Thursday, August 18, 2005

Garbage In, Garbage Out.

At work lately we have recently gone through a bit of staff turnover. Some of it is to be expected, as some of the younger help who have worked for us in high school get ready to go to college, but some of it is longer term employees who are moving on to other things.
It's been amazing to watch and see how different people work out their remaining time.

"People will leave their work the way they approach it."

Bish had this in his blog (one of many blogs he has,) and I found it interesting to see the dynamic played out in the workplace. I'll give you my examples.

We have two high school students who are leaving, both girls.(Not that it matters.)

One of them has been working as hard as ever right up to her last day. She's positive, energetic and has said repeatedly how much she's going to miss everyone when she is gone.

The other one has been dragging her ass around the store, saying how she can't wait for her shift to be over and for her time here to be done.

We also had two longer term employees leave.

One of them was very straightforward and had said at the beginning of his employment with us, that if he ever got a chance to work in his chosen field,(musician) he'd be leaving. Well he lucked out and got a chance to tour with a band, so off he goes. Worked his time, was very respectful and appreciative of the training we gave him.

The other one was a real long term employee who did not even tell us that she was planning on leaving, went out, got another job while on her holidays with us, and put in her notice. Now there's nothing really wrong with that, except it's the way we were told about her notice. She had told everyone in the department she is in what was going on and asked them to keep it quiet. Why? Why not be honest and grown up about the whole thing? To top it off, she's been really slacking her last two weeks. We would probably just not schedule her, but we still need the body in that department to cover holidays and such.

Why can't most people just be like the first girl and the guy and work out their time and leave on a positive note? Why would you take the chance of possibly jeopardizing any future reference you may get, as well as effecting whatever relationship you had with your co-workers?

I don't work at a horrible place, in fact the owners treat the staff very well, with respect, and are extremely friendly and open to talk to. It's just unbelievable how people will work out their time with the company.

When I left my last job I left on very good terms with practically everybody. I still pop by from time to time, as the sidekick still works there, and have been told by my old bosses that they miss the effort and talent I brought to the team. Yay Me!

It's an interesting theory that Bish had and seeing it played out on this screen I call real life is quite amusing. I know that some of you out there must have some entertaining stories from when you or someone you know left a job, let's hear it!

3 comments:

  1. I don't really have any left work stories, most of the ones i have are the same you have from the arches. I would like yo however point out that for all your hacking on my spelling in my last comment...you fuckin spelt college wrong..I don't think you can get a higher education by attending a collage...dillhole...hahaha

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  2. Occasionally, though, companies haven't been so good with employees leaving. I've been with companies where mentioning one's leaving may result in immediate termination; indeed, when my current employer started bleeding staff a bit, almost everyone was surreptitiously applying for other jobs or working with head-hunters. Had they told the company, it was guaranteed they'd've been on the next layoff or maybe even part of a downsize-of-one.

    At the job I had before this one, the company president had a beef with the girl who left, and threatened to sue her for weeks -- all manner of pathetically trumped-up stuff.

    My former office-mate tells a story of a job he worked at, once. It was a very technical job, like mine.

    Everyone got a notice, one day, about an 'all hands' meeting in a large auditorium kind of building. When everyone was present - and it was required that everyone be present - they actually cut the building power. Then they announced that most of the site had been laid off, and that security representatives would be assisting people - more like guarding them - as they cleared out their desks.

    The cutting of the power, you see, was to prevent the former trusted employees from snapping and randomly sabotaging the company's current projects over the corporate network. The staff went from trusted employee to a teeth-clenched-grade saboteur and criminal, all in a heartbeat.

    Isn't work fun? I think the important thing to do is to separate one's job from the people who work there. Make friends with the people, as people, and suffer the rest of work only so much as the paycheque coerces one to do.

    Spoken from a workaholic that may be pretty thin logic, but it's what I read.

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  3. I fixed it, you smary bastard. Hope you're happy.

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