first off, hello everyone. hope all is well with everyone. need to vent a little and then get your opinions

work has been busy lately, way backed up on jobs, so thats good. however, problems have been abounding. the old gas truck engine has just been put back together, the trackhoe has had a fuel leak at the injector pump, and the bobcat has been pouring fluid lol. to top it all off, i had an employee (52 year old guy i hired in june who can operate anything) blew his top. i told him and the other guy to stack some hay in the loft while i go take care of some stuff. he calls me once i make it to college to enroll and starts yelling and cussing about how he isn't my (insert racially explicit term) and that he will be glad to do yard work, but that being a farm hand isn't in his job description.

he fusses about how i'm not considerate or appreciative of him. (although i volunteered my truck for him to use personally to haul lumber for his dad, so he didn't have to haul it in his SUV. plus i gave him a vehicle to drive after he wrecked. plus give him overtime, and let him off on a busy day because his mom was having an alzhiemers bout). so i got pretty ticked and told him he was my employee and as long as i'm writing his checks he best do what i asked, within reason. he said straw for yards is one thing, cause its his job, but that he isn't there to do my personal farm stuff that me and dad are too lazy to do.

the lazy comment really ticked me off, because saturday i worked harder than him on a dirt job from 6am till 10pm (he worked 8-6) and then i went and pressure washed till 2 am. then got up before 8 am on sunday, went to church, then went and picked up the hay i asked him to stack cause it was freshly baled and in field.

anyway, what do you all think i should have done? fired him or left him on trial basis? i drove straight home to find the hay stacked and then set him straight in person, he appologized, and went back to work only to leave early sick, and then call in today due to liver problems (Hepatitis C).

i accepted his appology, and told him to never try to set me straight again. would you guys be offended if you worked for a 19 year old, and they had to go do stuff for college and asked you to stack hay to free up the mower trailer?

 

well...it's gotta be a little weird for him...i know i tend to have a different type/level of respect toward supervisors who are considerably older than me. that being said: he chose to work for you, and the request seems reasonable to me. maybe he had a bad day *shrugs* i believe in second chances though cause i'm nice like that

 

i went to the house intending to fire him. but, i didnt obviously. i just can't stand for an employee to tell me they aren't gonna do something, and refuse to do it. now, if its for health concerns, or physical inability, no problem. but when its just cause they want to be a butt, that ticks me off.

 

I agree. Being in the military I get a lot of people who are supervisors and really aren't any older than I am. And I do think that some of them are pretty dumb sometimes but you still have to do what you are told to within reason.

 

im sorry for him, but his is your explicit ratial term.

his job is to work for you, so he needs to shut the f up and do what he's told or go home.
employees do what they are told. bosses find jobs for him to do. id rather stack hay then push a wheel barrow and dig dirt.
so tell him that his job description is to do work for you. not complain.
unless he has a written job description, he is your certified bitch and he needs to grow some mannors.

 

i tell people when they bitch, " do you like getting paid?" and they will say yes.
so i tell them they best get to steppin.
just stand your ground, and tell him how it is. he has absolutely no excuse.

 

that fella obviously isn't the brightest color in the spectrum. We all should appreciate the job we have at this time. Sure, maybe it's not what we want to be doing, but it's money to feed the family (and hopefully a little for PMS).

I personally don't take to kindly to an employee mouthing off and throwing hissy fits. I actually had this happen earlier this spring with an employee complaining about a job that was well within his job description. He mouthed off and I told him where to get off because "i have close to 100 applications on hand and your a dime a dozen right now."

This all went down in front of our other employees and I told them to clock out if they feel the same way as that guy. Nobody else did and they have been the best crew we've ever had.

IMO Just because your 19 doesn't mean anything other than your more motivated and dedicated than your employees to accel. Our country was build on the shoulders of hard workers. So an employee that moans and growns about his work doesn't fit your companies "values". I say trim the fat and move on. Guarentee you will find a better employee. Don't give a second chance in this situation. You give second chances when the sleep in one day, or if they didn't do the job quite right and need some help learning the right way. But bad attitudes should have no place at work and should not be tollerated at all!

Can him!

 

amen!

amen is to short of a message. laf.

