He was exceptional all right,  mine usually take longer to show off their
skillset.

On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 1:49 PM Chuck McCown via AF <af@af.afmug.com> wrote:

> I hired a guy to be a production manager over our grout mixing machine
> product.
> He came with a pedigree of doing this at other places.  I didn’t check him
> out, just trusted the resume.
>
> He did have interesting ideas but soon it became evident:
> He liked to sit and talk –alot.
> He did not want to start helping cleaning up the bill of materials
> (primary job responsibility). (did absolutely nothing along those lines)
>
> He wanted us to farm things out to his buddies (like have fastenal kit the
> nuts and bolts, have this other company make your sheet metal for you).
>
> OK, was trying to absorb ideas and suggestions.  After all he was over
> building all the production equipment at the local Purple Mattress factory
> (or so he said).
>
> I expected him to help task employees in his department, but soon when
> asked where they were and what were they doing, he had no idea.
> I gave them a task to modify a mounting fixture by cutting it and
> inserting 10” of steel tubing.  Rather than have them do what I asked, he
> took new steel and made one from scratch.
> So he wasted the steel, his time and he used too thin of material.  Took
> two hours.
>
> I told him you could make the modification in 10 minutes, he argued that
> point.
> So I took a stand, cut it, extended it, using a stopwatch.  3 minutes 43
> seconds....
>
> When I complained about it, he said that my fixtures were too weak and
> they were going to kill someone.  I demoed one with about 10X load not
> failing.
> Then he started complaining about other things, deflecting that he did not
> do what I asked and did something else wasteful and substandard.
> Interspersed with my request was not clear and he didn’t understand what I
> wanted...
>
> He said my repair to a air compressor was unsafe.
> He said he got arc flash in his eye from a distance of about 60 feet, etc
> etc.  Had to buy stuff to build safe welding stalls, etc etc.
>
> So I  made a casual comment to my son (who is taking over) yesterday: “you
> know, when a guy like this leaves a company whether fired or not, they
> sometimes call OSHA just to cause problems”
> Then I actually listened to my own words and agreed with myself.
>
> Late in the day this problem employee said to me: “I guess I am going to
> have to ignore my own exceptionalism to be able work here”.
>
> That bugged me the longer I thought about it.  I fired him via email about
> an hour after he left...  Made it one full week and a couple days the prior
> week.
> He can bless someone else with his exceptionalism.
>
> AITA?
>
>
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