ask a manager fired for taking initiative

Here are Liz Ryan's 10 sure signs your boss doesn't respect you and it's time to … A quality answer includes examples of what the candidate plans to do in their role. If Tori screamed at a client or sabotaged a project or otherwise went beyond her normal level of “not great at her job and unpleasant to work with” …, some offenses are so bad that it’s not reasonable to expect feedback and warnings before action is taken. The road to hell is paved with good intentions… honestly, I don’t think it matters. Last summer, I decided to re-enter the workforce after five years of raising my kids. There’s no way to fire somebody, even for good cause, without feeling queasy. I’m thinking more along the lines of would Veronica think Betty could not manager her staff? Most of the time the thing to do is going to be to accept it. For someone who is new to the field, this was an amazing opportunity that the OP was not able to take advantage of. Thank you. I believe that part too. Alison, I just want to say that I like how you put these comments at the top. At 4:55 PM, the branch manager called me in to say that I was being let go, because the other admin said that if he didn’t fire me, she would quit, and since she had been with the company for years, and I hadn’t completed my three-month probation period yet, he figured that it would be better to keep her instead of me. if they had some supervision, that might be fun…. My co-worker’s main argument for being “smarter” was that her managers made decisions that baffled her or were different from what she would have done. And sadly, this wasn’t the worst or most clueless thing she did. Doing it more than occasionally makes me feel a little heavy-handed, but it’s probably better to do it when needed than not do it. This is a good idea. Overall, I think OP handled this situation very badly but seems like a bright person who, if she could direct her initiative more productively and work on interpersonal skills, could go very far in her career. Speaking as someone who has been on a PIP (for reasons that I thought were partially fair and partially not), I agree with Alison that it’s not something you necessarily want to tell your co-workers. If OP was acting unprofessionally, why does Betty need to act unprofessionally in return? Something happened that was egregious enough to be an immediate firing offense on its own. Though it was not the same woman, I had an employee go over not only my head but my boss’s head to our division VP. I had an employee who I had several sit downs with and explicitly said “If you can’t build 80 widgets per day by the end of November, you will not be working here.” He said okay every time and gave lots of excuses. Absolutely!”, (Less cynically, it could have been that Mom was feeling overwhelmed with the kids’ and managing their routines, and seized on fixing up the house as Look, I’m Helping.). I think the term meet is relative and not thoroughly explained by Allison or the person who asked the question. They had years of negative reviews, a mistake that probably should have been career-ending, and a demotion all before I got there; my six months of progressive performance management was simply the garnish on top of an already prepared dish. The committee did not meet by December 31. Since I was fired before my probation period was finished, I was ineligible for rehire by any of that company’s branch offices. In a situation like that, manuals written by the previous spout construction coordinator, and training courses led by someone who specializes in spout construction, would be far more helpful than the manager giving the training herself. Run your own small business, perhaps. They’ve always got that axe to grind at your expense! OP, I just want to say you have my sympathy for losing your job. Is your kid in trouble, or have they just shown initiative? The way the letter stated it made it clear that the OP intentionally went behind Betty’s back without really justifying it too much. When you are open to communicate, take initiative and are willing to take help, your boss will certainly help you for it. Then everyone in that department was told that ex-employee had been fired, don’t ask why and don’t talk about it, which of course made everyone talk about it anyway. It promotes a feeling of security and trust, knowing that equal partners are being equally respected, and that the kids are not allowed to do the run-around. We want employees to have it, as long as they match it with good judgement. You don’t have to respect the person, but you do have to respect their role in the organization. She was very cold to me that day. I’m just anxious by nature and every time my boss asks to speak to me I assume I’m getting fired. In fact, it’s conceivable that Betty was willing to keep working with you–and her boss refused to consider it. I’d probably only retain 0-10% of the information that is unloaded on me in that way. I almost didn’t tell him, but I felt if I was going to be fired he deserved some advance warning since we really need two incomes to get by. Ideally, our manager would have stayed on top of it and made sure the original people assigned the task got it done correctly and on time or they would be fired. That's not always easy work, but it comes with the territory and I, for one, don't take it lightly. This is why I wish we had yearly performance reviews. There are a few positions out there where a candidate who is brilliant but unmanageable might get hired, but it’s really only a few, and you really have to be brilliant. And given the OP’s tone, if I were Betty I might not trust an apology/”I’ve changed” email. Since OP describes this as her first job after five years of SAH parenting, I feel like she should just leave it off completely (if that’s an option). OP, it may just be that you are not cut out for following the beat of someone else’s drum. Those who did their work and who put those feelings into off-hours conversations and a job search if they couldn’t resolve things, are still well-liked by everyone and could probably come back if they wanted to. Artwork by Kaitlyn Mason, from the AIGA Member Gallery. It’s like the letter is working hard to undermine itself. When I got back from vacation, I had to undo everything she had done and she threw a fit, pulling my boss into it. It’s still not ideal, but it’s different than “Tori had no idea there were problems.”