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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2017
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    4

    Angry Pending Write-Up for "Performance" and Verbal Notification of Impending Demotion

    My question involves labor and employment law for the state of: North Carolina

    I'm a property manager of two sites for the company I work for. Late last week my supervisor called several of my subordinates, stated that he was scheduling a visit to the property but not to tell me. They told me, unprompted.

    Upon hearing this, I waited through the weekend and through Monday and Tuesday to see if my supervisor would tell me the day of or with short notice. He did not. Tuesday night, I wrote my supervisor an email (copying their supervisor and HR) asking that my supervisor please (I actually did say please) never ask my employees to conceal information outside of policy dictated items and elements (i.e. discussion of pay, etc.) because not only inhibited my ability to meet goals from decreased awareness but facilitated expansion of integrity issues among my teams, of which there is a recent discovery (unrelated to this question).

    The following morning, HR calls me and states they've received and read my email and that they were going to follow-up on the issue. About 30 minutes later, my supervisor calls me and tells me that my email "people see me as a threat, they feel threatened" and his boss asked him, "if I(he) have everything in writing." Finally, in that conversation I was informed I'd be written up for performance issues and demoted as soon as they hired another property manager to take over the second property I currently manage.

    When I asked what performance issues I had, I was told that during a corporate visit in early February, the condition of the property did not meet expectation. At that time, I had only been with the company for three weeks and reminded my supervisor that the issues pointed out by corporate during the visit were issues I had asked for assistance with and existed prior to my hiring. His response was that it shouldn't matter, that it was my responsibility to know what issues needed address and to address them even if they happened before I was hired.

    I feel this is a form of retaliation. If I'm justified in this feeling, what can I do to combat and defend against what it seems my supervisor is doing?

    Thanks,

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
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    18,340

    Default Re: Pending Write-Up for "Performance" and Verbal Notification of Impending Demotion

    I feel this is a form of retaliation.
    I don't think so. There was obviously something going on before you wrote the email. Writing that email was an incredibly bad idea. You NEVER tell your bosses what they should or shouldn't do. For one thing, they don't car a whit for your opinion or your desires. For another, it just makes you out to be a trouble maker.

    what can I do to combat and defend against what it seems my supervisor is doing?
    Accept the fact that you are likely to be fired and there won't be anything you can do about it.

    Start gathering whatever documentation you can gather to protect your unemployment benefits claim and start looking for another job.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
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    8,238

    Default Re: Pending Write-Up for "Performance" and Verbal Notification of Impending Demotion

    Quote Quoting ejronin
    View Post

    I feel this is a form of retaliation. If I'm justified in this feeling, what can I do to combat and defend against what it seems my supervisor is doing?

    Thanks,
    I assume that you mean retaliation for sending the e-mail to your boss’ superiors. Maybe it is, but even if that is the case it is not ILLEGAL retaliation. A ot of employees for some reason seem to think that all retaliation by an employer is prohibited by law. The truth is that most retaliation is perfectly legal.

    What an employer generally cannot do is retaliate against an employee for exercising some right the employee has under the law or for making certain complaints to government agencies about the employer. For example, if an employee complains to her employer about sexual harassment and the employer retaliates against her for making that complaint, that is illegal retaliation under the laws that protect employees from illegal discrimination based on sex. For another example, suppose an employee complains to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) about some hazard in the work place. If the employer retaliated against the employee for making that complaint, that is illegal retaliation.

    But there is no law that prohibits your boss from retaliating against you because you went over his head and he got ticked off about it. Now, the situation of your boss scheduling a surprise visit to the property suggests to me that your boss had issues with you even before you sent that e-mail, so his reaction may be at least in part due to the issues that prompted the visit in the first place. But even if the demotion is over the e-mail you sent, there is nothing illegal about that.

    Let me suggest to you that sending an e-mail like the one you did was not a good decision. It would have been far better to discuss this informally with your boss alone before shooting off e-mails, especially ones that copy his boss and HR. Putting stuff in writing instantly escalates things and tends to put people on the defensive; you make that problem even worse when you copy others on that e-mail because you put your boss on the spot. An employee who wants a long career at an employer does not put his/her boss in that kind of situation. Moreover, you may have tossed your subordinates under a bus, too. They weren’t supposed to tell you they were told of the visit. Your boss expected them to obey that instruction. They didn’t, and now they look untrustworthy to your boss (and his boss too, probably). Those employees told you what they knew to help you, and you betrayed that confidence by letting upper management know you knew they’d been told, so I would expect your subordinates might not be feeling really great about this either if they find out about that. In short, that e-mail, as innocent as you probably thought it was, may well have done a lot of damage to your position at the company. You really have to think carefully in this kinds of situations about how others will react to whatever course of action you are considering. Think about not just the relationship you have with your boss, but also all the other relationships impacted by it: your relationship with his boss, your relationship with your subordinates, and the relationship between your subordinates and your superiors, too. It may be that you should not have disclosed to your boss that you'd been told of the visit at all. But if you felt you needed to do it, it should have been in an in-person informal discussion with just the boss.

