The Meeting

The cast of characters assembled in a conference room for the meeting: me, the mean staffer (herein referred to as "Smokey"), HR (we'll just call her HR for lack of a better name) and the great and powerful Oz (why? because we never see him...He's in NY. (98% of our interaction is via speakerphone.)

I opened the meeting by telling Smokey that I was very surprised and disappointed in our conversation yesterday. I told her that she has always been a good employee in the past and I never imagined that we would have that sort of interaction. And I said that I was willing to try to start with a clean slate just because this was so out of character for her. I told her that the reason we for the meeting was to discuss the phone conversation and to reiterate our expectations for her position. Smokey started explaining why she was so frustrated and what sparked the outburst. Basically, she blames me for all of her troubles at work...payroll issues (they docked her check for taking vacation days that she did not have), the inflexibility of her work at home agreement and she said that she is not getting the respect she deserves. She also said that she thinks I'm a poor manager. (Talk about disrespect!)

At this point HR jumped in about the work at home stuff. Then Oz emphasized that as the department head I have absolute authority. (wow...I wasn't expecting that level of support from him.) Even through all of that, I don't think Smokey really heard what was being said. HR told her that she was unfairly taking her frustration out on me.

Still somehow, by the end of the meeting my blood was BOILING. I just started thinking about how all this times I've had to compensate for her not being here. And the numerous times I asked my boss if there was some way we could try to accommodate her, only to be shot down. And all the time I spent trying to come up with a way that we could give her something. I didn't even bring up her lying, her borderline insubordination about having to do certain assignments, or her doing a poor job training the production assistant. I won't even play the race card because it has never been an issue with us in the past.

And surprise, surprise...today she called in sick.