I think I got people fired . . . again.

[darkrose50]

I think I got people fired . . . again.

I wrote like a 47-point essay on all the things that we need, and how horribly our last Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) went.

My managers got fired. 2/3 of them I did not mind getting fired as they tried to get me fired like 3-4 times.

Now I learned that the training department was dissolved, and they all got fired.

I am not so sure how I feel about this. On one hand the trainers did not know a lick about what we did, or needed. This kind of pisses me off.

My department goes from ~20-folks to ~100 folks during the busy season. We likely lost a lot of good folks due to trusting the training. Seriously EVERY manual was thrown out . . . I could not find ONE manual that these folks put together that was kept by ANYONE. The manual was so bad that I wish I kept it to show folks how useless it was. As a result the new folks were at a profound disadvantage of competing and getting hired (and this makes me angry).

On the other hand a whole department was let go.

[Willie the Duck]

Do you have reason to believe that your essay was a major factor in this? If entire departments got dissolved, I have to believe that there was widespread dissatisfaction with the way things were going, in which case I'd guess a lot of people voiced complaints.

[darkrose50]

The meeting that I had with management about the 47-point essay was kind-of surreal. My bosses, bosses, bosses, boss was like "we have ~20-minutes", and I looked down at my essay and was like ". . . there are 47-points".

Do you have reason to believe that your essay was a major factor in this? If entire departments got dissolved, I have to believe that there was widespread dissatisfaction with the way things were going, in which case I'd guess a lot of people voiced complaints.

One of my managers asked me how it felt to get those folks fired.

My department is small. Like 20 employees in a company with 500-700 folks. We get all the brand-new manages with training wheels. No-one pays attention to us.

We were just given a manager with lots of experience to fix all the broken bits.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Yeah, sounds like you're just another pebble in the avalanche there. One memo doesn't generate that kind of drastic action unless your name is on the door.

[WarKitty]

One of my managers asked me how it felt to get those folks fired.

My department is small. Like 20 employees in a company with 500-700 folks. We get all the brand-new manages with training wheels. No-one pays attention to us.

We were just given a manager with lots of experience to fix all the broken bits.

Yeah, if that happened, they already knew something major was going on. You were just confirmation. And the manager that asked you that needs to learn some tact.

[Rogar Demonblud]

It's not about tact. It's about putting down DR50 so they can feel superior, because they are a manager and thus they are superior. It's just another piece of the abusive work environment DR50 complains about sometimes.

[WarKitty]

It's not about tact. It's about putting down DR50 so they can feel superior, because they are a manager and thus they are superior. It's just another piece of the abusive work environment DR50 complains about sometimes.

I was being charitable, admittedly.

[Rogar Demonblud]

You are a better person than I am, then.

[darkrose50]

It's not about tact.

I am pretty sure that he was joking, but . . . Asperger's Syndrome. So I never really know.

[pendell]

Companies don't lay off departments on the word of one individual contributor, regardless of how well-written it is. They collect data from multiple sources and only then make a decision. at least, they're supposed to.

If some VP or whatever pulled the trigger on an employee without gathering feedback from multiple sources and getting agreement up and down the chain that this step was necessary, that's on them. They're the decision makers. They make the choices, they take the consequences for the call, good or bad. That's why we pay them.

What else was DR50 supposed to do? Lie, or cover for someone else? That wouldn't help anyone but the underperformer -- it wouldn't help anyone else who had to carry the underperformer's load, and it wouldn't help the company.

Say something more tactfully? But, again, if someone gets fired over an individual contributor's poor word choices, that's a problem up the chain, not with the individual contributor.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Korith]

I'd like to validate all of your emotions. Massive changes like this create a ton of emotion, including the emotions that would cause a manager to tell you that you're responsible for getting all these people fired (you're not. If upper management was only willing to give you 20 minutes, they weren't very interested in what you had to say, and had quite certainly already reached this conclusion before you had provided your report)

So -

Not minding these managers getting fired? Justified. These people worked against you. You did your job, and you outlived them. If you happen to also feel a bit of guilt or a bit sick that this happened, also justified. These kinds of sudden changes are very stressful (and your upper management probably needs to be schooled on change management - cutting this many jobs this quickly inevitably has consequences on organizational health and on their bottom line)

Not being sure how to feel about the training department being cut? Justified. Big sweeping changes like this are hard to evaluate. You may experience broad and sudden emotional fluctuations as you work through in your own mind what exactly happened. This is normal and healthy.

Anger towards a training department that did not adequately fulfill its mandate? Justified. These people had a responsibility to provide your organization with a service, which they failed to do. That failure likely stemmed from multiple points, many of which you may have identified in your report already. You know more about how to feel towards certain individuals than I do in that regard.

