After a very long time, I was able to finish Tom.
As the “fun” project progressed, she started telling me she was overwhelmed, and I started stepping in to do more of her work. Don’t ask me why I found her request for help so impressive, I’m still angry at myself for falling into her trap.
After giving him a “needs improvement” talk, his work improved for a few months. But then something broke and he fell completely below the minimum limit. Many important meetings were not shown. I could not find him in the campus the whole afternoon. The IM I will send at 4pm will not be responded to until 10am the next day. I always called him, and he always had excuses of varying credibility. It’s hard to motivate someone who doesn’t care about the impact of his actions on others, especially when he knows all your threats are useless.
I tried for about five months to get HR to extract her badge data (or support PIP in general), but they “gave up on reading me” for half a dozen email/team attempts, then my main contact went on maternity leave, then the interim said it was protected information(?). Plus, this entire time I had no manager to turn to, because he was fired without any backup plan. Eventually, I was able to listen to a new HR generalist, and she pulled the data herself. Over the past six months, Tom had spent an average of 25 hours on campus (for work that couldn’t be done from home). i bet Was It became too much for him to complete his work while working half the time!
I was going crazy. We work on government contracts, so theft of time is incredibly serious – he could go to jail! I thought we would fire her that day, but instead HR had me give her a formal written warning. As part of this, we set fixed hours for him to be on the premises. Within two weeks, he was again doing the “minimum” – arriving at 8:10, taking a long lunch, and leaving at 4:20 (as he argued, his peers do the same… but they actually get their work done). Still he could not be fired from the job. Then the New Year came, and he called in sick every Monday and Friday until he ran out of sick time. Still he could not be fired from the job. Then, he arrived 20 minutes late to a major client meeting and told me, ‘Well, that part is the boring introduction anyway.’ That retaliation happened in front of an executive, so I had to fire him.
Of course, I don’t have any backfill, so now I’m stuck doing 40 hours of her work each week instead of the usual 15, but that’s another letter.
Overall, that was a good reminder that you don’t have to have enough experience to eliminate your blind spots. I wanted Tom to be even more successful than he was. I take it as a sign that I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve had almost entirely conscientious and well-intentioned employees over the last decade.
I appreciate the comments that warned me that I was letting Tom fail, and they were not baseless. I think it’s clear to everyone, including me, that giving Tom a fun project was a mistake. But there’s always more to a story than can be summarized in a quick update. At first, this project was based on independent work and required strict rule interpretation (Tom’s favorite), whereas Tom’s original job required constant teamwork and an appreciation of human nature. The entire team became much better after reassignment. He even began to include Tom in informal team lunches and happy hours again.
Second, the special project assignment was not stolen from any more qualified person. I advertised it widely to my team, and no one else was interested. I rearranged the team’s functions when I took over, so everyone was settling into their new places and didn’t feel like shaking things up again so quickly. I think that if Tom hadn’t been in the picture, I could have inspired a high-achieving person to take it, and it would have done their career some good. But I also respected his desire to limit his role until he gained more experience. I wish I had been this wise early in my career, instead of trying to increase “visibility” until I sank.
Despite the team hating Tom as a direct co-worker, he was inexplicably popular as “project guy”. I swear, Tom should start a career as a con artist. My team was furious when I fired her (she sent them the news before I even got back to the office, so it was funny). I spent many 1:1’s reassuring people that they would not be fired out of the blue, and we have a process in place that ensures no one is ever surprised by a performance-based termination. I somehow got through all this without making any sarcastic comments about how HR makes sure it’s almost impossible to fire someone. It’s been a tough month, but I’m excited to have some internal candidates who will potentially apply to backfill Tom. Full circle moment – one of them is an intern from another department who is doing “fine” there, but would have a great skill here.
