I just had to demote/fire this same dude for like the seventeenth time now – and yes, I take responsibility for letting it even get to the point where the same person had 17+ opportunities to make a removal or demotion happen, but the story beyond that needs to be logged for posterity anyway. So yes – it’s my fault, but still – check this shiz out…
So homeboy has a bad habit of constantly deciding he knows the RIGHT way to do something and then does it no matter how many times he’s told not to – which would be excusable if… he were the boss. or a partner. or investor. or executive. or high ranking advisor. or – you get the idea. Dude has this eternally stuck up attitude where everything anyone does is against or for him. He has no concept of things either just happening or people around him making decisions based on their own personal and professional requirements because that being a concept doesn’t make sense to him. And even all of this is fine. I get the syndrome. I make fun of it every day on this very website with the whole “everything is about me all the time” schtick. But when I interact with other human beings in the real world, you have to take off the clown nose and identify the nuances of their personality as you take them into consideration against your own self interests and then you take the mixture of those two and pass them through the filter that is your moral code of how you operate and what you think is ultimately right and wrong and voila: you have a result that either both of you like OR one or both of you don’t like because you hit an impassable wall in one or both of your personal morals. Not this one… This one is just endlessly him and his feelings and his emotional hang-ups and his time on his schedule based on what he feels like to do and how. Which also would be fine if there were no such things as deadlines. Well – if you ask this dude, I guess deadlines actually DONT exist because he’s always presuming to tell me what they are. Another little something that is kindov frustrating since i’m rarely in charge of setting those deadlines. So they’ll exist – i’ll tell this dude about it – he’ll either do nothing or make a situation worse – and then after its too late, he gets motivated to get to work – then doesn’t – then whines about it – then blames me for the resulting consequences with questions like (and I shit you not, here) “why are you doing this to me?”…. Why am I…doi—okay, whatever. So thats happening. And now today I deliver the current state of affairs to him and he decides he’s gonna get right to work and fix everything. He does this thing where theres this world changing moment of clarity – then makes a campaign speech about storming the beaches of all the worlds problems and how the fight begins now and then gets bored and gives up after completing about 5 to 10% of it. Awesome.
So today there is the same proclamation that today is the first day of the new era where everything is different and that he’s going to get right to work and then he’s going to call me later with the result of his super duper action plan he is going to micro-focus on to bring all of these business and personal disasters back together in record time.
Several hours later, he indeed calls me. But I’m busy. He texts immediately after his call not being picked up saying, and I quote: “I have good news!!!”. He calls again and I drop what I’m doing to take the call.
I swear to God this was his good news he wanted to share with me after hours of supposedly working hard on some very pressing business issues we’re facing and that I have been working on this whole time… You’re going to think i’m joking but this is really it…
He won a hamburger eating contest… ._____.
That was the only thing he had done in all this time – he just finished and he wanted to share the fun story with me. like we’re friends (we are not).
Okay… So here is where I need your help to make sure that i’m not crazy. Because of course, if i’m wrong, I want to be called out on it so I can make amends…
How in the fudge was I supposed to react to this? I didn’t scream or flip over any tables or make any speeches about how i’m the boss and my word is law or whatever like I probably should have but instead I said congratulations but I really didn’t need to be interrupted from important time-sensitive work to hear about how instead of working also, he’s been competing successfully in an eating contest.
Think that was well received with a thoughtful response? Nope. Dude gets snippy with me about how he WAS going to get the things he said he would done but then he changed his mind, so GAWD. In other words: I’m the asshole here, of course. What other conclusion could possibly result from this? Idk what I was thinking. So I let him know that the ship has been sailing without him, which of course makes me even MORE Of an asshole in his mind so he yells “I’ll talk to you later” and hangs up on me…
Could there BE a worse reaction to this? If a persons crime is being endlessly deaf to the fact that there are other people in the universe why would you double down on the selfishness by deciding that this current conversation (that you initiated, unwelcomed) is now OVAH but will resume at a later time of your choosing?
Even though this is all my fault though, I still have to make a note for anyone reading this to learn for the future: If you interrupt my work with a phone call to tell me an annoying bullshit personal story after me repeatedly telling you how many negative-fucks I give about your life and to not bother me with it like its something i’m involved in and you don’t like my negative response (that you should have predicted) then go ahead and hang up on me if you must, but making your parting line “i’ll talk to you later” is especially ironic.
Fire him. He obviously doesn’t care about your business.