Boss Life

by Paul Downs

  —

  TWO DAYS LATER, mid-morning. I’m working on a proposal when Bob Foote, my shipping manager, comes through the door. “Do you have a minute?” He has that look on his face that I recognize from years of interruptions. Something is wrong and I have to deal with it. He continues, “There’s a thing—Sean and I want to talk to you, if you have time. If it’s OK. If you’re not busy. I don’t know. Maybe after lunch.”

  “What’s the issue?” I ask. He doesn’t respond. I lead him to my private office and shut the door. “OK, what’s up?”

  He hesitates. “I don’t want to be a jerk, or anything.” Another pause. “Sean and I have been keeping track, and we think that Eduardo is cheating on his time sheets. He’s turning in hours when he’s not here.” Shit. I didn’t need this at all. I have things to do. But now I have to fire Eduardo.

  Firing a worker is the most unpleasant thing I have to do as a boss. Fortunately, I haven’t had to do it often. The first time was shortly after I opened my doors. I (stupidly) hired a temporary worker even though I knew she was a junkie. She showed up and did some work. While my back was turned, she stole a check out of my checkbook, forged my signature, and then used it to buy cigarettes at the corner store. The grocer knew her well so he called me to make sure it was OK. Of course it wasn’t, so I told her not to come back. But the agony of that confrontation—I was twenty-four years old, had no idea what to say, and had no idea how she would react. Fortunately for me, she wasn’t surprised, she didn’t make a fuss, and she left. (What was she thinking, using the check on the same block she stole it? Junkie logic.)

  It was eight years before I had to do it again, but the second time was even worse. This was a full-time employee, Nate Morgan, who had been with me for four years. His work wasn’t great and his attendance was spotty, but I liked him and kept finding excuses for his failures. Finally, he didn’t show up one day, even though I had emphasized that he was needed for a critical delivery. No phone call, no nothing. When he rolled in the following day, I was furious and told him it was over. He was astonished—apparently all the little talks I had given him about what was expected had made no impression. Or he thought that I would never go through with it. He begged me for another chance, tears rolling down his cheeks. But my other workers were sick of his failures and one guy told me that if I didn’t fire Nate, he would quit.

  So I steeled myself and fired him. I knew that he would have a hard time getting another job, but I did it anyway. After he left, I broke down myself. Depriving someone of employment is no joke. But the mood of the other employees improved immediately. And that taught me a valuable lesson: bad employees make good employees feel bad. It makes them wonder why they should follow the rules. If the boss doesn’t care, why bother? My workers are craftsmen and have their own standards for behavior: show up, work hard, and try their best to make a good product. Seeing a coworker get away with sloppy work and laziness is a slap in the face. They hate it.

  For all the bad advice that The Partner gave me, he was correct about firing people. Shortly after another termination, he told me, “It’s not your fault. They do it to themselves. When you need to fire someone, just do it.” This worker was ruining projects with errors and hiding the faulty work under his bench. Which might not have led to immediate termination, but he was also falsifying his time sheets. The problems didn’t come to our attention for a number of months, by which time we had written an employee manual, at The Partner’s insistence, that listed acts that would lead to instant termination. These included showing up under the influence of alcohol or drugs and falsifying time sheets. Every employee is given two copies: one they keep, another they sign to indicate that they have read and understood the provisions. My expectations are crystal clear.

  Which brings me back to Eduardo. I know what I have to do. But it’s still an effort to switch gears, to go into Crusty Boss Mode, to become the guy who will pull the trigger.

  Eduardo has worked for me for seven years. When we needed a floor sweeper to empty dust bags and keep the shop clean, The Partner asked the groundskeeper at his country club, an acquaintance, if he knew of anyone who was looking for work. What followed was surreal. The groundskeeper showed up on the following Monday with six guys, ranging in age from about twenty to forty or more. “Take your pick,” he said. The Partner turned to the youngest—Eduardo. “Do you speak English?” Eduardo said yes, although we would later learn he could barely speak the language at all. “This one,” said The Partner, and that was that. I felt bad for the others, but The Partner waxed philosophic. “They were all OK, or the groundskeeper wouldn’t have brought them. But the young one will be the cheapest.”

