Self-Insufficient

After a buyout, I’ve been temporarily acting as manager of a large group of employees. I’ve separated them into two groups, and each is coming to spend a week training at our headquarters. In preparation, I set up Google documents page with the training schedules, training reference information, maps, lists of contacts, information about the hotel, forms for travel reimbursement, and local information such as taxi services and restaurants. I then email each employee their specific plane tickets and hotel check-in information.

As I am in a supervisory role, this is not my job, but I choose to do this to make my employees’ training easier. Their point of contact for travel is a secretary at headquarters.

Almost immediately, I get the calls from people unwilling to glance through the documents that were provided. Two employees are specifically difficult.

[Employee #1] calls for every question on his trip. He has chosen to rent a car, and expects me to stay on the line with him and give him turn-by-turn directions around the town where the headquarters are located. Each time I tell him to use his company-issued phone for GPS, but he keeps calling. He also emails every morning asking me his daily training schedule. In response, I just keep re-forwarding the initial email with a note that information was already provided.

[Employee #2] just doesn’t read anything. He is scheduled to train with the second group, but having not read the email, doesn’t know that. Instead, he assumes he will be in the first group, books his own flight, and flies out to headquarters. I don’t realize there is an issue until he fails to show up at work on Monday. Then, I get a furious phone call from him complaining that he isn’t booked for a hotel. The secretary at headquarters manages to rearrange things so he can join training that week, but he takes to calling me for any question he might have. Over six days, this amounts to 49 different phone calls. Each has a question that was already answered in the initial email, or is local information he could easily Google.

Afterwards, the company brings on the permanent replacement manager. About a month later, the company decides to make cuts, and I am asked to work with this new manager to decide who will stay. After discussing our experiences, we decide that both [Employee #1] and [Employee #2] show the same lack of attention to detail and zero self-sufficiency in their normal workday that they displayed during the trip.

When they are let go, they have to turn in their phones. I know I made the right choice when I find out I was listed as “Queen Bitch” on [Employee #1]’s contacts!