Firing

One of the other parts of my job that's not so great is firing. At this point I have an employee - fairly new - whose asked for a raise. The problem is she's not good enough for a raise and not bad enough to fire. And I don't think she's going to realize it.

Actually I was ready to fire her a couple of weeks ago. But one of the owners wanted to wait until later. The help she gave was enough to get by. But I keep hearing under the breath comments about how difficult this, that and the other thing is. And while they're not directed at me I can hear them and, more importantly, so can anyone passing by.

But one of the other problems is that I'm scheduling her tasks to finish about noon and she finishes two to three hours later. Yes, that is a way to increase your paycheck for an hourly worker, but that's not the way to keep your job and it's not a way to get the raise for which you've asked the owner and the manager.

And so tomorrow I'm going to ask for two things. One is that I not hear any complaints about how difficult the work is. The second is that she finish by noon. We'll see what happens.

I'm more cynical than hopeful.