  Eduardo was a good worker. Eventually we decided to see if he could do some woodworking. With training, he was OK at the simpler assembly tasks. He was reliable, worked hard, and followed directions.

  Being an immigrant with brown skin caused him difficulties outside the shop. On January 21, Eduardo did not show up. As our company policy requires, he left a message saying that he was unexpectedly held up in New York and would be back in two days. When he came back, I asked him what had happened. He had been driving his cousin’s car, and for reasons he couldn’t or wouldn’t explain, had been pulled over by the police. They looked inside the car and saw a plastic toy pistol that one of the cousin’s kids had left on the backseat. Apparently this is a felony in New York. So Eduardo was arrested, released on bond the next day, and given a court date about a month from then. He showed me the court documents, which confirmed that the problem was the toy gun. I could picture what would happen next—defenseless Eduardo, who barely speaks English, becomes a pawn of the New York criminal industrial complex. I called a friend of mine, a criminal defense attorney in Brooklyn, and asked for help. When Eduardo showed up in court with competent counsel, all charges were dropped. It cost me a thousand dollars to set this up.

  But now Eduardo has broken my rules, and in a way that I can’t ignore. I have to fire him. First, I call Bob and Sean into our small conference room. They’re nervous, as you might imagine. I open by telling them that I’m going to be firing Eduardo within the next hour and thank them for having the courage to come forward with this. That it is a testament to their value as employees and their faith in the company that they wouldn’t tolerate theft. That it is entirely proper to act in the interests of the company, as the company is the foundation of all our prosperity. And that the problem is not their doing, but Eduardo’s. And I ask them to repeat what Bob had told me earlier, with details.

  Their story is detailed and believable. They show me their written notes and the discrepancies with the reported hours. I check my records, and they confirm the story. And then something curious comes out: it turns out that the week before, they took the problem to Steve Maturin, the shop manager, and showed him the same evidence. Steve Maturin heard them out—and then did nothing. Fantastic. Now I should fire Steve, too. Can I continue to employ someone who would ignore a case of theft from the company?

  But I need to sort out Eduardo first. I write a description of the problem, a summary of the dates involved, and a quotation from the company handbook referring to the policy violation, and the consequence (immediate termination). The document concludes, “The undersigned, Eduardo Lopez, admits that these events occurred and understands the consequences of his actions,” with a signature line and a date. I have Emma review it and tell her that she will be sitting in on the firing as a witness. And it will be recorded on video. This helps me keep up my resolve and provides evidence in case Eduardo files for unemployment compensation. If he is fired for stealing, he is ineligible, but if it’s lack of work, or even incompetence, I have to pay fifty-two weeks of benefits. It’s also incentive for everyone to behave civilly.

  I set up the camera and tell Emma to find Eduardo. When he comes in, he sees the chairs and the camera. He knows that this is trouble. I motion him to the chair across from me, and Em
ma sits down next to him. I begin. “Eduardo, I’d like to record this meeting. Do I have your permission?” He agrees, barely audible. “It has come to my attention that you have turned in time sheets for hours that you were not in the shop. This was witnessed on April seventeenth, April nineteenth, and April twenty-fourth, and reported to have happened on other occasions. This is a violation of company policy. Here is the handbook with your signature on the cover. You acknowledged that you read it and understand the policy. Here is the page with the causes for immediate termination. Look at number three: falsifying time sheets. Your employment here is now ended for violating this policy. I’m sorry, but you have to go now.” His face has turned bright red. He has tears in his eyes. “Eduardo, do you have anything to say?”

  After a long pause, he asks me, “Can I pay you back? Can I pay a little every week? I will never do this again.” It’s tempting—my resolve weakened when I saw his tears. But then what? What about Bob and Sean? Will they think that stealing from the boss is acceptable, at least the first time you try it?

  “I can’t have you here anymore, Eduardo. I can’t have the others see you working here after this. This is the choice you made. If you needed money, you could have asked me. I’ve helped you before. You made a different choice. You did this repeatedly. It’s not something I can tolerate. Now you have to go. Please sign this acknowledgment that you understand what happened. And if you file for unemployment I will contest it. But if you want to use me as a reference, I will never mention this. I will tell them that you are a good worker and that you left because of the long commute. I want you to have another chance, and I’ll help you with that. But you can’t work here anymore.”