 

i kinda feel where your coming from 2 stroke, im in my mid 20's and lead supervisor and over alot of people much older than me. most of the time the realize that i know my **** and listen to me and i do alot of the work myself to make sure its done right, theres alot of days im there before everyone else and leave several hours after everyone else leaves, but some of the older guys get pissy when i ask them to do some of the stuff i just simply dont want to do. most of the time they just give me dirty looks and take care of what i ask them to do. when they get an attitute somtimes ill brush it off and not realy say alot about it but if they start getting real lippy i in a nice way tell them that the way the economy is right now theres alot of people out of work right now that would love to be here right now making money. if they are realy lippy ill tell em i can have someone here from labor ready in an hour and hire someone else tommorrow if thats how they want it to be. if im asking them to do somthing that is very hard or somthing i wouldent want to do when i ask them to do it ill tell them i know your not going to want to do this its not going to be easy but ill buy everyone lunch today or somthing like that. if it cost me 20-30 bucks to pickup lunch for everyone but keeps everyone happy ill do it to steer off a problem before it happens

 

I cant say I have really ever had the problems you had, but the one thing i know I once worked for a guy on his farm (Big farm around here) well just one time i was told to take charge of a group of guys (The foreman wasn't there and I was the only guy that had worked the job with the foreman) so the older guys got lippy and me cause I was there boss for the day, and I tried to tell them the only reason I was in charge was cause I knew what was going on. Like my mom says 'Alot of older people think they know it all, which makes them as bad as kids' now do I know any better than those guys? HELL NO! They know more than me, I just was there to let them know how we had done stuff. And the reason the older man wanted a crew on this job was cause weather had slowed us down, and we needed to make way. But I am currently working on getting a job and I know that I want to kep it so when he says jump I ask how FN high sir? Next time.... fire his ***.

 

ATTITUDE , is everything to me .. The man has issues ..

Can we say "he's done ?"

 

yes, we can say he's done! lol. the day he left early after our argument he didnt even call me, just left and told the other guy that works for me to tell me he had left. then he did call in on tuesday. today, no show. 7:30 no john. 8:00, no john. 8:02 john calls the other employee and tells him to tell me that he's running late, and couldn't get me on the phone. then i fueled everything up, had dump truck ready to go, and a tractor behind my truck, and trackhoe behind dad's truck. 9:10 everything is fueled, running, and ready to go and still no john. so i left and passed him on the way. i didn't turn around, and still havent heard from him. i will mail him what i owe him.

 

the opposite went for me. i quit my job because in the factory when you pick parts on the machine thats what you do. pick them, inspect, and pack. when you are on the floor you make boxes, re inspect, put on pallets, wrap pallets, monitor the rolls on each end of the machine, monitor the machine, and prep the rolls. well the shop boss wanted me to do everthing at 6 shots every 10 sec! thats barely enough time to scratch my butt! but i sucked it up until i seen the shop boss sitting at his desk eating bananas and the head bosses son was doing donuts on the forklift in the back. so i got behind six parts while making a box and they went onto the floor. the shop boss proceeded to say "look you want to be a lazy fing (racial term) then you can go cause we got guys callin everyday for work. so i finished the box and asked him to get it and he said no. i was trying to be nice so he wouldnt get behind when i left. so i taped up the 53 lb box and threw it at him. i am not going to be treated like that by anyone at any job especially in 115 degree temps while they are bein lazy in the ac. was i right by leaving? i think i was. but 2 stroke you were totally right in what you did. at least what you asked was in reason unlike what i was lol. my rant is done to. thanks

 

jethro, i understand your problem...i have done jobs for people like that. i had one old guy coming behind me and checking everything with a level, and fussing about stuff that didnt matter at all. finally i told him i was his contractor, and needed to be able to work and get stuff done and get his job over, and i couldn't do my job cause he wouldn't let me. so, i threw my contract price out the window and told him i was gonna start charging him by the hour, and i went on the clock at $40/hr for me and my tractor, and my employees at $10/hr. he turned a $2500 job into a $5000 job cause of how he held us up stopping us to "meet" every little bit. i'm like "its dirt, not a government job so lets shut up and get to work!"

 

First off this is probably a dumb idea for me to say anything but I just have to. I know how it feels to be the one in charge and either nobody listens to you or argues with you it pisses me off but I kinda complain all day about stuff I wish I could just shut up but that seems impossible, but I know my job is secure cause I generally know more about the job than the boss about building the grain bin. I would like to say that Im a good employee but I can honestly tell you that I complain way to much about crap all day. Personally Id forget about what he said but Um used to not being listened to. Thank you for listening to my BS too Good Night.