Ghosting companies

[TheDan]

I've always understood the 2 week notice to allow for your company to find a replacement and you help train that person. While I've always understood it to be that way - I've never actually seen it in action.

Whenever someone would give me notice I would start interviewing for a replacement right away. I wasn't allowed to bring on the replacement until the other one was off the books, but I could set the new employee's start date to the next business day. I'm the only manager that I've seen do that; everyone else just waited. Seems like a terrible waste of time.

 

[TreyG-20]

Pics of hot Moms or GTFO!

Back on topic. I fully understand why someone would ghost a company. I did it when I was 17. Worked for a oil change shop. Put in my 2 weeks as I was preparing to go in the Army. 3 days later I had 2 cars on lifts start draining the oil in them. A different manager from the one I spoke with about me leaving called me into the office and told me that was making a big mistake with my life. He then proceeded to tell me that soilders were fags who never amount to anything. Also tried to tell me they were paid murderers. I had enough at that point and went straight to my car and went home. Left those cars on the lift drained of oil and all.

When I came home after all my training the shop was closed down. I like to think I had a little to do with that, but it was probably mostly that libtard manager.

 

[benenglish]

Companies really don't have a choice if they want to retain workers and foster good relationships.

But what do you do with employees who don't want to be retained?

Here's a story to illustrate why I ask the question.

Just before I retired, my organization was hiring quite a bit and I saw something that I'd never seen before. I saw it over 100 times, though, so it's not rare.

Young people would hire on for a job as a field agent. This is the type of job where you really have no idea what you're doing until you've been there for 3 years and nobody trusts you to work your own cases until you have 5 years under your belt. The entire process of getting someone into the job is based on the idea that you'll be employed for 20 years, minimum, if you survive your probationary year. Building a foundation for a new agent is a very slow process, taking months before the new-hire does anything remotely like real work that can be evaluated.

With that in mind, we hired many, many classes consisting entirely of new college grads. Roughly 80% of them approached the job exactly the same way, on this schedule:

• 1 week local orientation.
• 6 weeks training at a remote location.
• 2 to 6 weeks of caseload setup, shadowing your training officer, then planning your caseload.
• First evaluation - If you show up, stay alive, and don't punch anyone, you won't be fired because you haven't done any actual work, yet.
• 2 more weeks training at a remote location.
• 4 weeks of preliminary casework including non-contact planning and sourcing documents.
• Second evaluation where you submit a casework plan then revise your plan based on feedback.
• 2 to 6 weeks of casework. It's now time to put up or shut up, so delay as long as you can then,
• Stop coming in to work.
• Drop off your computer bag, ID, phone, etc.
• Tell the secretary or text your training agent or leave a voicemail for the boss that you've quit.

If you're a total goof-off, those bullets points translate into getting up to 4 months of decent pay while you spend 95% of your time on your phone, alternating between Facebook and looking for your next job.

More than one of those new-hires told me that they never intended to do a lick of work. They just figured they'd get a paycheck to tide them over until they could find a real job. Since the gap between college graduation and the next job would be so short, they'd just leave the few months they sat around our offices off their resume. No one would miss it; a short gap right after leaving college isn't a big red flag.

4 out of 5 of our fresh college grads followed this plan.

Personally, I thought the interview process was incredibly flawed until I saw it happen 100 times. Apparently this default attitude of "just find a loophole in the system and exploit it" is well-ingrained in the youngest parts of our workforce.

And, to be crystal clear, the "80% just screwed off and walked out" statistic as well as the "I saw this happen at least 100 times" statistic are literally, in the dictionary sense, true. I found the whole process shocking. It wasn't that their actions were illogical; I could see the logic in it, yes, but I can see the logic in the way some criminals ply their trade, too. What shocked me was the complete lack of integrity. How in Hades do these kids justify, in their own minds, accepting a position that's normally a 30 year commitment even though they know they intend to do nothing and walk out in 2 to 4 months?

 

[candcallen]

If you assign someone to go on a random drug test, that's not random. Using fake random drug tests as a weapon against an employee you don't like is so stupid I can't wrap my head around it. The amount of liability you create for your employer is huge.

You're speaking in the past tense so I sincerely hope you no longer manage anyone.

