update: telling a new employee he’s not cut out for the job

Remember the letter-writer who needed to tell a new employee he’s not cut out for the job? The first update was here, and here’s the latest.

After far too long, I was able to terminate Tom.

As the “fun” project wore on, he started telling me he was overwhelmed, and I started stepping in to do increasingly more of his work. Don’t ask me why I found his requests for help so compelling, I’m still mad at myself about falling for them.

After delivering the “needs improvement” conversation, his work improved for a few months. But then something snapped, and he completely fell below the minimum threshold. Multiple important meetings no-showed. Entire afternoons where I was unable to locate him on campus. IMs I would send at 4pm that wouldn’t be answered until 10am the next day. I always called him out, and he always had an excuse of varying believability. It’s difficult to motivate someone who doesn’t care about the impact of his actions on others, especially when he knows all of your threats are idle.

I tried for about five months to get HR to pull his badge data (or support a PIP in general), but they “left me on read” for a half dozen email/Teams attempts, then my main contact went on maternity leave, then the interim said it was protected information(?). Also, all this time I was without a manager to escalate to, as she was fired with no backup plan. Finally, I was able to get the ear of a new HR generalist, and she pulled the data herself. Over the previous six months, Tom had averaged a shocking 25 hours on campus (for a job that cannot be done from home). I bet it was overwhelming for him to get his work done while working half-time!

I was hopping mad. We work on government contracts, so time theft is incredibly serious — he could go to jail! I thought we would be firing him that day, but instead HR made me give him a formal written warning. As part of that, we established set hours he had to be on campus. Within two weeks, he was doing the “bare minimum” again — arriving at 8:10ish, taking long lunches, and leaving at 4:20ish (which, as he argued, his peers do too … but they actually get their work done). Still couldn’t fire him. Then the new year came around, and he called in sick every Monday and Friday until he was out of sick time. Still couldn’t fire him. Then, he was 20 minutes late to a major customer meeting and told me, ‘Well, that part is just boring introductions anyway.” That retort happened in front of an executive, so then I got to fire him.

Of course, I have no backfill, so now I’m stuck doing 40 hours of his work each week instead of the usual 15, but that’s another letter.

Overall, he was a good reminder that you never have enough experience to eliminate your blind spots. I wanted Tom to succeed more than he did. I take that as a sign that I’ve been very lucky to have had almost entirely conscientious and well intentioned employees over the last decade.

I appreciate the comments warning me that I was allowing Tom to fail up, and they weren’t off-base. I think it’s clear to everyone, including me, that giving Tom a fun project was a mistake. But there is always more to a story than can be summarized in a quick update. First, the project was siloed independent work and required strict rule interpretation (Tom’s favorite), while Tom’s original job required constant teamwork and an appreciation for human nature. The entire team got along much better after the reassignment. They even started including Tom in informal team lunches and happy hours again.

Second, the special project assignment was not stolen from anyone more deserving. I advertised it broadly to my team, and no one else was interested. I had rearranged the team assignments when I took over, so everyone was settling into their new spots and didn’t have a desire to shake things up again so soon. I think if Tom wasn’t in the picture, I could have cajoled a high achiever into taking it on, and it would have benefited their career some. But I also respected the desire to keep their role limited until they gained more experience. I wish I’d been that wise early in my career, rather than frantically taking on increasing “visibility” until I was drowning.

Despite the team loathing Tom as a direct coworker, he was inexplicably popular as “the project guy.” I swear, Tom should start a career as a con artist. My team was pretty angry when I fired him (he had texted them the news before I even made it back to my office, so that was fun). I spent many 1:1s reassuring people that they weren’t about to be fired out of the blue, and we have a process 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 ensures it is virtually impossible to fire someone. It’s been a rough month, but I am excited about a few internal candidates who will likely apply to backfill Tom. Full circle moment — one of them is a mentee from another department who is doing “okay” there, but would be a great skills fit here.

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