Feeling disoriented by this sudden change and the lack of clarity over how to proceed? Justified. It does happen a lot more in the real world than people care to admit (many of us just wear a mask of false confidence, and spend some of our private moments internally screaming at how ridiculous work life is).

Feeling...something...over a whole department being let go? Justified.

Take your time, work through it, but don't blame yourself for this one (and maybe the other one. I haven't read that post, but people tend to blame themselves for a lot of stuff in life that they have only imagined control over and at the end of the day it's healthier to accept that we aren't necessarily the masters of our own destiny, we're just the pilot at the wheel trying to steer our ship as best as we can through a foggy night without a lighthouse hoping we don't sink ourselves or someone else along the way).

[sktarq]

There are a few options here.

A: People knew there were problems in the dept. DR50's Memo may have been influential in how the axe came down but likely not alone in that. It may also have been the impetus to deal with a problem they had been putting off for a while but was already planned to do...and even requesting the memo was more an exercise in figuring out how the changes would be taken etc (mgnt's takeaway - this group doesn't like them either and won't put up a fuss when they get axed)

B: the memo kickstarted a quick round of investigation which confirmed the major points and a quick assessment of fix-or-replace came down on replace. For something like that to occur either the mucky-mucks are rather impulsive or the investigation came back very clear very fast from various sources DR50 didn't find out about because mgnt knows to get a variety of viewpoints.

C: People wanted to can most of the dept anyway for other reasons. Office politics, that dept messing with other groups besides DR50's etc. The memo request was, in part, a fishing expedition looking for ammo in doing this. And the memo delivered.

D: There was a conflict with the upper layers of the company about what to do with that dept. DR50's memo was helpful to the fire/replace faction within those upper layers and unlikely alone but possibly in the Key Vote (flipped-the-sixth-person-in-an-eleven-person-quorum)kind of way changed the balance of power allowing the redundancy plan to get the go ahead. This also allows various key people to be themselves in positions similar to A, B, or C described above on a more personal basis.

In either case the management team made the call. And that kind of call doesn't get made without the blessing of (and more likely active participation of) people rather high up the corporate ladder. A single memo, no matter how well written from the level DR50 is (the fact that DR50 has a boss's- boss's - boss's-boss tells me that DR50 is far enough down the ladder) is going to have that kind of sway, unless their boss's-boss at least is backing and using it as exhibit A in their own crusade. Unless DR50 is a lawyer or found some catastrophic illegality that was quickly confirmed (but doesn't sound like it)

So DR50 you shouldn't feel bad. You didn't get them fired. The incompetence of their leadership.
At most you moved the key swing vote to a group of people already promoting this course of action.
And if this isn't true and you were responsible that means you leadership is scarily impulsive and you'd be best served by looking for new work licky-split

[Crow]

Unless your essay caused the company to lose a ton of money, it didn't get anyone fired.

[Peelee]

I feel like everyone is glossing over a very juicy bit of the story here. Namely... What was the other time you apparently got everybody fired?

[Scarlet Knight]

...and why they tried to fire him 3-4 times?

[Iruka]

I like to imagine darkrose50's workplace as a den of intrigue with constant scheming, plots and counter-plots to get each other fired. He won the last two rounds, but who will come out on top next season?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Thought exercise: Say this was not your job. You are a consultant. You have exactly the knowledge of the operation real you had, but you're not personally attached to any individual working there. Now also imagine your report would have had to include points on personnel, who to fire, hire or retrain.

In that scenario, what would your recommendations have been like?

If they're close enough to what actually happened, well done, congratulations for playing your part in that.

If they're not close then you can ask yourself what happened. Did they draw the wrong conclusions from your report? If that's the case you might have a case for blaming yourself. Or did they just have their own reasons or another analysis to go on? In that case you're still a powerless peon who didn't accomplish anything today.

If I were you, I'd just go with the first of the three scenarios and retroactively act like this was all your plan and you should really get a promotion.

[Rogar Demonblud]

I feel like everyone is glossing over a very juicy bit of the story here. Namely... What was the other time you apparently got everybody fired?

...and why they tried to fire him 3-4 times?

That's in some of DR50's other threads. Short version is the company isn't run very efficiently, memos are occasionally written on the subject, and at least one a memo coincided with executives cleaning house in the approved business school manner (i.e. mass firings rather than preventing the problem in the first place). Which leads to middle managers wanting to get rid of DR50 for rocking the boat rather than letting the place quietly collapse under institutionalized inefficiency.

