Quit or Termed

Marty T Hawkins back with you and another episode of Warehouse and Operations as a Career.  Is everyone having a fabulous week so far? Today let’s talk about a few of the things that we as employees sometimes must deal with, many times things we possibly bring on ourselves.  Throughout my travels each week I hear about lost jobs, NCNS, layoffs, and a lot of reasons why individuals have loss those jobs.  This isn’t probably something we like talking about, but I guess it is a part of the job cycle or career cycle so let’s look at it for a bit. 

Ok, being a manager for over 30 years I’ve had the fortune of meeting and hiring many an associate, mainly in the realm of operations only to see them move on to something else voluntarily and non-voluntarily.  Some found better positions or greener pastures and moved on and some through terminations.  I like to believe I’ve never actually ended someone’s job, well I guess I’d have to say I have ended 3, all 3 we’re due to a position actually being done away with due to a loss of cases, through a customer loss or once a particular product line, the selectors job was to pull that one line of product only.  In all 3 cases I helped them seek gainful employment at another company or made the effort and offered anyway. 

A V.P. of mine, kind of a mentor to me for several years, once told me, that he’d never terminated an associate, that they’d always terminated themselves.  He honestly looked at it as the rules, or processes and procedures weren’t being followed and as the associate knew that, that they had terminated themselves.  I guess that’s one way to look at it but I subscribe to the belief that I’ve failed in some way or another every time I’ve lost an employee.  I always wonder if they we’re given the Orientation properly and received the welcoming, they needed, had they received the training they needed, had management supported them in every way?  In previous episodes I spoke to the Corrective Action Process, what I prefer to call the coaching process and presented the question to young managers as “Did we give them every chance to succeed, did we discuss any job-related deficiencies’ we were experiencing with their performance & offer solutions to help them succeed?  Personally, I think the Orientation of a new associate is the one thing we as managers have to get right.  It’s where we have a chance to express how important they are to the organization, learn a little about them and share the expectations, rules, processes or procedures of the company with them.  It’s intimating walking into a new job & managers need to make us feel welcome and allow us to leave that first day wanting to come back early for the second one, right? 

Ok, I’ll step down off the soap box now you can see how easily I get sidetracked.  Let’s look at a few of the reasons I’m given by associates and managers each week from a few different industries I deal with, all types of positions and regions as to why a term form ends up being turned into our HR departments. 

Let’s start with the simplest, this is one I’ve never been able to get my arms around, the infamous NCNS.  I mean we as new hires have filled out the application, went through all the hoops to get the job, the interviews, background checks, maybe drug screens, we’ve filled out all the onboarding paperwork, had the job descriptions explained to us, maybe even met our coworkers and bosses and then don’t show up for our first day on the job, don’t call anyone, just kind of disappear?  Don’t get me wrong, things certainly come up sometimes and I don’t want you to think I’m being or going negative today at all but this one I’ve never figured out.  If we’ve decided the position just isn’t for us, and it’s going to happen sometimes, maybe something comes up in the job description that we figure woah, this isn’t going to be for me. But why don’t we just speak up right there and then?  I guess what I hope we think about is if we’re dealing with a staffing or sourcing company we’ve probably just burnt a bridge and while looking for permanent employment we should never burn any bridges! 

And then there’s the NCNS when we’re employed.  I hear almost weekly from an associate that says yeah, I got mad, or my boss didn’t treat me right so I decided not to go in.  I just don’t see how that’s fixed or hurt anyone, I don’t think we’ve won anything by quitting like that have we?  If someone’s made us mad or our boss did us wrong, wouldn’t it have been better to communicate that to someone, maybe their boss or our HR departments?  There’s not going to be a check with our name on it next week!  Again, I know things happen from time to time, but it’s rare I hear a valid reason from anyone concerning a NCNS.  A phone call is just too easy to make.  If we’re taking off no matter what our boss says, go ahead and do it, but call.  Then on our next interview we can say we’d asked off, had a valid reason but my boss fired me for missing.  It’ll go over better than them finding out about us NCNSing.  The NCNS we’d have to agree we’ve actually quit or terminated ourselves, right? 

