subject: You're Fired! [print this page] You're Fired! You're Fired!
When I came back he was sleeping on a pile of old carpet in the middle of the room. That was the scene I saw as I opened the door to one of my Job sites during college. I have always owned my own companies. I don't know if its the innate hate I have for being told what to do, or that I truly love to create, invent, and implement; I really hope its the latter. Either way I put myself through college running a flooring company. Anything that went on a floor I would sell and install. And business was good, maybe too good. I quickly got to the point that I had to have help.
I lived in a college town at the time and help was plentiful and cheap, but not exactly effective. I would hire one person only to fire them within a week. They would either not show up to work, show up late orlike the individual I mentioned in the beginning of the storydecide the job was too hard and take a nap instead of working. I learned quickly that if they could not handle the work, they should hit the road. They were all sub-contractors. I was a one man show and could not afford full-time employees, and I could not afford to lose money. If you did not perform you got fired.
Over the years I have started and run several different business, but somewhere along the line the firing of non-performers got complicated. Suddenly it was no longer single college students looking for extra cash, but families trying to keep food on the table. I started to relax the rules and it cost me money. Eventually, every non-performer would have to be let go but not before they had cost me thousands of dollars. I often wonder where the line for compassion lays in a business environment. Do you let them go the day you find out they are not performing or after the second or third offense or even the fifth?
And things can get even more complicated! I had an experience that was even harder for me with one employee. The problem was not that he did not perform; the problem was his attitude. With one of my partners he was courteous and polite but with me he often made snide remarks, rolled his eyes at comments I made, publicly criticized content I created, laughed at my expense, and one time even told me that my idea was dumb. Now, I have never claimed to be the most brilliant person but I learned early on in business that I didn't need to be. I just had to hire brilliant people.
The problem had several facets: the employee was good, not brilliant in my opinion but good. My partner liked him, the managers liked him, I just didn't. He was rude but only to me and worst of all he made me waste time even thinking about it. The situation had become a cancer but, every time I wanted to cut it out my partners stopped me.
That experience opened my eyes to the fact that there are multiple intricacies to business that you can't find the answer to in a book. Its not as easy as finding the PE ratio, or defining a target market. There are human emotions involved. However, even as important as dealing with an employee, is dealing with your clients. How many clients do you have who are good clients, well, good for the bottom line that is, but not necessarily for morale? Do you have clients who drag you down? Are you keeping them even though you hate talking to them? Do you cringe every time they walk into your office? Do you have an ulcer from the problems they cause you? Is it really worth it? You can fire your employees but can you fire a client? Maybe it's time to evaluate what is most important to you; peace or the bottom line?