  Neither of us have any more to say. He signs the paper and walks out. I turn off the camera. Exhale. “Well, that sucked.” Emma looks a little upset but shrugs and says, “He had to go. You had to do it.”

  Now I have to deal with Steve Maturin. This is a more complicated problem. Since he ignored theft, I should fire him. But he’s in charge of the shop, so removing him will cause a lot of disruption. I will also have lost a third of my production capacity—two out of six workers—in one day.

  Steve Maturin is like a machine. He arrives exactly at five-thirty a.m. every morning and works steadily and efficiently all day. His completed projects are immaculate. He never wastes time with small talk. He won’t even speak unless spoken to. He eats lunch at his bench precisely at noon and leaves at exactly two-thirty p.m. During his nine hours, he will complete more work than anyone else in the shop. My records show that he has consistently been the fastest, highest-quality worker I have had. I’ve never hired a new person who didn’t tell me that Steve is the best cabinetmaker they have ever seen.

  Steve has been around forever. I hired him in the fall of 1993 and made him the shop floor manager a few years later. At that time, I had three guys building furniture and I did everything else: sales, design, engineering, administration, finishing, delivery, and overseeing the shop floor. I needed to push some of that load onto someone else, so I put Steve in charge of the shop. I chose him because he was my best craftsman. Shouldn’t that person be in charge? After promoting him, I heard from the other workers that he was very fair, didn’t play political games, had no favorites. They accepted him as a leader.

  Nineteen years later, he’s still building stuff and running the shop. He has performed this job even as we got much larger, moved twice, switched our products from furniture to conference tables, downsized after the recession, and rebuilt the business. He has never complained or asked for help, even during the worst crisis. His management responsibilities—reviewing drawings with Andy Stahl, assigning the jobs to different workers, monitoring work in progress—seem to get done in very little time.

  We rarely speak. He seems to avoid interactions with me and I don’t stop by his bench unless I have something specific to tell him. When that happens, he’ll listen to whatever I say without comment and answer direct questions with as few words as possible. I would go so far as to say that Steve dislikes me, except I can’t think of a reason why he should. I’ve always gone out of my way to praise his work to the others, and he is the highest-paid guy in the shop. Over the years, I have seen him laugh and joke with some of the other guys. He’s never even cracked a smile with me. Frankly, his silence intimidates me. I know that I should have a better relationship with him, but I can’t figure out how to get past his defenses.

  Aside from a frosty relationship with the boss, Steve has one other weakness: he is not innovative. I can’t rely on him to look at operations, identify possible improvements, and implement them. I don’t know whether he doesn’t care enough or isn’t capable of it. He doesn’t seem to spend any time making sure that the other workers do things the best way. I often see workers making choices on how to build a project that will get them into trouble, and I wonder why Steve doesn’t set them onto the right path. He clearly doesn’t like to interact with anyone beyond the bare minimum to divide the work up. So the shop is stuck. We don’t identify best practices, don’t make sure that everyone does things the same way. I’m too busy trying to deal with customers and administration to take over shop management myself. I’m mystified. Does he already have too much work to do? Does he have plans that he can’t implement for some reason? I have no idea.

  I think that he’s unhappy that the shop has shifted from making a range of furniture items to just conference tables. I sympathize to a certain extent, but we can’t make any money doing this and that. It’s not efficient, in either marketing or production. If all my people were willing to work for ten dollars an hour, maybe we could survive. When everyone wants a high wage, and they all need to make mortgage and car payments, we have to face reality. Conference tables work as a business. Fine furniture does not. I’ve never heard him comment on whether he likes making conference tables but his demeanor speaks for itself. Always grim. The jokes and smiles have disappeared. He arrives, does his job, and then goes home.

  The firing of Eduardo brings his failings into sharp focus, but I have to take some responsibility as well. I have done a very poor job of managing Steve. His resistance to any interaction with me has kept me away from him, but I have not put any effort into teaching him what I think a manager should do, nor made much comment on his style of running the shop. I have been lazy, or intimidated, or maybe overwhelmed by my other duties. And now I face the consequences.

