I had to fire a young employee and his parents called my personal phone to complain.
By @owenok2 · Work
I've been a manager for a long time, and this was a first. It was a clear performance issue over several months, fully documented, but now I'm getting calls from his mom and dad.
The full story
I'm in my late 50s and I manage a department at a pretty large company. We hired a young guy, early 20s, about six months ago. From the start, there were issues. Not huge things, but a pattern of missed deadlines, careless work, and just a general lack of attention to detail that you can't have in this job. We have a pretty standard process for this: verbal warnings, written warnings, a performance improvement plan (PIP). He went through all of it. I had multiple meetings with him, trying to coach him and see if it was a training issue or something else. I really did try to get him on the right track. He'd seem to get it, then the same problems would pop up a week later. It was exhausting. Finally, after he made a pretty costly error last week, I had to let him go. I did it by the book, with HR present, kept it professional and focused on the performance issues we'd already documented to death. I thought that was the end of it. Then, on Saturday morning, I get a call from a number I don't recognize. It's his father. He starts telling me how I've ruined his son's career, that he's a good kid, that the company didn't give him a fair chance. I was so stunned I didn't know what to say. I told him politely that I couldn't discuss personnel matters and hung up. Two hours later, his mother calls. She was crying, asking me to reconsider, telling me they had just helped him get this apartment and now he couldn't afford rent. It was incredibly uncomfortable. Now I feel awful, but also... what was I supposed to do? My wife says I should have just blocked the numbers, but I can't shake the feeling of how wildly unprofessional and strange this whole thing is. It's a job, not middle school.
How people voted
- OP Is Right — 22% (11 votes)
- Both Messy — 38% (19 votes)
- OP Is Wrong — 40% (20 votes)
Readers are split: “OP Is Wrong” leads with 40% — 50 votes and 5 comments so far.
What people are saying
@ryan — I have a feeling the 'coaching' wasn't as helpful as you think it was.
@laurensorta — I would have told the parents that their son gave me their number for a reference and see what happens.
@scarlettmm — bruh
@remyy — How did they even get your personal phone number?
@finnliterally — If he can't handle getting fired he's not ready for a real job.
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