Vault: Fire The Struggling Single Mom Or The College Grad?

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2:13So it's not, they're not going to close any stores, but it is bad news if, you know, 7,000, actually the west coast regional office is going to have more job cuts than the Atlanta office, but still 7,000, which is about 4% of their workforce. Times are tough and everybody's, you know, knows someone who was affected, Melissa said earlier this morning that her sister got snagged up in some downsizing. Our intern Benjamin. Oh, yeah, he just lost his game. He lost his cake too. Talking to some police officers the other day and there's explainer about the furlough. Jen and I were having a conversation with somebody who works on media or they're forcing everybody in the company to take one week unpaid leave over the next year. Like next three months, right? Everybody just gets a week off, but unfortunately you didn't get paid for it. So it's affecting everyone and we are going to talk to Molly on the voice disguiser who actually has a tough decision to make because she gets to choose who gets laid off. That's unfair. Hey Molly for her. Hey, how are you?

3:14I'm okay. I have a tough position in my account. Well, it sounds like there's probably a lot of bosses in your same position having to choose who to let go and who not to. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, my situation is that I'm a team leader and I have five people that work under me. Five, do you say five people? Yes. Okay. And last week, I was told that I had to let go of one of my team. Okay. And specifically, basically someone who was hired in the last year. So out of my five, that left me with two options. Well, that is a single mom. Her husband actually just left her. How many? Molly, can you speak up a little bit more like maybe right into the phone receiver? It's hard to hear you. A little bit. Okay. Okay. Sorry about that. That's okay.

4:16And so once again, just single mom, three kids, you know, doing this on her own. The bad news is she's really the weakest link in the team. She is by far the least qualified employee. And how long has she been there? She's been here about eight months. Okay. So she is employee number one. Mom will just call her mom. Oh, that's about to say, whichever, yeah, whichever ones are the least amount of time, but you said about the same. Okay. Yeah. That's kind of a problem. They're really on that level. They're really the both the two options. The other folks in my team have been there significantly longer. So it's kind of like they're safe. Of course. And then the other one, what is what is her situation?

5:17The other one is she's a 23 year old. The great news is she is really the model employee. And she will really be going far in the company. But here's the scoop. She lives with her mom. She actually has a second job as a model. She doesn't really need the money per day as opposed to the single mom who is struggling right now. Well, is she living with her mom? Oh, I'm sorry. I was just wondering if she was living with her mom because her mom's having financial trouble just maybe to help her mom out or to help herself out. I don't know. I don't know. I think she's just doing it to like save money because she can and she wants to buy house. And you know, she can she can save by living with her mom. Wow. So if you took the personal out of it and you were just making a strict business decision, you would let go of the mom. Oh, yeah. Just because she's not as good of an employee.

6:17Yeah, no question. Which way are you leaning? Well, I'm sort of torn right down the middle. You know, in this environment, it just seems it almost seems cruel to let go of the mom. It's just being cool. It's going to put this woman in an incredible hardship. Is there any potential for her performance to improve? I'm just saying from a devil's advocate, like she's had a, she's had a hard year. She's had the hard, probably had the hardest eight months of her life working for you guys. So is there any, do you think there's any room for improvement on her part? Like how much, yeah, how much of the issues over the past year might directly be related to her personal problems? That's a good question. I would say they are pretty, you know, related to the personal problem. But even without them, she was, you know, she wasn't the top employee. She was a, you know, I was going to say solid employee, but literally stuff bar.

7:23I don't see it improving. It could go back to where she was still a weak link, but without some of the issues. Like, you know, she's often leaving early, you know, dealing with personal business on the phone, which I understand because she's sort of dealing with these kids and, and, and, and, and they care. And like, like, I get it. That's what's definitely come up recently, but it wasn't, it wasn't on an exemplary employee before that. You know what I mean? Hey, I could see that it would shift a little bit, but not significantly. Hey, Kimber, welcome to the virtue. Good morning. This, this absolutely is serious me. Okay. I, I am a single mom and I depend on my job. But because I'm a single mom, you're thinking of whether or not you're going to fire me. I don't even think so. It has nothing to do with the job.

