Mike and I had an employee who worked in the daycare that we had considered letting go for a while and finally had the opportunity due to plenty of reasons to, and getting a new employee to cover all of her shifts. The day to do it was this last Monday. Mike pulled her aside (but not in his office, because she would have cornered him and given him a long ugly sob story as to why she should stay) and told her that it was her last day. Very loudly she said, "WHY?!!" What started out to be a somewhat private conversation was now very public. Mike started to explain the reason(s) why and she got louder and angrier. Finally, he told her to get her stuff and get out of our gym. She was no longer allowed (nor anyone in her family) to even step foot in our gyms ever again. It was that awful. She then decided to go to our other gym in Marysville and make a bit of a scene with her mother, sobbing and freaking out, and saying that we didn't even give her a reason. Riiiiight. Apparently, her mother said, "We need to call the police! They have no right to fire you! They can't do that!" What? Fortunately for employers and unfortunately for employees, we can fire you because we hate your haircut or because you have bad breath. That's Washington. But we felt that stealing was a good enough reason. Calling the police...really? Maybe we should.
Well, she has a best friend who also works in the daycare. I was told to be ready for her to quit if we let the other go. I had a back up girl on the back burner just in case. Well, Tuesday the best friend didn't show up for work and within 15 minutes I had all of her shifts covered and everyone is happy with their new schedules. We all win! Tuesday was also payday. Since I didn't want to deal with either of those girls' bullshit, I decided to mail them their checks. I informed a couple of the other employees that kept in contact with them of this. No big deal, right? Apparently, it was. So, that best friend of the bad employee...she called me and left me two nasty messages on my phone. "You had better have my check waiting for me in 2 hours or I'm calling the POLICE! I know my rights! I'm calling the POLICE! You will get in so much trouble with L&I. I'll file a complaint with the POLICE! You're breaking so many laws with our breaks! It's illegal and I'm turning you in! If I don't get my check in two hours, you'll be hearing from my attorney!" Oh...my...God. What a freakin' weirdo. This of course, made me laugh as well as piss me off. Did I fire her? Oh, no I didn't. She quit. Without a word, I might add.
I picked up my phone and called her right back. "Wow, it's pretty brave of you isn't it to leave such ugly messages for me on my voicemail. Let's see how brave you really are. Why don't you come on over here and say all those lovely things to my face. In fact, I'll get Mike over here so you can be sure to tell us both to our faces how you're going to call the POLICE and turn us in to L&I." Her response was, "Oh, I will. I'll come over there and you better have my check ready for me." "Well I won't because I already put it in the mail, so why don't you sit by your mailbox and wait patiently for the mailman to deliver it to you." "Oh, I will. And you better believe that I will also file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau." "Please do. Have fun with that and feel free to call them a hundred times, because we don't give a shit. Have a nice day." It makes me laugh again as I type this. She has an attorney? With the pay we gave her? She must be REALLY good at saving her money. While this was a bit of a thorn in my side yesterday, it was also a WONDERFUL blessing in disguise. I don't like being questioned about decisions I make and I don't like people who just want to complain, rather than giving friendly suggestions. As soon as the whining and complaining begins, my fingers are stuck in my ears.
Finally, today I had to take care of three days worth of deposits for both gyms. That's 6 deposits. That's 6 full days of accounting summaries that I had to go through and make sure was perfect (which none were). That's 6 different times that different people put the deposits together in different ways. This experience made me want to cry. For real. I have never been this frustrated at a job. Our assistant manager took her maternity leave on Tuesday, and I have to do her job as well as mine. That is A LOT of work and A LOT of responsibility. It was a bit overwhelming. However, the good side to it was that we learned that we either need to retrain some people or send them on their merry way. We hope we can simply do some retraining because we really do like our employees. The ones we have now.
Whew! That's it for now. I'm so ready to take on tomorrow with a positive and optimistic outlook!
Oh, Gold's Gym...
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