Mental Health Thread #9 - Spring is Coming!

After years of drought, we're not supposed to complain about rain, and the cooler temps for June have been nice. However, we've spent very little time in our pool so far, and the humidity can go away anytime now. On the plus, our grass has never looked better.

 

Heat index is supposed to hit 110+ this week, with oppressive humidity. Should be buckets of fun. I would still rather have this than the cold though.

 

98 degrees right now and high humidly. We are supposed to get very bad storms with hail and possible tornado later today. I'll believe it when I see it. On Sunday the weather people called for rain all day, was supposed to be a wash out! We didn't get a drop of rain just very humid. Everyone canceled their outdoor fathers day plans because of what they said. Me, I just cleaned out my pantry and painted the walls and ceiling. Should be better tomorrow.

 

I don't even bother with listening to weather reports. We had a garage sale planned a few weeks ago with friends. They were all worried about potential bad weather and oh, no should we cancel. I said no we're going through with it. We had perfect weather and took in almost $1400.

 

true, I think the best way to see what's the weathers going to be like is to get up in the morning and look out the window!

 

Daily thunderstorms here. Those I don't mind.

 

In need of mental health:

When I bring up a performance issue to you I am SO not interested in hearing "So and so does such and such and you don't say anything. I'm being singled out." This is NOT #$&(* elementary school and I don't want to hear that crap. We are discussing you and YOUR performance failures, not anybody else in the company. Be an adult!

Rant over. Thanks, I feel better now!

 

I agree wholeheartedly! I've seen that so many times when employees are being disciplined/corrected and it never fails to p*** me off.

 

I want to know how they're so sure that "so and so does xxx and you don't talk to him". I don't discipline you in front of him - I don't discipline him in front of you.

 

I know, that's what I'd like to know as well! One time I was talking with an employee who was complaining about being written up for something and that was one of her statements: "my manager has it in for me. Other employees are always doing things and he never disciplines them." I asked her how she knew that he didn't discipline them...once she thought about it, she realized that she DIDN'T know, and truthfully had no way of knowing, and she stopped using that excuse. (She found a million other excuses for her poor performance, but that's a whole other story!)

 

My munchkins learned rather quickly that defense was a non-starter. If only employees were so perceptive. I have one in particular who is the queen of finger pointing.

 

The entitlement mentality these days is ridiculous.

Today I had an employee who is turning 26 next month. She emailed us to find out why there isn't an open event in PeopleSoft. Evidently we were supposed to know without being told that she was covered on her parents' insurance; that it was ending on her birthday (as opposed to the end of the month in which her birthday happens, which is how we do it); what coverage she has; and automatically open the event for her without her having to notify us of anything.

Also today, I heard from an employee whose daughter turned 13 last fall; he signed up for a dependent care FSA anyway despite the fact that the OE materials spelled out that your child had to be under 13; his claims have been denied; and it is OUR fault because OUR system didn't pick up that he had an ineligible employee and reject his enrollment. HE had no responsibility at all to ensure that he qualified for the benefit.

 

I had to lay off an employee because we were simply over staffed. Her reaction was " what about Suzy."

 

*Puts on best manager face

"We're not talking about Suzy just now. We're talking about you."

 

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It gets better with the employee I was ranting about in my original post. After I disciplined her, she went whining to the owner who totally fell for that favoritism and "being singled out" stuff. I'm pretty sure she turned on the tears too. So I got called in with the owners the next day and raked over the coals for, you know, doing my job and managing. It ended up with...I am supposed to prepare a "list of expectations" and we will all meet and go over it together. Because working adults, particularly ones who have been working as secretaries their entire lives, should need to be told to be on time and not to abandon the company phone to walk out to the warehouse and take a 15 minutes personal phone call without telling anyone.

The very next day, this same employee, who has not even been here six months announced that she was taking 5 days off over the course of July. Obviously, now she knows she can end around me....oh this is going to be fun....