8:24I reached this lady with my employees so I could fire her. Well, she's, I think she's trying to be sympathetic because she's a single mom. I think if she was a single mom, she would have fired her already. So would you fire the single mom? Absolutely. If she's not up to performance, I mean, it's unfortunate. And I would feel bad about it. As a, as a my job as a manager, I can't take that into consideration when I'm weighing people off. I have to do what's best for the company. You know, I would certainly give her a reference if it, you know, if it was appropriate. But I'm sorry. It's, you know, your personal life has nothing to do with how well you're performing. And if you're not at the punch in the Southern way, it is. Yeah. That's interesting to hear coming from a single mom. I can bring that to her. Being a mode like women are more emotional and can connect with the family life, other than personal life. So yeah. And I guess she's trying to be sympathetic one because I mean, you're not guaranteed to get another job for a long time. Once she fires either one, you know, they're not going to automatically turn around getting another job.

9:25And then I wonder though you ever, you know, because I, I totally get, I'm just bringing up an argument about bringing the emotional or the actually the personal into the work. But like when you negotiate for your salary, don't you bring the personal in? Doesn't a company feel or at least sometimes will negotiate a higher salary if somebody comes in says, hey, I got two kids. I got to take care of them. I got to do this. And then they end up getting paid more because they have more people to take care of. And I've always heard that when you're negotiating, you leave your personal life out of it. Like that's what I've always heard in negotiating raises, negotiating salaries. That sort of thing. You just leave it out of it. It's about what you can bring to the table and what skillset you have and what leadership qualities you have. And everything you can bring to the job. But if you go in there sort of whining about like, well, my rent's really high or well, I got a mortgage payment to pay or whatever. If I was in it. But I bet men have come in and I say, man, because usually they're better negotiators. And I think that, you know, if they come, if a guy comes in and says he's got a family to support as opposed to single guy, I bet he uses that in his negotiation.

10:27Well, I know of a situation actually where a man approached another man, his male boss and said, hey, I want to show you something because I need a reason. And the guy says, okay, well, tell me, tell me why expecting him to say, well, I'm a 40 hour a week employee. But I regularly work 55 hours a week and I do this and I do this. Instead, he pulled out a spreadsheet of his monthly expenses to show like rent, you know, $650 a month. Groceries. Childcare. Going out a lot. And then he goes, seeing at the end of the month, according to this, I only have an extra $40. And the guy's like, well, move to a cheaper place. You know, like the boss is like, I didn't care about that. Melody, welcome to the virtue. Hey, I just wanted to say that basically the woman you got to talk to about is pretty much someone in the same situation that I'm in right now. Okay. Yeah, my husband left me. I've been working for six months. Just entered the workforce after being out of work for five years. Take care of my two kids. And this woman basically has no other option because you guys fire her right now.

11:30I mean, I had to take bottom of the barrel, barely making anything, just like I could get back into the workforce because I had this huge gap in my resume history. I mean, I understand keeping the personal out of it that you've got to understand the situation in the economy, too. I mean, with paying child care, I am barely making ends meet. I pay $12,000 a year in child care expenses. And that's like the cheapest child care that I could find. So, I mean, you're basically putting somebody back in a situation where they're just not going to get anywhere. And I understand, you know, making it just a business and not personal. But this is really going to affect this woman intake her just totally under the water. I think that's why she's calling us. I mean, I think that a business is not obligated to the employee. The employee is there to serve the business. But it is hard when you identify what you do for a living. That's how you identify yourself as based on your job in this country. So, it is hard, I think, to keep all that separate. But if she was a better employee, like even because I'm sure this manager, and correct me if I'm wrong, what's our manager's name?

