Well fuck my job right now. My old boss retired a few weeks ago and her son took over. He and me pretty much run the company now and he took a week off leaving me in charge. We're currently moving from our old building to a brand new building that's still unfinished in areas and it requires lots of planning to get things delivered on time so it's busy and hectic at the best of times. Our new building has some new elements like a second floor and to reach this floor, we bought a second hand Reach Truck. It's a kind of forklift where you sit sideways - very handy to have but it requires experience to drive.
Yesterday I caught one of my co-workers driving it without permission. I told him off, told him to get off the truck, he refused and completely loading a pallet, almost damaging it in the process. "I learned how to drive it 10 years ago so I'm a better driver than you!" he tells me. I grumble and tell him "I don't care, don't use it, only I get to drive it".
Today, a truck pulls up outside our new building and he asks where to park. While I'm telling him where to park, the same co-worker comes FLYING next to me driving the reach truck after I had told him not to and SLAMS into the gate which wasn't open enough to allow the 3 meter tall reach truck to pass through. A brand new 5 meter wide gate ... the bottom two panels badly damaged. While I go get my phone to take pictures, the co-worker walks back inside and tells me "The reach truck is stuck". I say "What? How the hell did you manage that?".
AFTER having badly damaged the gate, he had opened the gate further (potentially damaging the gate even more) and had proceeded to drive onto the public road at an angle which got the back wheel of the reach truck stuck in the gutter. A truck like this weighs over 3 tons so impossible to push. I wanted to strangle the idiot. I had to go to the company across from us, ask their help with their own fork lift to push ours back onto our parking lot.
Now I yell at my co-worker that he not only disobeyed my orders, he fucked up TWICE due to his arrogance and left me to clean up his mess. His reaction? To shout and yell at me, threaten me, etc. instead of apologizing for his fuck up.
While I do understand you being pissed off at that guy, you also have partial blame. As someone in charge you should have made yourself clear and you should have told him what the exact consequences are. Most people don't actually give a shit about the place they work at and they rarely know what every fuck up costs. When he first disrespected you, you should have taken direct action. This is what they call a perfect "leermoment".
When you first get any kind of responsibility at work, you begin to realize how much of an asshole most employees are.
Be happy nobody got hurt. If your boss leaves you in charge, he should give you more control over personnel, including letting them know you are in charge. This is an important conversation to have with your boss, because, as you see, if people don't respect your authority, shit happens.
Sack him, operating a vehicle like that needs a license. Which makes it easy, especially since he had an accident. You might get doubly fucked if the insurance company does a proper investigation.
That ten year bit, tells me: he doesn't (they expire every few years) have one.
Also: might I suggest you tell your boss to train people (as in send of to a course). Preferably you want more than one or two being able to operate it. And I know everyone can kind of operate it but not in a safe way. Also, these courses come with how to perform light maintenance on these machines.
A friend of mine was drunk one night and hit a tram with the company car he begged the tram driver not to call the police, let's just exchange insurance data, no need for the cops to show up and smell that he's drunk.
Well sense his shitty company was saving money they didn't extend the car insurance, long story short he was fuuuuuuuu*ked and the tram driver had no choice he had to call the police.
A friend of mine was drunk one night and hit a tram with the company car he begged the tram driver not to call the police, let's just exchange insurance data, no need for the cops to show up and smell that he's drunk.
Well sense his shitty company was saving money they didn't extend the car insurance, long story short he was fuuuuuuuu*ked and the tram driver had no choice he had to call the police.
You're right and you know why? The previous boss (mother of the boss) had a stick-head-in-the-sand policy which really made everyone just do whatever they felt like doing because she wasn't going to do anything about it. She had a fear of conflict so her solution was to just complain behind people's back and thinking that would solve things
BUT, the part I didn't add to my post: after he yelled at me, I said "you're forgetting we have a new boss now and he's not as lenient and you can bet he'll want to hear why there's a giant dent into the gate and then i'll tell him how, how you ignored my commands, how you proceeded to make it worse and how you then couldn't even take criticism but instead would attack me." I saw his face switch to fear as I walked away.
And yeah, what he did was grounds for immediate termination due to a grave mistake: operating heavy machinery without a license despite orders not to AND causing not one but TWO accidents ...
I'm responsible for anything that happens because that's what being in charge means. If someone fucks me over, am I to just go "sure, let me take the blame"? I learned the hard way you need to be an asshole sometimes to make for a good boss or person in charge and you can be nice to them and they'll fuck you over a dozen times, or you can be hard on them and they won't try it twice.
This has to be a legitimate cause for termination.
What an absolute piece of shit human, that really has to suck. Good luck dealing with all of this shit..
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