Hell hath no furry
like a Kulesza woman scorned. The first employee that I ever hired quit today. I didn’t fully understand Pete’s “they’re dead to me” philosphy with employees who chose to leave our company, but now I understand. Its interesting I just read the book the 4 Agreements. Number 2 is don’t take things personally. Well, have one of your employees leave and try to not take it personally. Its pretty personal. We packed up our shit, left Elliott’s family, our friends, our first home, our life to move here to make it work out here, don’t take it personally, its pretty personal.
Since leaving the office today I have been adding explatives to my every comment, moments ago Elliott told me I need to calm down. Right, that helped.
I was as nice to our now ex-employee as I could muster without giving him the satisfaction of thinking I was even the least bit understanding. He said he was willing to stay on and finish our project, we decided to let the shortimer go.
He had lots of good reasons that I won’t share in such a public arena. Some of them even sounded believable. None of them however matter. I think it almost would have been better if he said I am putting in my notice, I no longer want to work here, you are a horrible manager, you picked out ugly furniture, Elliott smells funny, and your projects suck. If I ever quit I am telling Pete straight out its because I don’t like him. (Mom to answer your question from a previous blog comment no I have never given anyone at work my blog address so I highly doubt Pete is reading this right now, if he is, Pete – I like you just fine, I am still working for you right?).
I am now one glass of wine into what should prove to be a decent evening afterall. Some how my cursing convinced Elliott to make dinner. Dinner of course then got to be Elliott’s pick which was mac & cheese (the Wild Oats versionm, free of high fructose corn syrup and partiall hydrogenated stuff of course) and chimichangas. I’ll take what I can get.
The next step after fury is to learn from and move on. I have already written the job posting as part of the moving on. As for the learn from I have reflected quite a bit and it will definitely change the way I do things. In the meantime I will let the fury and wine fight it out.
July 25th, 2007 at 4:41 am
Great post sister!
July 26th, 2007 at 2:10 am
Terese,
What a great post…hell hath no fury…I hope I can take credit for some of these grand old sayings you come up with. For my two cents, I don’t think your employee was worth much considering how much time he wanted off for the July 4th week when he’d only been there a couple of weeks. One thing I’ve heard a lot lately is that…sometimes things are just meant to be and we can learn from them…and this is not all related to health issues. I probably told you about one of my students who had what I thought was the misfortune the first night of class of sitting next to a difficult student who became her partner for presentations and other such sharings that we did in class. When I said something to her about her karma the first night of class when she picked that seat, she replied that she thought it was just meant to be…that she was supposed to have that particular experience…I still think it was bad karma…Kathi has a different view of karma…you bring it on yourself…if I say I have bad karma for choosing seats at the movies, she says I just send that out there to Karmaville and select bad seats (I might add that they’re not bad seats when I choose them, but within minutes something goes wrong with the immediate environment around me). Anyway, the departure of your first employee probably will be a positive experience in the end…just think…you’re going to get someone soooo much better, now. And…Elliott isn’t leaving any time soon, unless you don’t tone down that cursing…where did that come from? Certainly not from your sweet-talkin’ mother who rarely uses a foul word (yeah, right!) About The Four Agreements…I think Don’t Take Things Personally is the most difficult one. Just think though…you are Impeccable With Your Word and you Always Do Your Best. My favorite is Don’t Make Assumptions because it avoids misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. Amen to doing away with drama! Here’s another favorite saying for you…
This too shall pass.
Love you,
Mom