    If you want to stay with this company and bounce back, I would start by forgetting about going into “combat” mode here. Rather, you need to start repairing the damage to the relationship with your boss. Because right now, it doesn’t appear your boss has a high regard for you, and if that continues you may well end up unemployed.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Massachusetts
    Posts
    24,521

    Default Re: Pending Write-Up for "Performance" and Verbal Notification of Impending Demotion

    Agree 100% with every word of the above. If you want to have a job next week, what you should be doing is not combat and defense, but putting your head down, saying Yes Ma'am and Yes Sir, and start doing the job you were hired to do with or without the assistance you've asked for, and stop sending out e-mails telling your bosses what to do. That was a REALLY bad career move.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
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    1,179

    Default Re: Pending Write-Up for "Performance" and Verbal Notification of Impending Demotion

    Especially since it sounds like you haven't been there long if you had only been there for 3 weeks in early February when the initial corporate visit was.

    Doesn't sound like a good fit and I would be working on your resume. If you oversold your skills in either the interview or on your resume, it could very well be that you weren't meeting immediate expectations at hire if they already had issues with your performance this early in your employment.

    eta: I agree that you also put all your subordinates at risk by how you handled the situation. Again it shows that you might be missing skills needed at the level they hired you at. Someone managing multiple properties should know better (and honestly I work for a property management company in HR)

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2017
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    4

    Default Re: Pending Write-Up for "Performance" and Verbal Notification of Impending Demotion

    Quote Quoting hr for me
    View Post
    Especially since it sounds like you haven't been there long if you had only been there for 3 weeks in early February when the initial corporate visit was.
    eta: I agree that you also put all your subordinates at risk by how you handled the situation. Again it shows that you might be missing skills needed at the level they hired you at. Someone managing multiple properties should know better (and honestly I work for a property management company in HR)
    Not quite. I was hired in the early fall of 2016 and then promoted for my performance to handle two properties by the old in early to mid-January. The old RD was promoted to a VP position in corporate and a new RD was hired. She brought on board a new DM which we didn't. I had only been managing two properties for three weeks, not been with the company for three weeks. I had only been to the second site a few times because I was directed to focus my energy elsewhere (which I did) in preparation for the visit from the Asset Manager / Owner Representative, who, at the walk said she liked the direction I had taken my primary property and to call her directly about what I needed to get the other property to the same standard (and then as soon as she turned around and drove off - the DM said I will NOT ever contact the Asset Manager for any reason because he would not approve the budget).

    A week after the new DM was hired, a sister site manager and the longest tenured manager quit. That manager and I were friends but I never asked why he quit and it was never offered - however the day that manager quit, his staff followed. the DM spent several days interjecting into any conversation a question whether my friend had said anything to me about what happened. I ignored the question at first and after the fourth or fifth time being asked, I simply said anything I was told was off the clock and at the time the person in question was a non-employee. I don't know anything, but it isn't professional to make an attempt to pry information from someone because of the relationship they have with someone else, regardless of your position in a company. I'd like to think that's actually an HR issue, too.

    Additionally, my employees came to me about being told not to say anything, independently. I didn't have to dig or pester them, i didn't even have to ask them for additional details. I wrote my email in their full knowledge. As far as I know, Open Door policy exists for these exact situations - however, I opted to directly communicate to the DM and copied HR and the RD because I felt I have no way of knowing what or if he's said anything to his boss that isn't accurate - moreso given my direction to be at one site more than another but being written up for performance and told being unaware despite the direction??? That doesn't add up. If he's telling people to hide things and then pinging me on not knowing - he's directly created a situation where I can't be aware and then using it as torque to push me out. Regardless of whether he had an issue with me and was just using position to move pieces or not, legal or otherwise, it started after I didn't give him information (that I don't have) about the happenings at another property regarding a former manager, and then I was told I'd be demoted and written up after sending the email which was sent because as a person, don't lie to me.

    I would hope that the general consensus is that regardless of position, a degree of integrity is not an outlandish request. And then, "you shouldn't tell your boss what to do." Ok, generally no, I agree - unless their being dishonest and you know it and you know that it hurts not only you, your employees, and the company - which I believe this does on multiple layers. I escalated it. They do what they do about it and that's it, but I did what I felt was right.


    Perhaps the method by which I went about it was something many discourage, but in my past experience it has always been best to nip integrity issues directly and immediately so that they do not spread. With two employees manipulating their time clock in retaliation to the DM and some other unrelated actions, I have to report and handle that.

    Quote Quoting cbg
    View Post
    Agree 100% with every word of the above. If you want to have a job next week, what you should be doing is not combat and defense, but putting your head down, saying Yes Ma'am and Yes Sir, and start doing the job you were hired to do with or without the assistance you've asked for, and stop sending out e-mails telling your bosses what to do. That was a REALLY bad career move.
    The subordinates of your subordinate is great? I didn't tell him what to do, I asked him to not do it.I'm pretty sure that if I lied to him or his boss, there would be a pretty big frown on someones face with a fancy piece of paper waiting for my signature - but no.... shut up, look down, speak only when spoken to. So, really - it's a no win, but in this I at least sleep comfortably. I can go back to being a forensic auditor.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Massachusetts
    Posts
    24,521

    Default Re: Pending Write-Up for "Performance" and Verbal Notification of Impending Demotion

    You haven't heard a single thing anyone is saying to you.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Posts
    1,142

    Default Re: Pending Write-Up for "Performance" and Verbal Notification of Impending Demotion

    What can they do to you? Anything they want to, up to and including fire you. What can you do about it? File for unemployment insurance. Find another job. Is it illegal retaliation? No Is it retaliation, probably. Most people believe they have a whole lot more rights and protections in labor law than they actually do.

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