I hear this one a lot, every week, Excessive Absentees and missing too much work.  Our employers are going to need a certain headcount to hit the needed productivity numbers everyday.  The hours and shifts were explained to us when we applied for the job and even if the hours were changed later, we were probably told about it and I’d assume we accepted them.  We stayed with the company so why are we surprised when our supervisor counsels us 1, 2 or 3 times and then lets us go?  Typically, we’re not terminated on our first or second absence in 90 days.  Again, I’m not being negative about us quitting our jobs, and I think we all would agree we’ve quit, we just took the long road to doing it, we knew it was coming, I think. 

Then there’s insubordination, when I hear this one I come close to understanding sometimes.  We here at WAOC have talked a few times now about handling ourselves in a professional manner, and boy that’s very difficult at times isn’t it?  If we assume we’re liking our job it’s important to remember we have other recourses than saying no to management or something like “that’s not my job”.  As long as the request is ethical and legal we need to do it.  Many times, we won’t know the reason or the end result but hey, we’re being paid and it’s just a part of it.  I was a high rise selector, I’d only been on the job for about 3 months and a supervisor hurriedly came to the back and asked me to go clean the men’s room real quick and disappeared.  I was still a new employee, had 2 kids at home that was going to want donuts when I got home that morning. Yep I was pretty upset but I went ahead and cleaned it up and wiped it down.  I hadn’t been finished but for like 5 minutes and another sup came by with an auditor from one of our larger accounts and sure enough they walked right on in to the men's room to check it out.  I ended up working for that company for 26 more years.  As employees we have other resources when we get upset, we have management members and our HR departments we can see.  Another time, a couple of years later I had a young supervisor come back to high rise and tell me I needed to pull pallets while I was up in the air instead of bringing them down to the ground first.  I respectfully told him I was uncomfortable working around our Safety protocol and suggested we go check with the manager first.  He told me to go ahead and do it like I wanted to but get it done.  We became good friends after that, I’d actually helped him do what was right in that instance.  We need our jobs; there’s nothing to be gained by throwing a fit on the docks.  Let’s try and do as request and voice our opinions to another member of management.  By being insubordinate we’re really just quitting again, we’re probably fully aware of the consequences? 

And then there’s horseplay, this ones tough.  Our shifts are sometimes long, its hard to maintain our focus for 10 hours, keep our heads down and focus on our jobs isn’t it?  You know, there’s Safety concerns, quality concerns and we probably know the rules.  I hate hearing about a young employee, meaning a new employee, losing his or her job for horseplay.  I just always trust us more tenured associates will kind of mentor or advise the new boots to do the right thing.  Once again, I hope the consequences to horseplay has been explained to us.  With horseplay there may not be any corrective actions applied to us, It’ll depend on what we were doing I’d think.  Anyway, we probably knew better, why do we get upset when we’re dismissed, maybe its just a human nature thing. 

Several weeks ago I heard about an order selector that’d done something wrong, or at least his supervisor thought he had.  Anyway the selector ended up getting in the sups face and threatening to hit him.  In today’s world that’s a threat, could even be a terroristic threat since it happened at work.  The associate was walked off the property and honestly didn’t understand how the authorities could have been called.  He got hot, calmed down and was now out of a job.  That’s a good example how not handling ourselves in a professional manner can really cost us dearly. 

Here at WAOC we spend a lot of time talking about how to get our jobs, planning for our advancement and reaching our goals but keeping those positions are just as important.  Terminations are a part of the work experiences, and being such we should recognize our responsibilities in keeping those jobs.  It’s hard, we’re humans and we all have reactions but I think we’d all agree it’s easier to be in charge of ourselves and in many instances, prevent terminations. 

Again, I hope I didn’t come across as negative today, I’d like to think I presented us with something to think about and consider. If you’d like to add to our list of terminations or share an example or situation with our group please shoot an email to [e-mail] we’d love hearing from you!  Check out our Facebook and Twitter feeds too, @whseandops & we’d appreciate a Like and Follow should you find any interest there.  If you operate any type of powered Industrial Equipment check out the Facebook group Warehouse Equipment Operators Community group, we’re usually hanging around there through the week!  Until next week – Be Safe and lets all take care of our Families and our Positions!