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Last week is soooo FIRED!
Feb. 8th, 2010 09:05 amAlong with our cleaning lady...
It's funny how much I censor and edit what I would really like to say on Facebook. But last week was fraught with annoyance and pissiness.
I wish LJ had an easy way to do a keyword search through your own archives. I'd link to several stories over the past 5 years about Magpie--the woman who was our receptionist and then fired for incompetence. As a pity move Bossman hired her as a contractor to clean our office building. She's been playing at being Janitor lady now for five years in spite of numerous complains from tenants and from me. Remember the episode with Naked Guy!? The 'friend' she hired to help her clean who was found not once but TWICE naked and whacking off at a tenant's desk.
So finally, last week, Bossman called her in to let her go. This was long over due. Still, I've had to fire people and no matter how just the firing, it's a difficult thing to do. It's difficult to be fired and its difficult to sit there across the desk and fire someone. Especially when you know that they are virtually unemployable. Such is the case with Magpie. This was her last hope at a salary of any kind. She's kind, naive, not very bright, unable to focus or prioritize tasks. She sees herself as very very thorough. Our new, OCD janitor has spent the last 4 days on his hands and knees scrubbing five years of filth off the floors in the bathrooms in this building, nearly making himself retch.
Now, five years ago, when she was our receptionist and my direct report, I offered to be the one who let her go. At the time Bossman said no, he'd like to keep me as the 'good cop' in the situation and he would let her go. After all, he is the company owner. Last week, he tried to get ME to fire her. I said HELL NO. #1, I'm no longer an employee--I'm a contractor. #2, I do not work for the property management side of the business. #3, I gave you that out 5 years ago and you didn't take it. You're on your own now mister mister.
Imagine how surprised he was at how emphatically I drew THAT line!
Tuesday was 'doom day'. Magpie knew it was coming too, and that made all of us feel that much more miserable. Still, the meeting went as well as it could considering the news. He told her at 10am. They met for about 30 minutes. She asked for some time to gather up some personal effects she had here and then she'd turn in her key. Bossman agreed and offered her a 1/2 months worth of money as a sort of severance--something he did not have to do, but is entirely in keeping with the type of decent human being he is.
We have a tiny janitor's closet on the second floor and an only slightly larger one on the first floor. I am not exaggerating one bit when I say to you that from 10:30am to 4:30pm she carted arm load after dolly load of CRAP from those closets into her car, a Subaru wagon. Did she have a fucking HOUSE stored in those closets? Not really. It was all crap. Seriously, garbage. It was odds and broken ends she's scavenged from the trash bins. Any thing a tenant threw away that caught her eye she kept. I had always assumed she carried it home, but apparently she stored it here in every nook and cranny she could find.
FIVE
HOURS
I've worked her for seven years now. My desk area is filled with personal stuff. I could sort and clean and box my crap and be out of here in under an hour if it came to it.
FIVE
HOURS
Of her shuffling, and sniffling, and dropping things. I realize it was hard on her, but yi yi yi. FIVE hours??
Meanwhile, word spread through the building like wildfire and it can not have helped that I had a steady stream of tenants who came by my desk with words of joy and relief--many not realizing she wasn't gone yet.
Wednesday our Non-violent volunteers upstairs converged on us with a completely different reaction. How DARE we fire a downtrodden female and replace her with a man. They don't like him, they don't feel safe. They want Magpie back. Not only that but we KNOW they're chemically sensitive and he used Simple Green upstairs and they can't have that. Blah blah blah blah. How can people who work in non-violent communication make me so want to strangle them on sight? Last I checked Simple Green was very non toxic. It contains none of the chlorine and other chemicals that most products use. I use Simple Green and Vinegar to clean my house, so I know. As it turns out--he didn't even OPEN any chemicals. He opened the closet in which they were stored to inventory what supplies we had when three women descended on him demanding to know who he was and what he was doing. He introduced himself as the new janitor service and they went into a frenzy of questions about why Magpie wasn't there. When their bathroom upstairs and their kitchen is spotless clean for the first time in half a decade, I think they'll quiet down. I hope.
Thursday was a plumbing fiasco with an exploding toilet tank on the second floor. But at least that didn't involve whiny, crabby chemically sensitive women with a sense of entitlement about leaving our door wide open and the building vulnerable to robbers.
OH and speaking of THAT! We got cased again on Friday. Just to cap off a great week. I was on the phone with a client. I had our mail delivery in my hands, because Angela, our lovely mail person had just handed it to me. Meanwhile the phone rings and it's line 3, which is the front door line, when people need to be buzzed in. Punk Princess answered the line to hear a man say "Uh..mail man, let me in."
Fortunately, she was aware of the fact that Angela was already in the building. "I'll be right down!" She ran to the window to see a heavy set man running away from the building. I guarantee you its one of the guys who hit us in late November and again in December. And it just pisses me off.
On my task list this week is researching and pricing a digital camera for the front door to record commings an goings.
