Pat Whatley
New Member
Theoretical question, don't in any way think this has anything to do with my two employees! I'm telling this from the perspective of the owner but IT'S NOT ME. This is really long, and it has to be, so if you've got something better to do you probably ought to go do that instead.
THE EMPLOYEE:
Great guy. Worked for a couple of shops in town before coming to work for me and fit here perfectly. Anything he didn't know how to do he took upon himself to learn. He went as far as to take welding classes at trade school (we paid the tuition when we found out he was doing it) just to know how to do it. Shows up to work on time, every day, took two sick days in 8 years.
The guy married an incredible woman. Cute, hilarious, everyone loved her. She had a great job as a physical therapist making damn good money. The two of them seemed inseperable.
Three years ago we got an order to put up a real estate sign on an unbelievable piece of property on the river, the kind of parcels that NEVER go on the market. I sent him out to install the sign, he came back two hours later with the sign still in the truck. He'd taken one look at it, called his wife to come look, and they'd called the broker and bought it. They built their retirement home over the next year and everything looked wonderful.
Then his wife severely blew out a knee rock climbing. Then she got addicted to the pain pills. Then she went to rehab. Then she started using her medical connections to get more pain pills. Over the course of a year she completely changed (still taking pills all day long), quit her job, started having an affair, then ran off to somewhere in the mid-west with a guy she met online, leaving my employee with two young kids and a huge mortgage.
WHY HE SHOULD/SHOULD NOT BE FIRED
I got a call from a friend of mine at a local pawn shop concerned about the employee and what he might be getting into. Besides the sign equipment in the shop we have a fully equipped wood shop. My father ran a cabinet company in this building for 30 years and when I inherited the building I moved my sign shop into the warehouse side, the wood working equipment has been in it's side virtually untouched for five years.
Turns out the employee had pawned one of the lathes over there several times, typically paying it out in a month...then back with it a couple of months later. Then one month he took in a saw, and used part of the money to renew the pawn on the lathe. Then got them both out, then pawned them both again. The cycle kept escalating until he had about $12,000 in pawn and was literally counting pennies to pay the interest. When the stuff was about to go out to be sold by the pawn shop my friend at the shop started cleaning it, saw my dad's company name on it and put the whole story together.
So I called the employee into my office (literally in shock) and all I had to say was "What's going on?" for the floodgates to open. The guy just lost it right there in my office. The house has been up for sale for over a year for $50,000 less than the mortgage but since the housing market tanked he hasn't had an offer. Without his ex-wife’s income he can’t make the payments and he’s maxed out every other avenue he had to try and ride it out until the house sold. The savings they had were all used up by the drug problems and with two young kids at home he can’t really go out and do extra work to make ends meet (no local family…and no family with the financial ability to bail him out)
I really felt sorry for him at that point but the “fire him” part came when he told me he’d been taking our jobs and doing them on the side. Things have been slow and we’re barely scraping by without having to lay anyone off as it is. He told me about a couple of billboard wraps he’d done, several lexan face replacements, and a few other jobs. He didn’t take any of the supplies needed for any of them, he just contacted our subcontractors for the printing, paid them directly, and had the payments made to him. All total he made about $4000 profit (on the jobs he told me about) but that was $4000 we could really have used (not that my employees know about the financial condition of the shop).
He was grossly apologetic and in tears. He swore he’d get the equipment back from the pawn shop (I already paid it out) and repay the money, he was just deperate and didn’t know what else to do. I asked him why he just didn’t come talk to me about it before and he just mumbled a little and never really gave me an answer.
I was torn between being pissed off and feeling sorry for him and we’d been talking for almost two hours. I gave him the rest of the week off (with pay) and told him to spend some serious time figuring out what he needed to do and how he needed to do it and I’d figure out what I needed to do. Without me asking he left his shop keys and his shop debit cards on his desk when he left.
The more I’ve looked into it and after talking to several suppliers it turns out that this has been going on a lot longer than he told me. The billboard wrap company has done 15 prints for him in the last 18 months and I now know he has “his own” real estate client who’s work he’s been doing at night. I’m afraid if I keep digging I’m going to find he’s much much deeper in this. The more I find the more sympathy for him erodes. I'm estimating his total profits on what I've found out about to be around $11,000 in 18 months.
So, as much as I feel sorry for his situation and as much as I care for him I’m really not happy right now. There were so many paths he could have taken to get out of this horrible situation….and it hurts me that the one he chose was to run over me. I’d really like to bail him out but at the same time I’m borrowing money to keep everyone paid and he’s been part of the reason behind that.
