Well the holidays are gone, gave a nice bonus to the guys, took them out for dinner, one guy (call him Tom) in particular, loaned him my car for a month while his was getting fixed, paid for a weeks worth of bereavement when his dad died. Now, here we go. Been trying to grow my business, thought I could trust Tom to run several jobs and handle several contractors. Boy was I wrong. He has 7 years experience and has been with me for a year. I noticed that all his jobs were taking too long to complete. When I approached him on this issue he always pointed the finger at the contractor, homeowner etc. never at himself. Some of the contractors were screwed up so I passed it off as a loss and tried to implement different approaches to deal with these problems. Nothing worked... Jobs were still coming in late. One day one of my employees came to me and said that he can't work with Tom any more because when he is on the job he never lifts a finger to help out he just sits in a chair and barks out instructions. He is on the phone all the time and will not put his tools on. After hearing this I started to get angry. I decided to call one of the contractors and ask him what was going on. After prodding him for a while he finally opened up. The contractor told me that Tom did no more than 2 hours of work a day. He took 2 to 3 hour lunches. No wonder the guys are mad. So I decided to go to the jobs and check in. Remember I trusted Tom and was trying to leave it up to him to do the right thing. The first day that I checked in I saw him wandering aimlessly with no tools on. I confronted him and told him that I am not making any money on his jobs and that he must put his tools on and work hard to get this job done fast, I said the same thing to a couple of other guys as well. I was pretty angry at this point and it showed. I came back the next day and stood in the hallway as they took a 1 hour and 50 minute lunch. Jimmy was lying on some sheetrock sleeping and Tom was sitting in the same chair for that time. I could not go inside because my anger was too great and I didn't want to loose control. I fired Jimmy that day and confronted Tom. He did not deny or confess. The problem is Tom knows the ins and outs of some of these jobs which are in various stages of completion, if I let him go it would be difficult to complete. I called other contractors and got similar stories one of which fired us. It's been a rough few weeks. Paid enemies I tell you!!!
[This message has been edited by tsolanto (edited 02-11-2003).]