As I said
Last week is soooooooooooooooooooooo FIRED!
It's funny how much I censor and edit what I would really like to say on Facebook. But last week was fraught with annoyance and pissiness.
I wish LJ had an easy way to do a keyword search through your own archives. I'd link to several stories over the past 5 years about Magpie--the woman who was our receptionist and then fired for incompetence. As a pity move Bossman hired her as a contractor to clean our office building. She's been playing at being Janitor lady now for five years in spite of numerous complains from tenants and from me. Remember the episode with Naked Guy!? The 'friend' she hired to help her clean who was found not once but TWICE naked and whacking off at a tenant's desk.
So finally, last week, Bossman called her in to let her go. This was long over due. Still, I've had to fire people and no matter how just the firing, it's a difficult thing to do. It's difficult to be fired and its difficult to sit there across the desk and fire someone. Especially when you know that they are virtually unemployable. Such is the case with Magpie. This was her last hope at a salary of any kind. She's kind, naive, not very bright, unable to focus or prioritize tasks. She sees herself as very very thorough. Our new, OCD janitor has spent the last 4 days on his hands and knees scrubbing five years of filth off the floors in the bathrooms in this building, nearly making himself retch.
Now, five years ago, when she was our receptionist and my direct report, I offered to be the one who let her go. At the time Bossman said no, he'd like to keep me as the 'good cop' in the situation and he would let her go. After all, he is the company owner. Last week, he tried to get ME to fire her. I said HELL NO. #1, I'm no longer an employee--I'm a contractor. #2, I do not work for the property management side of the business. #3, I gave you that out 5 years ago and you didn't take it. You're on your own now mister mister.
Imagine how surprised he was at how emphatically I drew THAT line!
Tuesday was 'doom day'. Magpie knew it was coming too, and that made all of us feel that much more miserable. Still, the meeting went as well as it could considering the news. He told her at 10am. They met for about 30 minutes. She asked for some time to gather up some personal effects she had here and then she'd turn in her key. Bossman agreed and offered her a 1/2 months worth of money as a sort of severance--something he did not have to do, but is entirely in keeping with the type of decent human being he is.
We have a tiny janitor's closet on the second floor and an only slightly larger one on the first floor. I am not exaggerating one bit when I say to you that from 10:30am to 4:30pm she carted arm load after dolly load of CRAP from those closets into her car, a Subaru wagon. Did she have a fucking HOUSE stored in those closets? Not really. It was all crap. Seriously, garbage. It was odds and broken ends she's scavenged from the trash bins. Any thing a tenant threw away that caught her eye she kept. I had always assumed she carried it home, but apparently she stored it here in every nook and cranny she could find.
FIVE
HOURS
I've worked her for seven years now. My desk area is filled with personal stuff. I could sort and clean and box my crap and be out of here in under an hour if it came to it.
FIVE
HOURS
Of her shuffling, and sniffling, and dropping things. I realize it was hard on her, but yi yi yi. FIVE hours??
Meanwhile, word spread through the building like wildfire and it can not have helped that I had a steady stream of tenants who came by my desk with words of joy and relief--many not realizing she wasn't gone yet.
Wednesday our Non-violent volunteers upstairs converged on us with a completely different reaction. How DARE we fire a downtrodden female and replace her with a man. They don't like him, they don't feel safe. They want Magpie back. Not only that but we KNOW they're chemically sensitive and he used Simple Green upstairs and they can't have that. Blah blah blah blah. How can people who work in non-violent communication make me so want to strangle them on sight? Last I checked Simple Green was very non toxic. It contains none of the chlorine and other chemicals that most products use. I use Simple Green and Vinegar to clean my house, so I know. As it turns out--he didn't even OPEN any chemicals. He opened the closet in which they were stored to inventory what supplies we had when three women descended on him demanding to know who he was and what he was doing. He introduced himself as the new janitor service and they went into a frenzy of questions about why Magpie wasn't there. When their bathroom upstairs and their kitchen is spotless clean for the first time in half a decade, I think they'll quiet down. I hope.
Thursday was a plumbing fiasco with an exploding toilet tank on the second floor. But at least that didn't involve whiny, crabby chemically sensitive women with a sense of entitlement about leaving our door wide open and the building vulnerable to robbers.
OH and speaking of THAT! We got cased again on Friday. Just to cap off a great week. I was on the phone with a client. I had our mail delivery in my hands, because Angela, our lovely mail person had just handed it to me. Meanwhile the phone rings and it's line 3, which is the front door line, when people need to be buzzed in. Punk Princess answered the line to hear a man say "Uh..mail man, let me in."
Fortunately, she was aware of the fact that Angela was already in the building. "I'll be right down!" She ran to the window to see a heavy set man running away from the building. I guarantee you its one of the guys who hit us in late November and again in December. And it just pisses me off.
On my task list this week is researching and pricing a digital camera for the front door to record commings an goings.
As I said
Last week is soooooooooooooooooooooo FIRED!