[Scarlet Knight]

That's in some of DR50's other threads. Short version is the company isn't run very efficiently, memos are occasionally written on the subject, and at least one a memo coincided with executives cleaning house in the approved business school manner (i.e. mass firings rather than preventing the problem in the first place). Which leads to middle managers wanting to get rid of DR50 for rocking the boat rather than letting the place quietly collapse under institutionalized inefficiency.

i understand. Well, we all know stories of bad bosses and the enablers that keep them in charge. Sad that it's often the hard workers who suffer in the mass firings right size adjustments.

[Rogar Demonblud]

There's a pretty good case to be made that companies were run better without business school graduates.

[darkrose50]

I feel like everyone is glossing over a very juicy bit of the story here. Namely... What was the other time you apparently got everybody fired?

The AEP (Annual Enrollment Period) is the lion's share of what we do. Seriously we work for 6-12 weeks (depending on the president), and the rest of the year we get paid to basically get ready for the next AEP.

I was in an interview for a job in another department, and they asked me how my AEP went. I told them the truth. I was told that I was too negative. I was like WTF, no the hell I was not, I was just the right amount of negative. I wrote an essay. They looked into things. All my managers got fired.

Honestly that AEP was, bar none, the worst work experience that I have ever been though.

I am in sales. This is the GAME TIME . . . they sent out letters telling customers to call the sales department, during the busy season, and talk about non-sales stuff with us. For every call I answered I got TWO voicemails, and more hang-ups. These were not sales calls. These were customer service calls, calling the sales department, during the busiest weeks of the year.

It was like a toy-shop sending out letters telling customers to come by and talk about Barbie cloths the week of Christmas! Not come buy Barbie cloths. Go up to the register and chat about Barbie cloths . . . while there are 40-ish people in line waiting to buy things. It was the worst idea ever, and it was a bar-none catastrophe. Whomevers idea this was does not understand what it is that we do. I don't think that this mess was mentioned to the higher-ups at all.

At the end of AEP I had over 500 voicemails to return, and C-3PO knows how many emails. In every single way this was a dumpster fire. It completely ruined my season, where I would normally get a great many more sales. We earned less money (I earned less money) because someone did not know what they were doing, and I do not think anyone was made aware of this mess . . . until they asked me . . . and I told them.

I guess that I need to tell all of my superiors not to ask for my opinion unless they want it.

[Evil DM Mark3]

I will re-itterate what others have said. You did not get people fired. You might have contributed or sped up the process, but no one who isn't actively looking for a lawsuit would fire on the word of one staff member, no matter how in-depth, for anything less than demonstrable criminal activity (and if there is a union involved, sometimes not even then...)

[darkrose50]

I will re-itterate what others have said. You did not get people fired. You might have contributed or sped up the process, but no one who isn't actively looking for a lawsuit would fire on the word of one staff member, no matter how in-depth, for anything less than demonstrable criminal activity (and if there is a union involved, sometimes not even then...)

I hope so.

...and why they tried to fire him 3-4 times?

Okay I have Asperger's Syndrome. I am socially awkward, and I will be smarter (a certain type of smarts) than most people. I can't really be the manager, because that is social skills smarts that I do not poses. So I am a cog, that just about always knows more about efficiency than anyone I ever work with. Seriously I will eat my hat if someone can find a coworker of mine that is better at efficiency. There is no such animal. I wish that there was, as such a person would make my life better, but there is not such a person in my workplace, nor will there likely ever be.

I notice problems, warn people about these problems, get ignored, and then I get to do it all over again. Folks do not like being told that they are doing there job wrong, and then for me to be right almost every time just rubs salt in the wounds. I have to live with warning people that "X" is a problem, and have them just about always say "well let's see how it goes" . . . and it pretty much always goes the wrong way that I warned them about. It is like being stuck in a clockwork nightmare that just keeps repeating. I somehow need to learn how to live with being ignored, sit back, and just let things play out.

I mean who would listen to this odd guy with autism about best practices? If he was good at best practices, then he would be in charge, right?

-----

Basically inefficiency is painful. I am then told that inefficiency is efficient, and to do things the wildly inefficient way. I am asked to just try out the wildly inefficient way of doing something to see how it goes. It NEVER goes well. I have already thought about this very thing extensively from many angles, and whomever wrote the plan, procedure, or thought of this idea did not think it though. Sometimes it costs us money . . . real honest to C-3PO money.

I often find ways that we loose money . . . like 1-2 times per year. I just found a glitch that makes an application vanish into nothingness. I really want to know how often that glitch triggered in the last five years, how much money the glitch cost the company, but I will never get to know these things.

[Peelee]

Look at it this way, DR - let's assume the most extreme position, that management had no plans to fire these people until you made noise (which, btw, I don't believe, but for the sake of this argument). Even then, you didn't get them fired, they got themselves fired; you just told management to look at them. If you went to Target and complained about an employee to corporate and they fired the employee based off your complaint, you would have gotten that employee fired. If you went to Target and complained about an employee to corporate and they fired the employee based off video evidence of the employee stealing from the register, then you wouldn't have gotten that employee fired, their actions alone got them fired.

