I inadvertently got someone fired today.
There is construction work taking place adjacent to my office and a lot of tradies on site. One of them was smoking in a toilet cubicle this morning and filled the entire men's room with smoke. I mentioned this to our School manager.
My intention was that our School manager would then speak to the construction manager who would then have a word with the tradies to inform them not to smoke in the toilet.
Well, things didn't go the way I expected.
Whilst sitting in my office, I heard the construction manager walk up to two Chinese tradies working outside my office demanding to know which one of them had been smoking in the toilet.
At first, each of the tradies said it wasn't them. The manager pressed on and was using all kinds of obscenities. Eventually, one of the tradies owned up to it.
He was asked to leave.
I felt really bad.
3 comments:
I sympathise having had a similar experience some years ago. I made a written complaint about the behaviour of an officer towards members of my staff pointing out that it amounted to bullying in the terms of Departmental policy. I assumed the officer would be counselled but learned later that he had been summoned by a senior manager and following a two hours long closed door meeting had emerged tearfully to clear out his desk never to be seen again. I was mortified as it wasn't my intention for him to lose his job.
Remind me not to mess with you
Victor: As I keep telling myself with the construction worker, maybe there were other factors (such as prior bad behaviour) that might have contributed to the dismissal.
FB: Yes, and I wasn't even trying to get someone fired!
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