. It’s the outbreak investigations and hazmat exposures that get me. Good luck. OP, you were new, you weren’t really a fit but were given the job anyway, you’d just learned how to do the job and suddenly started acting like you knew what as best for the department, and should be given authority over other people’s accounts. Short of getting lectures to go with them, what was the OP expecting? The names are great but where is Jughead? Look for places that could use improvement and suggest those improvements, choose to handle something that is within your purview a different way and make it work better WITHIN the limitations of the job/company structure/project/etc., expand your skill set through classes/in-house training to be able to take on more and then make it known that you can do that”. “No.” A few months after I started my current job (which was almost 11 years ago) one of my teammates left. Does it maybe depend on the nature of the work? My husband and I do the same thing with our kids, so they know that playing one parent against the other doesn’t work. Sick leave is a totally separate thing from annual leave here (you get 20 days of annual leave, which must be booked in advance, and sick leave is what you take when you’re too ill or injured to work. ) So any assumptions about Betty shouldn’t be seen as a personal attack, probably just natural repercussions for actions taken. Help employees develop purpose in their role within the organization (Edmondson, 2002). I used to bring this up here all the time before I decided to give my soap box a rest. This line stuck out to me, because I’ve been given very similar advice before. And the more you point out what they did wrong the more they go but.. but.. but.. FWIW, I don’t mean “obviously I’m right here” to come off as judge-y; we do often see letters here where the OP *is* obviously right. Laid off means the job is no longer needed and won’t be filled, but it sounds like YOU were no longer needed, but the position will remain necessary. Those are some pretty big guns there! We all make mistakes. That’s a real interesting take. He’s incredibly entitled and mysogynistic, but still, the writing didn’t quite sound like this. Boy, do I understand this one. I find OP’s disconnect from how her own actions impact others and how her actions cause others to react very concerning. There are some people who you simply don’t want present when they’re disgruntled. She also said boss referred her to online courses. Firing an executive correctly is a bit more complicated and extremely important. And that was super frustrating, and for a long time left me pretty bitter. You can ask about the work, the training, the challenges you’d face, the overall direction of the company. I had already read Limbo on someone’s recommendation (someone on here), and it really does explain a lot of my own discomfort with the work/life bleed-through as well as the networking aspect. You’re used to being the boss. Problem-solving ability. There are certain types of people who manage to convince themselves this kind of behavior is okay, and certain types of people who can’t even READ this story without cringing. Two of the people had been given a to-do list with (easy) daily items due to their lack of progress, with a check-in meeting 2 weeks later, and I guess they thought they were going to get pats on the back for the 10% they got done. I don’t pick my friends based on their job performance. Five years after being fired in Chicago, Manuel, older and considerably wiser, is auditioning for his second manager’s job. The further I read, the more it sounded as a younger person (say, someone who had their children in their early 20s, and those kids were close in age), going back to work, but looking to get away from the jobs usually associated with teenagers/early 20s (like retail, for example, where you’re expected to find things to do if it’s not busy) going into an office atmosphere for the first time. Consumer Alerts and Closures; Administrative and Enforcement Actions; Alerts, Closures and Enforcements; Health Permits. I agree, it sounds like someone else wrote it to describe OP’s actions. Betty went away for a multi-week vacation; either it was OK to not have an account manager during those few weeks or someone else other than Betty was handling the account at the time, both of which Veronica could have told OP. So showing initiative is not the same as being insubordinate. I ask these things not to be mean, but to encourage you to really take a hard look at why you behaved that way, what management’s perception of that behavior is, and really make some corrections going forward. 