[darkrose50]

We get training from the marketing department (well one marketing executive). Just about none of it is ever helpful, and just about all of it will hurt the new person's sales. It is as if marketing does not understand what we do, and how we do it.

Basically if the marketing executive worked on something we need to mention it, and make it front and center on all of the calls.

Seriously . . . no kidding . . . the new folks will not get hired if they listen to the marketing lady. Who would think that you would not get hired permanently because you listened to your training?

No one should HIPPA verify every caller . . . name, date of birth, and address for EVERY caller? Do not check to see if they are in the right department, or if we already have there information spelled and entered in our system . . . just go directly to getting the spellings of their name and address . . . its is over the top pointless nuts. It is like they do not know that folks call the wrong department, have bad phone connections, have accents, or that we already have this stuff all spelled out and entered in our systems. There is absolutely no reason to take down information that we already have. Why ask folks for information that we 80%, or more, of the time have? No "I can look you up in our system with your member ID or SSN" then say "I found your information, please verify <your stuff>" . . . because stupidity, that's why.

No one will ever buys health insurance based on getting a discount for Jenny Craig. I have never sold a policy based on having discounts on Jenny Craig. No one is that stupid. No one gets health care based on pointless drivel. I have to mention it anyhow. I will never get a call about Jenny Craig discounts.

We have a specialized Spanish language line for our Spanish speaking insurance agents. Yet I, a non-Spanish speaking agent, am supposed to bring up the Spanish speaking urgent care centers that we have. I have never sold a policy based on having Spanish language urgent care centers. I will never get a call about these Spanish language urgent care centers.

We watched a 40-minute video on how the phone app works. It is required of me to mention that we have a phone app. I will never sell a health policy based on having a phone app. I will NEVER get a call to explain how it works.

I help people pick out a plan. The marketing executive does not know how we do things or what is important in helping people pick out a plan. Why ask us what is important? It is painful every year. Every year I am told that things are important that will never come up in a sales call, things that will never make me a sale. People will never make a choice based on these silly bells and whistles.

The new people will not get hired following the training. They will spend all there time taking down information that we already have entered, talking about Jenny Craig, and warm-transferring someone to the correct department (after being on hold for 10+ minutes). 10-minutes here and 10-minutes there will add up to no sales, and when all is said and done . . . no job.

It is kind-of bewildering how this is a thing.

[Peelee]

No one should HIPPA verify every caller . . . name, SSN, and address for EVERY caller?

A.) HIPAA
2.) Your beef there is with the feds, not your bosses.

[darkrose50]

A.) HIPAA
2.) Your beef there is with the feds, not your bosses.

I need to HIPPA verify you in order to share any of your privet information with you.

Not how a plan works in general, or in order to transfer you to another department.

If I say do you have the X plan (where X is our most common plan), then I can go on about how the X plan works without HIPPA verification.

If you call and want to know what phone number I have on file for you, then I need to HIPPA verify you.

[Peelee]

I need to HIPPA verify you in order to share any of your privet information with you.

Not how a plan works in general, or in order to transfer you to another department.

If I say do you have the X plan (where X is our most common plan), then I can go on about how the X plan works without HIPPA verification.

If you call and want to know what phone number I have on file for you, then I need to HIPPA verify you.

Peelee's ex-girlfriend, after Peelee got restraining order and changed phone numbers: Hi, insurance co.? What's the phone number you have on file for me? I'm TOTALLY Peelee, no need to go through all those HIPAA hoops that take ten seconds.

[darkrose50]

Peelee's ex-girlfriend, after Peelee got restraining order and changed phone numbers: Hi, insurance co.? What's the phone number you have on file for me? I'm TOTALLY Peelee, no need to go through all those HIPAA hoops that take ten seconds.

Even if the caller is HIPPA verified giving out information is frowned upon. I can verify information without any dirty looks.

Once some guy forgot his wife's SSN and called in to get it. I checked with a supervisor before giving it out. A new(er) manager was like nope, don't do that.

[Keltest]

Even if HIPPA verified giving out information is frowned on. I can verify information without any dirty looks.

Once some guy forgot his wife's SSN and called in to get it. I checked with a supervisor before giving it out. A new(er) manager was like nope, don't do that.

I'm with the new(er) manager. Don't give out anybody's SSN over the phone. Especially do not do so if you cant verify that they have legitimate reason to need it. Heck, if he couldn't remember her SSN, why didn't he just ask her? Did she not have access to her SSC? There is entirely too much room here for harm done, and its frankly a violation of the trust of your customers to give out their personal information. I hope you didn't actually give him the number.