Worried about this termination

Cyndi · January 2003

I terminated my assistant for insubordination. She has not been working out. She is very slow at doing her tasks and is not a "fast thinker" or one that can multi-task. The issues are not any that you can "write" her up on. Obviously it is against the law to terminate because of personality or intelligence. She abruptly hung up the phone on me when I told her to handle a new hire that came in. I wrote her up and told her I needed to speak with her, she then told me in an abrupt manner along with an eye roll, that she could not do it now, she had to meet somone for lunch and that she would talk to me after lunch. I told her fine, we will talk after lunch. I told my boss the COO and he agreed we just needed to terminate her. We called her in and told her it is not working out, and we were letting her go, we also let her know that the behavior today was unacceptable. She disagreed and wanted to know why, we also gave her examples of performance issues of how tasks are late and she stated is was not her fault because I have been giving her to much work and she needs more time and needs to work on the weekend. I have been receiving daily reports of her daily duties, by these reports she does a lot of file organizing and accomplishes very little in fact I do not see half the tasks assigned as even being worked on. We are in Florida and we are an "at will" employer. She lodged a complaint against me and the COO to the President, who is now investigating, she claims we terminated her because we were piling work on her trying to get her to quit. I have documentation of where I verbally asked her about projects and emails where I give her a diretive and she will ask me the same question over and over that I previously answer each time she emails. ALso I have tasks assignments that are completed late. My question is what else do I need and can we stand behind the "at will" I did her performance eval on November 8th and it reflected the areas she needed to imporve upon. Her next review was in Feberuary. Also, she is a minority. :-S

Rockie · January 2003

It appears to me that you are perfectly within your rights to terminate this individual. Having too much work to do is not cause for filing a charge (we could all sue if this was the case!) The direct refusal to do part of her job (take care of a new hire) would also be good documentation to bolster your termination.

She seems like a lot of people these days - wants to do the minimum work for the maximum pay and Lord knows...don't let anything interfere with lunch plans!

Balloonman · January 2003

Sounds like you are on solid ground. You even let your boss know what you were preparing to do, always a smart move. Since I work for a small company I always let the owners know about pending terminations and why, this way when the employee says, I want to talk to so and so I say fine. They know the facts and let the employee have their say but it does not ever change the decision.

Don't sweat it, have everything laid out to discuss with the President, and this should be a done matter.
My $0.02 worth.
DJ The Balloonman

Don D · January 2003

This same individual used to work for me! I am pleased that she has relocated to Florida from Mississippi. As a Monday morning quarterback (Go Bucs), the only fault I find with your decision is that you might could have done it a bit quicker. Stick to your guns on this one!

Rockie · January 2003

Just don't send this person to South Carolina. We have enough to this type to go around!

HS · January 2003

>This same individual used to work for me! I am pleased that she has
>relocated to Florida from Mississippi.

I think she also used to work for me! Only my boss wouldn't let her go, even with all the documentation of times spent on personal calls, and other managers complaints about her. There was always "never enough time" to do all her work...because all her time was spent on personal issues instead of work issues. She is now on longer working with us and I am pleased she has found someone else to "not work for".

Crout · January 2003

On the one hand, you certainly can terminate her if her performance is not up to par and you have been documenting it, but I'm confused as to where the insubordination lies. If you are saying that her eye roll constitutes insubordination, I would disagree and point out that it appears in your post you assented to her statement that she did not have time.

SDDCHR · January 2003

I agree that you are within your right to terminate. But in the future you may want to ensure better documentation other then a performance report. How long has this employee been working for you? Have you taken any previous steps to correct her action (I.e. work improvement, counseling, etc.) Your post doesn't indicate much for documentation and this would be my only concern. Good luck!

LisaMN · January 2003

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 01-27-03 AT 11:10AM (CST)[/font][p]It seems to me that you are terminating for performance rather than insubordination. And you have the performance review listing the areas requiring improvement. Did you give a specific time line or steps required for improvement? That's usually a good idea. It just seems that there might be more here than meets the eye. If you don't feel confident that you're doing the right thing perhaps you should rethink your position?

Nurse Recruiter · January 2003

From your post it seems you are quite justified in terminating the employee but I have 2 concerns.First, you seem to have documentation of her perfomance issues, but do you have documentation of where you addressed the issues with the ee? Second, "at will" is great but only as great as you company policies. Do you have a disiplinary policy? Did you follow it? Do you have documentation of this? Good Luck!

Theresa Gegen TX · January 2003

Unless she claims her termination was based on her being in a protected classification (because of her race, sex, age etc), I don't think you have a worry.

But, as some others have said, you can write an employee up for being slow to finish tasks and for requiring instructions to be given to her again and again. (That is not the same as writing the employee up for not being intelligent -- an employee might be very intelligent, but still unable to grasp certain job functions).

In the future, if an employee is not performing to expections, it needs to be addressed quickly.

Good Luck!

teecee · January 2003

You have nothing to worry about. Here in GA, regardless of what some may think, as an at-will state, employees have almost nothing to stand on UNLESS they have a contract. Otherwise, the regular rank and file can be termed for any reason or no reason even if you go against your very own handbook that our attorneys are so careful of in advising us. You covered yourself with your seniors and that's what is important. She is a "user" and unfortunately, there are plenty of those in the workforce. She may kick up a fuss but nothing will really come of it.

mrbill · January 2003

Like the other comments, sounds like you are on solid ground. Only comment is - How long did this person work for you ? If it was less than 1 year, then I would say that you are very solid. If it was more than 1 year, then a paper trail might be helpful.
Concerning being a minority, I certainly see no evidence of discriminatory treatment, however up here in "Da Bay State" going before the MCAD is never pleasant.

Don D · January 2003

I don't have any sort of experience that tells me something is magical about an employee of less than one year as compared to one with more than one year. Nor would I agree that 'you have nothing to worry about'. The EEOC can be very creative in suggesting to people how to fill out their charge forms. That, I can speak to with experience. x:-)

Worried about this termination

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