I think I have become a shitty human being

Dashel

Blackwing Lair Raider
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Eh frustrating situation for everyone involved. Yes sounds like you were needlessly shitty to him. At least you realize it.
 

Tarrant

<Prior Amod>
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There's a few possibilities here:
1. The guy was an over-achiever who was motivated and worked really hard but just didn't have the experience, intelligence and/or talent to deliver at the level he was at.
2. The guy was a bullshitter who got the job because he knew all the right words to say or had connections. However he's lazy and isn't attempting to deliver. He just thinks he can take abuse, give the perfect responses and get a paycheck while being a liability until he moves on to his next job.
3. The guy was a normal dude but something devastating recently happened (death, divorce, drugs, lost all his bitcoins on mtgox, just watched the season finale of Lost etc).

From what you've said it's #2.

I've seen this before where as soon as someone thinks they have an opportunity coming soon (in this case whatever painting shit he has in the pipe) they get this incredible mental defense against abuse. If you're thinking, "Whatever you say doesn't matter, I'm quitting soon and this is just a paycheck to me." there's nothing they won't say 'sorry sir I'll do better next time.' because in their mind you're just a pawn in their game.

In addition, a good bullshitter sees the failure->abuse->recovery cycle as part of the game. If it's easier for a bullshitter to manipulate people around him to keep his job than it is to work hard and earn the respect of his peers then maybe he'll do that.


The worst thing you can do, for yourself, your team and the person in question is to let him fuck around and just mitigate the liability he presents.

The second worst thing you can do is to get rid of him without telling him exactly why you're getting rid of him. If you say shit like, "Oh you're not what we're looking for" there's no chance for introspection on his part to realize that he needs to step it up.

The best thing you can do is to fire him and give him constructive criticism as to why you're firing him. This accomplishes your job as supervisor while still helping him in the long run.

What you did is close to the best thing you can do, but depending on what you actually said it seems that you lacked the willpower to focus your anger into something constructive for him. That doesn't make you a shitty human being, it makes you a human who is still learning to manage shitty workers.


If it was actually #1 or #3 it's a totally different ballgame and your fault is making the wrong judgement rather than handling that judgement.
Good post.
 

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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Do you give yourself infractions for comical logical fallacies, Tubro? A trichotomy is all the stratification you thought possible? A fourth (5th, 6th) option could be this: OP is a sociopath, liar or degenerate
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Myriad possibilities are not relevant to express or be concerned about. It could be that I'm the OP, that you're the OP or that the OP is a researcher and this is all an experiment.
 

Izo

Tranny Chaser
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Myriad possibilities are not relevant to express or be concerned about. It could be that I'm the OP, that you're the OP or that the OP is a researcher and this is all an experiment.
Not every possibility needs exploring, sure. But you left out OP. That's a no-no, bias 101. I'm glad you agree 3 is a tad low. Also, I'm not OP - you'd ban the account if I had multiples
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Quineloe

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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The worst part is really that you're creating a work environment in which people are now scared to approach the boss if something happened. Rather cover it up with duct tape and hope you won't notice.
 
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I think multiple factors influenced my "HR" skills in this field.

1. Publicly funded projects require a certain percentage of work to be done by "local" union workers. Say, a building built in East Bay requires 2000 man-hours of work done by East Bay union.

Often times, what they give you is what you get. Yea, we tried to get rid of this guy for a long time, but because he didn't have enough hours accrued (until just recently), and because union couldn't find us a replacement at the time, well we were fucking stuck.

2. It literally would have been more efficient to fire the guy and work with one man down, but we couldn't even do that. I took photo evidence with a time date that just showed this guy standing around; I showed pictures of his sub-par welding results when compared with the other guys. Fuck, often times I personally had to grind off what he welded and had someone else redo it. When these grievances did nothing, my office got pissed. I got pissed. And I guess that's where the belittling began.