Yep random drug tests are only random if a computer program spits out random people or a lottery system. These arent random if not dont at a specific interval in perpetuity.

Depending on laws and company policy you can send people for drug testing based on behavior or accidents.

My libertarian bone screams there shouldn't be testing but reality is people on drugs get others killed or costs employers lots of money. The happy middle ground is in there somewhere.

 

[candcallen]

Or Federal...

All the years I worked there was only 2 officers I supervised I thought needed to be fired. There were a hand full of others who we were able to convince the job wasnt for them and they left.

 

[pronstar]

I used to work with a field officer who, as a young man, was a loss prevention officer at Astroworld. They had one inviolable hiring policy.

• If your parents walked you in, you were not hired. Period.

So, how do you deal with this situation? If someone brings their parents to a job interview, do they have any chance of being hired?

For me, no chance in hell I’d hire them.
I wanted people who had control over their own lives, who could think critically and make good decisions given the data presented.

If I wanted to deal with mommy/daddy, I’d hire mommy/daddy and not their retarded offspring.


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[mroper]

Are you one of those guys in the white van with a deal too good to pass up? You know, the warehouse sent an extra system out with the job and you can’t send it back so you’re just trying to sell it for cash. A cheap Chinese knock off of a ”real high dollar” system.

I did this for One Day. I did not know what I was getting into. and No I did not give a two week Notice.

 

[Reb58]

I have seen it in the oilfield and in other industries.
Employee gives a two week notice and are often fired at the end of that day.
I have also seen ( personal experience) employers bending over backwards to keep an employee that gives notice, but I have seen the former far more often than the latter.

Depends on the position in many cases. People in sensitive positions with access to confidential/proprietary info are often released immediately. Others, not so much.

The issue for companies is that it costs about $30,000 to onboarding a new employee. Contrary to opinion, companies don't dump employees on a whim. They do layoff when finances require it due to lack of meeting profit expectations.

Being in Texas which is a right to work state, employment is at will for both the employee and company. Layoff/termination can and does happen daily and seldom for the right reasons (poor employee)

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[TheDan]

you really have no idea what you're doing until you've been there for 3 years
...
"80% just screwed off and walked out"

Good examples of bureaucratic management.

 

[Reb58]

Very reasonable, but I think the blame goes equally on both sides as I have witnessed just as much buffoonery from employees as I have companies.


Every job will have its ups and downs, but one has to look at the long-term trends and their own goals to determine if they are in the right field of employment. A person's career is their responsibility, not their companies.

So my bottom line is that I believe this is can be just as much a failure on the part of the workforce as it is the management...

Just tagging onto you as a similar response to mine.

I don't expect a company to respect me. I expect them to pay me what they said they would, on the day they said they would, for the work I agreed to do for them.

I do go above and beyond but i expect recognition for that from my boss or a VP, not from a company. Bosses are people too and a skill many employees should learn is how to interface, on a more personal level, with supervision. Not sucking up, but treating bosses as people. They are.

And conduct yourself as an employee as well or better than what you expect from your bosses. You get what you give in most circumstances.

You are only owed what you agreed to when accepting employment. There was a job description (minimally) that said what you'd have to do for your wage and what benefits you'd receive. I've never seen given respect as a benefit of a job.

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[popper]

2 week notice was intended to provide a buffer between duties of a leaving employee (actually started due to labor union deal). Many good reasons to give 2 wks pay and escort employee from the property. Not required but TX may deny unemployment bennys. Professional fields consider it a proper 'professional' attitude.
Mostly anymore it is 'weaponized' by both sides. Do whatever your ethics tell you to do.

 

[benenglish]

Many good reasons to give 2 wks pay and escort employee from the property. ... Professional fields consider it a proper 'professional' attitude.

I was once discussing this with a drug company executive in the context of retail pharma salespeople. His company got new-hires to sign paperwork that allowed all the following.

In his organization, newly hired salespeople went to training in a remote city. They were treated with the best of everything. They were also under a microscope during that initial 1 or 2 week, high-pressure training session. They'd already been highly screened but if the on-site trainers decided someone was not a good fit, the firing was handled gently but swiftly. The person would be pulled out of class and walked out of the hotel to a waiting limo. Their personal effects from their room would already be packed in their luggage and in the trunk of the limo. They would get a envelope with a very large check (I think he said $10K.) plus a glass of champagne. The limo would whisk them to the airport where they would use the first class ticket from that envelope to fly back home.

