Until this morning I worked with a guy that I thought was a fairly decent person - we'll call him Bradley, it reminds me of a song.
The heating and air company I work for/am part owner of is fairly small. We have two full time installation crews, three service techs, and a few office people in varying support roles for a total of 12 people.
Just after Christmas this year Bradley started acting a little strange. Showing up late without calling, calling in sick 2 or 3 days in a row, missing work, etc. On one particular day when the office called him to see when he was going to get to his first call he told J that he was quitting. Winter time is fairly slow in the HVAC business in GA but we really liked this guy so we brought him into the office to see what was going on.
Bradley apparently wasn't getting enough hours and could barely afford his car payments, mortgage, and child support so he was heading off to greener pastures.
While he wasn't the best technician we'd ever seen, and it was slow enough that we could do without him until summer, we wanted to keep him around if we could. The Boss, the Fox Hunter, and I sat down to try to come up with a plan to help him out. We guaranteed him a certain number of hours a week, some of which came out of my paycheck, and loaned him enough money to get caught up. He stayed.
Two weeks ago he rear ended a woman because someone cut her off and he was following a bit too close. No one was hurt and he told us he was going to work out of his personal truck for the rest of the day. When J called to ask him when he'd be ready to roll, he sort of freaked out and went home. He stayed home the next day claiming that he was too sore to work - after a doctor released him to come back the day before. We didn't say a word about it. Wednesday came and Bradley stayed home again. The Boss told him that if he was hurt he needed to go back to the doctor and get checked out. Turns out he had pneumonia.
He stayed out through the weekend and came back to work last Tuesday or Wednesday. Everything seemed cool until yesterday. He didn't call in first thing and he wouldn't answer his work cell or his home phone. Naturally we were a bit concerned. By the end of the day we were pretty sure he was going to quit. Again.
This morning The Boss called Bradley at home and got him on the phone. According to J this is how the conversation went:
Boss: "How are you?"
Bradley: "Good. You?"
Boss: "I guess we're done then?"
Bradley: "Yup."
Boss: "Bring me your keys to the office, keys to the van, phone, and company credit card."
Bradley: "OK."
No call. No show today either.
This whole thing bothers me on two different levels, personal and professional. Here's a guy that was down on his luck, of his own doing in my opinion, and we bent over backwards to keep him employed when we didn't have to have him. Yet we loaned him money interest free and with no paperwork attached just like you would loan money to a close friend or family member. We guaranteed him a certain amount of money a week even though the company could suffer for it. And what do we get in return? Us having to call him to see if he was still working for us. It's crap.
I believe that no matter what your reason for quitting a job - don't like it, money, want to change careers - you owe it to yourself and the people you work for to have the stones to come in and quit face to face. I would rather an employee come to me and say "I hate this place, so I'm out of here" than to just lay out until we call and try to figure out what's going on.
We still don't know what Bradley's deal is, but I do know that there's only one word I can come up with to describe the way he handled this thing - Chickensh*t.
