Hi all,
I apologize if this is an inappropriate topic to ask about. Please remove if so. I am a supervisor of my company's graphics department. For context, we are very small and I have never been in a supervisor position before. I was gone yesterday and came back to a less-than-ideal situation for lack of a better word. The other designer had messed up a vehicle graphic job pretty bad. He apparently had to reprint the graphics several times. The real issue is that our work table was damaged and our plotter was mysteriously broken (Graphtec 8600). It was clear to me that they were damaged in some sort of emotional outburst. When I questioned him on how they had become damaged, his explanation didn't make any sense. He said that material had jammed the plotter and that he accidentally cut too deep into the table. We have a self-healing mat over our table that's at least a quarter inch thick. One doesn't just "cut" through it on accident, so immediately I was smelling BS. It was completely cut through. The damage to the plotter was pretty severe. The entire motor was fried and the thing doesn't even turn on now. The part that we need to replace it is several hundred dollars and wouldn't arrive for a month, so we'll either have to buy a new one or be down for a month without a plotter.
I asked several other employees about what happened and they told me he was very upset yesterday and were not corroborating his version of events. I've already had several issues with the performance of this employee, so I was really beside myself with what to do, so I went to my boss and explained my suspicions. We scrubbed through security camera footage of yesterday and lo and behold, the employee was attacking the plastic cover on the table with a box cutter. Several hours later, he proceeded to rip material out of the plotter without lifting the lever. I was pretty shocked and concerned. In addition, he threw away several thousand dollars worth of material.
Would you fire an employee over this? How would you address the situation?
I apologize if this is an inappropriate topic to ask about. Please remove if so. I am a supervisor of my company's graphics department. For context, we are very small and I have never been in a supervisor position before. I was gone yesterday and came back to a less-than-ideal situation for lack of a better word. The other designer had messed up a vehicle graphic job pretty bad. He apparently had to reprint the graphics several times. The real issue is that our work table was damaged and our plotter was mysteriously broken (Graphtec 8600). It was clear to me that they were damaged in some sort of emotional outburst. When I questioned him on how they had become damaged, his explanation didn't make any sense. He said that material had jammed the plotter and that he accidentally cut too deep into the table. We have a self-healing mat over our table that's at least a quarter inch thick. One doesn't just "cut" through it on accident, so immediately I was smelling BS. It was completely cut through. The damage to the plotter was pretty severe. The entire motor was fried and the thing doesn't even turn on now. The part that we need to replace it is several hundred dollars and wouldn't arrive for a month, so we'll either have to buy a new one or be down for a month without a plotter.
I asked several other employees about what happened and they told me he was very upset yesterday and were not corroborating his version of events. I've already had several issues with the performance of this employee, so I was really beside myself with what to do, so I went to my boss and explained my suspicions. We scrubbed through security camera footage of yesterday and lo and behold, the employee was attacking the plastic cover on the table with a box cutter. Several hours later, he proceeded to rip material out of the plotter without lifting the lever. I was pretty shocked and concerned. In addition, he threw away several thousand dollars worth of material.
Would you fire an employee over this? How would you address the situation?