He explained to me that people who had gone through the process to get hired for these very lucrative jobs were commonly high-strung and unpredictable when things didn't go their way. (I thought to myself "Sociopaths tend to be that way" but I didn't say it out loud.) There had been a number of cases in the past where people were fired out of their initial training session and they responded by destroying hotel rooms, attacking management officials or trainers, etc. As a result, shoving them out the door with a big check was considered a bargain basement bit of insurance that the company was willing to pay. The idea was to get them gone before they could truly understand what had hit them.

btw - This was a long time ago. I have no idea how things are nowadays.

 

[JCC]

Good opportunity for a company to tell employee to use the rest of their vacation time for at least part of their two weeks. In Texas, pretty sure the employee forfeits remaining paid time off once they give notice. May depend on company policy.

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[benenglish]

Good examples of bureaucratic management.

Feel free to expand on that. Specifically, I'm curious how you connect the quoted text with bureaucracy.

 

[pronstar]

In Texas, pretty sure the employee forfeits remaining paid time off once they give notice. May depend on company policy.

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If vacation/PTO pay is part of your compensation package, you have to take it or be paid out for it

It’s illegal form a company to take it without compensation.

It would be akin to your company shorting you money on a paycheck.


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[JCC]

If vacation/PTO pay is part of your compensation package, you have to take it or be paid out for it

It’s illegal form a company to take it without compensation.

It would be akin to your company shorting you money on a paycheck.


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I agree, but am not sure if a company can get around that by putting different in their employee handbook. I know in Louisiana and California, you cannot have a use it or lose it policy. If an employee does not use it on an annual basis, they get a separate check for what they did not use. You are likely right and at least one company I worked for is doing it wrong for Texas employees. They had a use it or lose it and forfeited if the employee gave their notice that they were leaving.

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[easy rider]

Or Federal...

To be fair, and I do agree to a certain degree, some jobs, like I had working DoD for the Navy, take months and quite a bit of money doing background checks to clear employees to work more sensitive positions. As a supervisor, I couldn't actually fire anyone, I could only write up an employee and refer it to personnel. Many times though, it wasn't what you knew, but who you knew. Major security violations, on the other hand, could get your immediate removal.

 

[toddnjoyce]

... employee handbook...

That’s the part of documentation a lot of employers flat out get wrong. They don’t document their employment policies or; if they do, they don’t have a legal review accomplished.

Then, they don’t have documentation for the supervisors/managers and HR employees on when/how to carry out those policies.

And they don’t keep them up to date with annual reviews.

Those are things that can set the stage for a capricious termination because nobody is treated the same way.

 

[pronstar]

To be fair, and I do agree to a certain degree, some jobs, like I had working DoD for the Navy, take months and quite a bit of money doing background checks to clear employees to work more sensitive positions. As a supervisor, I couldn't actually fire anyone, I could only write up an employee and refer it to personnel. Many times though, it wasn't what you knew, but who you knew. Major security violations, on the other hand, could get your immediate removal.

True in many cases.
It took a damned act of god to get someone fired at the agency I worked at.

I had a shitbag hire, and I built a dossier of poor performance that HR required for me to get rid of him. It took months to document it all.

Then a gal accused him of sexual harassment, but decided to not pursue the case and just left.

HR made me start from scratch in firing the shitbag, because “he could say he was fired for retaliation from the unproven sexual harassment allegation”.

So it literally took nearly a year for me to get rid of him.

Plus, producers are shielded.

Our #2 creative director saw the agency as his own personal dating service, he banged all the young hotties.

Senior management literally looked the other way despite numerous complaints...and a company policy that explicitly forbade - fireable offense - senior employees from dipping their dicks into the junior-employee pool.


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[benenglish]

Our #2 creative director saw the agency as his own personal dating service, he banged all the young hotties.

Of all the wrong things I've witnessed at my former employer, sexual indiscretions were the worst.

Everybody knew why the executive in charge of hiring summer interns from a local high school chose the young ladies he chose. It eventually caught up with him and he lost both his career and marriage.

Why folks think they can get away with it, I dunno.