Over my career I’ve made mistakes and for the most part I’ve learned from most of them, well this story is about a hiring mistake I made. It all started when a I was at my favorite restaurant and as I was leaving I see a young kid that I haven’t seen in several years. His name is Dale. I stop to talk to him and we catch up. He tells me he is about to graduate in 2 weeks and was unhappy with the hours he was given at my favorite restaurant. Just so happens I was in need of a warehouse person. I finish the conversation off by telling him to put in an application online. Anyway we go through the entire hiring process. He passes the background check and drug screening. Awesome, within 2 weeks he was working. In the beginning, I was pleased to here that my sales manager liked Dale. He said that he was a good kid and that Dale was very grateful we gave him an opportunity. Due to the fact that I was not Dale’s direct supervisor, I assumed the rest of my management team felt the same way, BIG MISTAKE. About a month later, my assistant store manager Dean told me that he was having problems with Dale. He told me how Dale on several occasions was giving him push back on completing work in a timely manner. I was shocked and pissed at the same time. I told Dean to bring Dale to my office. In my office, I ask Dale “why have you been giving my managers GUFF”? Dale tells me that he is at work for eight hours and he doesn’t understand why my managers want things done in a certain amount of time. He goes on to say that he would like to do things on HIS time. As long as it is done before his shift is over. At that moment I’ve heard enough. In a calm and polite voice I tell Dale as of this moment he is FIRED. I tell him that he has one week to turn things around by letting my managers know he wants a job by working his ass off and following orders to the letter. I tell him that if my managers order him to jump off a three storied building, one of two things should happen. Either he is DEAD because he followed orders or he is looking for another job. I asked him if he understood what I was talking about, he said yes. Unfortunately I had to fire him a week later. Was I wrong? Should I have handled the situation different? Readers let me know what you think.