3. The wage of an ironworker is much higher than a wage of a laborer. I felt that we got swindled. They gave us a laborer that is to be paid as an ironworker (which is 3x as much). We were all angry that we were shitting away money. Like I said, because we were getting paid in public funds, we had no choice but to pay this guy because he's local and there's no other candidate. This grinded my gears and just pushed me over the edge. A small GC forced to cut their profit margin at the expense of one guy. Fuck that.

Imagine if you had an annoying pet monkey that followed you that said "yes sir" every 20 minutes. That's its only skill, it couldn't be trained to do shit no matter how much coddling or how many treats you give it. Along with that, you had to pay that monkey 40 dollars every hour. That's what it felt like to me. He was like a stressball to me, and I guess that's why calling him derogatory names was so easy.

4. When I let him go, my office gave me the go ahead already. The union finally gave us a new guy to replace him in a month. They told me to give him his walking papers whenever I felt like it. I think this is where I let the power go to my head. I can finally let him go, and I was going to let him go in the most vicious way possible to release the months of pent up stress he gave me. I could have definitely handled this situation better, but I had this burning desire to just tell him how much of a worthless cunt he is; to let him know the only reason he lasted so long on this job was because he was local; and to tell him he doesn't belong anywhere near a jobsite. It was childish, but the weird part is I probably wouldn't have felt guilty if he was just some bum off the street. After knowing what I know now, I felt like I fired Mother Teresa or something.
 

lurkingdirk

AssHat Taint
<Medals Crew>
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If something someone does irritates you to the point where you are unable to control reacting in the way you did, you should not be supervising anyone.

$0.02
 

Chanur

Shit Posting Professional
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To be perfectly honest you are as unskilled as a supervisor/manager as this guy was in welding/construction. You cannot scream derogatory things at someone on the job site. It makes you unapproachable by those that work for you and opens your company to a ton of liability and potential safety risks. Where did you learn management Burger King?This is particularly important if you are using public funds like you are as you have to operate under federal and or state guidelines laid out in your contracts. Your company may not have an HR rep but the union has reps, and there are lawyers. That sounds like a hostile work environment to me and likely would to your companies employers. Luckily this guy sounds overly nice, but he if was a vindictive asshole you could very easily lose your job over this.

On a final note you are very lucky this guy was so nice. If you talked like that to most of the folks I worked construction with they would be surgically removing his boot from your ass.
 

Swagdaddy

There is a war going on over control of your mind
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Yeah just take this as learning experience, you realize what you did was inappropriate and that is a good first step.

I probably went a bit overboard in my first post, because at least your knowledgeable of problematic workers and not too timid to do something about it.

It's not uncommon for me to share supervision with others and it irritates me to no end when they are too timid or non-assertive and eventually most the workers go behind my back or try to settle issues with a supervisor that is non-confrontational or overly nice.
 

Gravy

Bronze Squire
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Here's a few things I've learned the hard way, after supervising people for 20+ years:

- Control your temper. It's only going to bite you in the ass. I still have problems with this one.

- If you have to berate someone, do it in private. Never in front of the other employees, the word is going to get around no matter anyway. But this way, you don't shame someone in front of their peers.

- When you praise someone, make sure the opposite is true. Make sure other employees are in range. Don't make it obvious.


To address the issue: Yes, you are a horrible human being. We all are. Some of us learn from mistakes, some of us don't.
 

Dumar_sl

shitlord
3,712
4
My opinion is that this human being's well-being is more important than the tasks he had to perform at your worksite. As a manager, I would've given him the most menial tasks possible and let him complete them at pace he could.

Part of management, the worst part, is effectively managing people who are terrible at their job.
 

TrollfaceDeux

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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My opinion is that this human being's well-being is more important the tasks he had to perform at your worksite. As a manager, I would've given him the most menial tasks possible and let him complete them.

Part of management, the worst part, is effectively managing people who are terrible at their job.
thank god for no communism.
 

OneofOne

Silver Baronet of the Realm
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My opinion is that this human being's well-being is more important than the tasks he had to perform at your worksite. As a manager, I would've given him the most menial tasks possible and let him complete them at pace he could.

Part of management, the worst part, is effectively managing people who are terrible at their job.
Lots of good advice in this thread. This shit above? Not good advice.