3. And CADMonkey007’s comment above about whether our OP was acting like a customer trying to get her way (“I want to speak to your manager”) is interesting in conjunction. It’s very obvious and makes it almost impossible to miss it. In a small company or any company your boss (unless they are a trainer) has their own job to do. The framing of the story is almost like she was seeing the other side while writing, but continued to argue with it. No. I can just imagine Betty going in to work on Friday after a long vacation to catch up on e-mails, check the status of projects, and prepare for the following week, only to discover that instead of unpacking and running errands, she has to spend all weekend undoing the damage on the account from OP’s stint. In my experience, skirting around the fact that you were fired and trying to gloss over it does not land you anywhere – in fact it paints you as skirting the truth to good managers who follow up on your references. She has tons of ideas and loves to organize things, but always take it waaaaaay too far and then when people don’t want to be involved in her schemes or reject her ideas she gets offended. Anecdotal, but the co-workers I’ve had who openly hated female bosses (in the, “All of my best bosses have been men. Either way, if it is fake it doesn’t seem to me to be supportive of OP in any way. There might be an initial “Tori, oh my gosh, that’s so unwarranted, who could be next?,” but then there’s “Oh, wait, everyone hated working with her and she wasn’t particularly good at her job. Have a script ready on how you learned from all of this, etc. But as someone who’s been lied to or seemingly so lied to [because they were so inept…so bad], it was quickly fixed by you know, firing the person as soon as they showed they were awful. – I think it’s the “so richly deserved” part. to just “leave” will confuse a British person. It’s difficult to clarify without obviously spelling out what the issue was, but suffice to say it wasn’t something we wanted to publicize, for the employee’s sake! Going to Betty and suggesting the changes, as you did initially, was showing initiative, and is totally fine – good, even! There would be a professional in the house the next day fixing it at 100% their expense. “And then I wrote to Ask a Manager, but she barely even addressed my question! In a company of 20 people? Or so they don’t get hammered on unemployment payments and have to adjust their unemployment insurance premiums. So I get it. Yes. Yep. Privacy Policy and Affiliate Disclosures, my former coworkers hired me to work for them … but it was a bait and switch, they fired me, and I’m ashamed, I had to fire someone and I feel like a failure, my employee fired someone whose mother had died the night before. Maybe consider explaining to her your expectations of not continuing to push too. I worked somewhere that followed approach #4. The new employee makes an end run around the annoying boss, her idea is brilliant and makes the company a zillion dollars, happily ever after. It just assumed its “rightness” from the beginning. I ignored the little voices and hired them – only to have her walk out a month later. So it is very important to maintain good relations with your managers or bosses when you quit or leave your organization. Through this, I picked up some really great knowledge on communication and teamwork, as well as further develop overall managerial skills. Motivational interview questions assess why you want to become a Regional Manager; what you can bring to the role and where you see yourself in 5 years’ time. We were never told exactly who was on this committee, so we could never prove that all of them were in the office on the same day. As an adult I have wondered if he didn’t have some frontal lobe damage that made it hard for him to control himself. I have received complaints from hires that they were “only given a week of training,” because they only consider the first week where they are sitting with the lead every day training. That much is clear. Not just that. I don’t think an employer is a tyrant for not providing an extra 6-12 weeks of paid leave because an employee made sure to use every sick day as soon as it was available. That environment gave someone a HUGE chance that most people never get. ), I’ll explain why, but if I can’t and I just say ‘no’ with no elaboration, then you need to trust that I *do* have a good reason, it’s just not one I can share at the moment”. Betty: (while checking last minute assignments of her work) OP I’m assigning you to different account instead. I was on a PIP many years ago at and old job and to this day, only my boss, HR and I know. Needless to say, reference checks are much more in-depth now. Lesson learned. I hope takes the advice to heart for her own sake. As a boss going on a two or more week absence I imagine she had a lot to get in order and wouldn’t have had the time to explain in depth why OP should stick to the project assigned to her and not do the big project. It is an extreme case but those people certainly exist. It’s just that you don’t see it unless you were taught how to interpret that kind of thing growing up. It’s over-the-top language, but people who feel they’ve been wronged by being treated like a normal employee also tend to have a flair for dramatic language. I think in this case, the employer means that they aren’t calling it a firing for cause (even though it was). You had an idea, mentioned it, and were willing to put in the work to implement it, which is what initiative is all about, and managers generally appreciate the sentiment even if they have to say no in practice. Doing projects that your boss hasn’t explicitly told you not to do. Have been let go from a job after a few months out of left field, with my never being informed that I was on thin ice in terms of employment. But it sounds as though you were without much choice. Once I got to the part about waiting for Betty to go on vacation, I “decided” that Betty wrote the letter. I may have been told once that I needed to improve something at work, which I ended up doing — and since I got no further comments, figured I must have improved enough to it not being a problem anymore. I think that although OP could improve in some ways this may have been prevented if the manager were more supportive and open. As a company – for somebody who has only been there for 4 months? I don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with making an example out of someone when they pull something really horrible, and it’s not at all bad for morale of employees who were maybe stuck on a work trip with Drunk Driver Employee or feared having to share a car with them, or even just heard about it.
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