  First thing: I decide that this is not going to be Steve’s last day. But I still need to talk to him. I send Emma out to find him, and he arrives a few minutes later. He sits and looks at me, silent.

  “I just fired Eduardo.” No reaction. “He was falsifying his time sheets.” Silence. “Apparently this was brought to your attention? And you did nothing?”

  He shrugs and replies, “I was busy.” Pause. “Getting work done.”

  Now I’m getting angry. “Do you realize that in any other company, you would be fired for this? You are in charge out there and you ignored an incident of theft? I should fire you right now.” I wait for a few seconds, but he just stares at me. Unbelievable, but, as usual, I fill in the silence.

  “I’m not going to fire you today. I’d love to, but I have to take some responsibility for your weakness as a manager. I never told you what to do when something like this happens. I didn’t think I would need to tell you, but apparently I do, so it’s on me. So here’s what you do: you have a problem you don’t want to deal with, just bring it to me. It’s not so hard. I have to be the one to fire someone anyway. From now on, when you have an issue, I want to hear about it. You got that?”

  His only reply: “Yes.” Then he sits like a stone.

  “OK, we’re done here,” I tell him. He stands, turns, and heads back to his bench without a backward glance.

  My thought as he walks away: Why didn’t I fire him? Why not do it and deal with the consequences? Do I need him that much? Maybe. Probably.
I don’t actually know. What happens if he’s gone? How does that affect our deliveries? Who will replace him? Can I run the shop myself? Can one of the other guys step in? Or am I just being weak? Why do I always let this guy get away with disrespect? Why didn’t I give him a better speech? You did the right thing—don’t act out of anger. You’re a fool—taking the blame for his failures.

  I’m furious with myself for losing control of the situation, for being such a coward, furious with Steve for his attitude, with Eduardo for being so stupid and causing all this mess. And it’s not even noon. For the rest of the day I can’t unsee the look on Eduardo’s face when he realized he’d been caught. What would I do if it were me? How would I explain it to my family? Would I even go home? I’ve never been fired. Could I wake up tomorrow and start looking for a job? Was I too harsh? What else could I do? My pity is accompanied by a less compassionate line of reasoning. Eduardo has done me a favor. He adjusted my workforce to fit a falling sales scenario. Our biweekly payroll will drop about fifteen hundred dollars, but over the course of the year it will yield about twenty-five thousand in savings.

  The next morning, I steel myself and ask Steve who will be building bases. I don’t mention Eduardo. I just want to put yesterday’s mess behind me. Steve tells me that he’s going to have Will Krieger do it. That’s a good decision. Will is very fast, and his bench is right next to Eduardo’s, so he’ll be able to jump right into the work. Since I agree with the choice, I say nothing more. Steve has already turned back to the project he’s working on. It’s like nothing happened.

  —

  AT THE MEETING on Monday, I go over the numbers, then I pause. I need to say a few words about Eduardo. I’ve been dreading this moment all weekend. Here goes nothing: “Some of you may have noticed that Eduardo hasn’t been in for a few days, and you might have heard what happened. Eduardo was fired for falsifying his time sheets. Honestly, I didn’t expect this from him. I don’t know why he did it. I don’t care why he did it. When I find out that someone is stealing from me, I will fire that person on the spot.” I look at everyone—everyone’s paying attention, even Steve. “Falsifying your time sheet is stealing from me, and stealing from all of us. If we’re spending money on payroll and not getting work done in return, it weakens the company. It makes it harder for me to pay the rest of you, and to pay my bills. Not a good thing. I’d like to thank the guys who brought this to my attention. You did the right thing. I want this company to provide for all of us, and to do that, we can’t have thieves here.” I pause, trying to figure out how to wrap this up. “I don’t think, with this crew of guys, that we will have this problem again. I hope not. If we do, I’ll fire that person, too.” Speaking off the cuff is not going well. I’m not finding a way to turn this into an inspirational address. “Anyway, we all have work to do. That’s the meeting.” It’s the worst pep talk I’ve ever given. I turn and walk away. One of my special powers as boss: when I stop talking and leave, the meeting is always over. And the flip side is that when I go, I can’t see what I’m walking away from. I’ll never know what my people really think about Eduardo. I hope that I did the right thing.