So I ask you (and thank you for reading this long, long message) any suggestions or advice? I’ve got to figure something out by Monday (yes, two weeks before Christmas) and it’s gonna eat me up all weekend.
THE EMPLOYEE:
Great guy. Worked for a couple of shops in town before coming to work for me and fit here perfectly. Anything he didn't know how to do he took upon himself to learn. He went as far as to take welding classes at trade school (we paid the tuition when we found out he was doing it) just to know how to do it. Shows up to work on time, every day, took two sick days in 8 years.
The guy married an incredible woman. Cute, hilarious, everyone loved her. She had a great job as a physical therapist making damn good money. The two of them seemed inseperable.
Three years ago we got an order to put up a real estate sign on an unbelievable piece of property on the river, the kind of parcels that NEVER go on the market. I sent him out to install the sign, he came back two hours later with the sign still in the truck. He'd taken one look at it, called his wife to come look, and they'd called the broker and bought it. They built their retirement home over the next year and everything looked wonderful.
Then his wife severely blew out a knee rock climbing. Then she got addicted to the pain pills. Then she went to rehab. Then she started using her medical connections to get more pain pills. Over the course of a year she completely changed (still taking pills all day long), quit her job, started having an affair, then ran off to somewhere in the mid-west with a guy she met online, leaving my employee with two young kids and a huge mortgage.
WHY HE SHOULD/SHOULD NOT BE FIRED
I got a call from a friend of mine at a local pawn shop concerned about the employee and what he might be getting into. Besides the sign equipment in the shop we have a fully equipped wood shop. My father ran a cabinet company in this building for 30 years and when I inherited the building I moved my sign shop into the warehouse side, the wood working equipment has been in it's side virtually untouched for five years.
Turns out the employee had pawned one of the lathes over there several times, typically paying it out in a month...then back with it a couple of months later. Then one month he took in a saw, and used part of the money to renew the pawn on the lathe. Then got them both out, then pawned them both again. The cycle kept escalating until he had about $12,000 in pawn and was literally counting pennies to pay the interest. When the stuff was about to go out to be sold by the pawn shop my friend at the shop started cleaning it, saw my dad's company name on it and put the whole story together.
So I called the employee into my office (literally in shock) and all I had to say was "What's going on?" for the floodgates to open. The guy just lost it right there in my office. The house has been up for sale for over a year for $50,000 less than the mortgage but since the housing market tanked he hasn't had an offer. Without his ex-wife’s income he can’t make the payments and he’s maxed out every other avenue he had to try and ride it out until the house sold. The savings they had were all used up by the drug problems and with two young kids at home he can’t really go out and do extra work to make ends meet (no local family…and no family with the financial ability to bail him out)
I really felt sorry for him at that point but the “fire him” part came when he told me he’d been taking our jobs and doing them on the side. Things have been slow and we’re barely scraping by without having to lay anyone off as it is. He told me about a couple of billboard wraps he’d done, several lexan face replacements, and a few other jobs. He didn’t take any of the supplies needed for any of them, he just contacted our subcontractors for the printing, paid them directly, and had the payments made to him. All total he made about $4000 profit (on the jobs he told me about) but that was $4000 we could really have used (not that my employees know about the financial condition of the shop).
He was grossly apologetic and in tears. He swore he’d get the equipment back from the pawn shop (I already paid it out) and repay the money, he was just deperate and didn’t know what else to do. I asked him why he just didn’t come talk to me about it before and he just mumbled a little and never really gave me an answer.
I was torn between being pissed off and feeling sorry for him and we’d been talking for almost two hours. I gave him the rest of the week off (with pay) and told him to spend some serious time figuring out what he needed to do and how he needed to do it and I’d figure out what I needed to do. Without me asking he left his shop keys and his shop debit cards on his desk when he left.
The more I’ve looked into it and after talking to several suppliers it turns out that this has been going on a lot longer than he told me. The billboard wrap company has done 15 prints for him in the last 18 months and I now know he has “his own” real estate client who’s work he’s been doing at night. I’m afraid if I keep digging I’m going to find he’s much much deeper in this. The more I find the more sympathy for him erodes. I'm estimating his total profits on what I've found out about to be around $11,000 in 18 months.
So, as much as I feel sorry for his situation and as much as I care for him I’m really not happy right now. There were so many paths he could have taken to get out of this horrible situation….and it hurts me that the one he chose was to run over me. I’d really like to bail him out but at the same time I’m borrowing money to keep everyone paid and he’s been part of the reason behind that.
So I ask you (and thank you for reading this long, long message) any suggestions or advice? I’ve got to figure something out by Monday (yes, two weeks before Christmas) and it’s gonna eat me up all weekend.
