi, I’m fine.
K: Do you know why I called you into the meeting today? Do you have any ideas?
J: I have absolutely no idea.
K: Recently, you’ve been not doing your work to the extent that you used to. I know you’re a great worker so is there anything troubling you? Is there anything wrong in your personal life? Is there anything I can do?
J: No, I’m fine. So you want me to be on time. That’s what you’re saying.
K: Well I do not only want you to be on time. I would like you to perform better on your job, I would like to take care of your deadlines, and I would like you to come to meetings,
J: You know what, I promise, I really promise I understand the late thing. You know I work on weekends and I come in at night, you know that. And I don’t take lunch for god’s sakes.
K: We have been talking like twice or three times before and you have said the same things: you promise, you will try, you are never taking lunch. But nothing has changed. So, I’m really at a point right now where I don’t know what to do anymore. And if it keeps going on I might have to go a step further and tell human resources about it because I really don’t know anymore.
J: So, is this just between us?
K: Right now it is just between us but if it doesn’t change, it will be a company matter. You have known me as a friend; you can tell me if anything is troubling you.
J: I umm. I have been a member of a 12 step program for… I have had 8 years sober and um about 6 weeks ago, I just somehow thought that it would be OK. But I couldn’t. The reason that I was late to work was because I had these really bad hangovers and it was really awful. But the thing is, about 5 days ago, I started going back to the meetings at AA, I’m back in the program. I know I’m over the hump. I can’t promise you a life time but a day at a time I can tell you that I’m going to beat this OK?
K: OK.
J: And I can show up. And I want to do a good job. Because I know I can, you know that.
K: I know you want to do a good job, because you have always been like that. You have always been a person who wants to give 110%. I have had friends with a disease like this before and it is very hard. I want to work with you; I want to give you a couple of solutions. Maybe we can both work on the problem. Maybe take the rest of week off, go to your meetings. Starting on Monday, if you do not show up on time, I will have to write you up; I will have to tell human resources. If one person doesn’t make the deadline, it affects 20 other people along the line. So I do have to be very strict about it.
J: But you don’t have to tell human resources now right?
K: I am not telling human resources now. Just let me know what is going on in your life. Let me know if there are any problems. Maybe we can solve it or work around it.
K: Hey Janeen, how are you?
J: Hi how are you?
K: Not bad, how’s life?
J: Life is great. Thank you.
K: Good, I’m glad it has been good to you.
J: Yeah, this last week has been fabulous.
K: Awesome.
J: Yeah, thanks.
K: You’re welcome.
J: Everything is just going great. Didn’t you love that project that we brought to you last week? I’m so excited about it.
K: I did actually, but there are a couple of things I need to talk to you about.
J: OK.
K: The last two months, the business has been going steadily down. Right now we are actually talking about layoffs in the company. You happen to be one of the latest people to join us. I know you have been with us for 2 years, but most of the people have been with us for 3 or 4 years. So…
J: What are you saying?
K: It has been very hard, but we madea decision that we have to let you go. I’m very sorry about that. I did not want that to happen, you have been doing an absolutely incredible job for us.
J: Exactly.
K: I have talked to the department about maybe…
J: I don’t know how I’m going to deal with this.
K: Well we actually we put quite a nice package together to help you out for the first month.
J: In today’s economy that’s really not going to do much. I mean a month?
K: I know it sounds like nothing right now but this is all the company can afford. I mean, everyone is taking pay cuts.
J: I am so in shock right now.
K: It’s really not a personal thing. It has nothing to do with your qualities, or what you can do.
J: Oh my god.
K: But what the management team has decided we will help all of you, the 5 people who have to leave, to find a new job.
J: Wait a minute. You didn’t defend me because of what I told you.
K: That had nothing to do with it.
J: I can’t believe, we sat here in these chairs and you promised me that what I shared with you would be confidential, and that it would be taken nowhere and it would not be used against me. Now coincidently 2 months later you are going to fire me?
K: I have not broken my promise. It has not left the room. No one knows about your problems.
J: you know what, this is so wrong. I can’t even begin to express how wrong this is. I mean people have told me all along in program, you don’t talk about your personal life in work because when you do, they use it against you. And you promised me, you even sat there and told me, you sat there and said, I’m your friend, I promise you.
K: I have not told anyone about it. You are getting paranoid about it.
J: I’m the first person you’re firing, how can I not know that it has to do with that?
K: Janeen, you are one of five. I think you should be much more confident about you. I did not tell…
J: I am very confident about my work, I am not confident about you. You know what, there has got to be something I can do about this because I know this is discriminatory. I am going to go talk to a lawyer about this because I know that there is something I can do about the fact that you…
K: Janeen, you are very angry right now.
J: Well wouldn’t you be? No, I don’t want to hear anything. I’m going to talk to a lawyer. This is ridiculous.
Afterthoughts
K: It was very hard not to get emotional when she started crying, and I did feel my heart drop when she told me what had happened. But I do think that not getting involved emotionally with her at that point was a better solution than getting really involved emotionally. It would have been a totally different situation from what we actually ended up with because I tried to stay a strong figure that would actually help her and wouldn’t be too sympathetic but still open for her. I did stress a lot in the meeting that I was her friend. It is a strategy to get the trust from the people to have them open up to me as their friend, as their boss. I do believe when you are at a workplace where everyone is friendly to each other, where you go out at night as well, it’s a much better atmosphere at work. So it is part strategy and part real open friendship towards the people I work with or who work for me.
Being friends with Janeen put me in a real awkward position when it came down to telling her that we have to lay people off and that she is one of them She expected me to fight for her so being her friends and being her boss was very hard. If I would keep her in the company, most likely all the other people in the company would think that I would keep her just because she is my friend. If I fire her, obviously she is going to think it was for the personal reasons we talked about 2 months ago.