12:33Molly, Molly. So, yeah. So, even if this employee, the single mom, let's say she's having a rough year, we all have rough times. And we're not as good employees as we could be. But she's still, I mean, you just said she's subpar regardless of her going through all this, right? But here's the thing about, not Molly, I'm sorry, melody. You have to reverse it. Let's say that you're not the single mom. Let's say that you are, because one of them is going to get fired with no warning. So, now you're not the single mom. Now you're a 23-year-old in your first job. You're putting money in the bank. You're living with mom. Everything's going good. Things are, you work two jobs. You clearly bust your ass at, at least this one. Plus, you still have a second job, you know, doing the modeling stuff. So, you're working your tail off, and then the boss comes and goes, yeah, we gotta let you go. Yeah, but you have a fallback. You know, you don't have really much more overhead than that. You don't have to pay rent. You don't have to worry about anything else. And I thought you'd see what you guys are saying. And I know that the overall consensus is, you know, you need to take the business in the personal and separate them. But I mean, at the end of the day, this would really significantly negatively affect this woman, you know, just livelihood right now.

13:40And being able to keep up with taking care of her children and everything else. I mean, just child care expenses alone will take you under. I guess not. You know, everything else is, it's just a hard economy to go out and be. Let me ask you a question. Stop. How many kids do you have? I have two. Okay, you have two. So if you were at work today, and the boss came to you and said, said to you, and one other person, I gotta let one of you go. And you're a single mom with two kids, and the other person's a single mom with three kids. Do you say to her, okay, it'll be me. I'll go because I'm not. I'd like to hope that I wouldn't be involved in that decision. In terms of saying, okay, well, you two look at each other. Well, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people who work at Home Depot. We didn't want to be in that decision in May season, all these companies that are laying off. So if it was, Well, I was, I wasn't involved in the decision of making another employee, you know, lose their job. I mean, I understand when you're in a managerial position, that's just kind of the job. The Molly, Molly is being an underling. I would hope that wouldn't be my position. Well, the thing is, Molly doesn't have the luxury of telling the single mom you've got to step it up or you're going to be fired.

14:44She has to let somebody, two people on her staff go. And if she's being a good manager, she even said to us that the younger single woman is a great future for their company. So she may be held responsible, say she keeps the single mom. Let the younger one go because, you know, it tugs on her heartstrings. Okay. Well, if the single mom doesn't perform and the company doesn't do as well, that's her responsibility. You know what I'm saying? So people above her are going to come down on her and say, why did you let go the more talented or more productive employee? Hey, Angela, welcome to the show. Hi, this is exactly what's wrong with the way people are treated at work environments now. If you have a kid, you get special treatment no matter what. So basically, single people or people without kids are treated differently and not given as many benefits because, you know, people are the kids that want to get off early for the holidays, get extra days at the holidays or excuse because the kids thick more.

15:44This is exactly the example. It's about a work. When you come to work, your personal life is separate. It's a job. You should not be treated differently because you have kids. So this girl should be treated differently because she chose not to have children yet. It doesn't make any sense. You know, I appreciate leaving personal. I just think that's not realistic. Like I'm not saying this really doesn't have anything to do with Molly's decision because I would actually, I would actually look at the job higher date and even if it's five days different, I would keep on that was there the shortest amount of time. That way it's playing because if you want to do business, then that is. You know what? The newest in is the first to leave, but I do think that when you spend 10, 12 hours at work every day, it is impossible as a human being to spend years at a job, 12 hours a day, and think you can be mechanical sitting in here and it not be emotional. So we're not machines and we're not coming. I mean, I do think that there has to be, I don't know. I think there has to be emerging of both very staunch business, mechanical,

16:47but then your employees just can't be a number. They need to be a person, you know? Hey, Molly, we're going to follow up with you this week and find out what decision you made and how it went. Okay. Good luck. I don't envy that. I have to say, you know, I heard the first person and I was like, okay, okay. Now I know what I have to do. I go to second person like a, oh my god. Everyone's very, very compelling argument. It's really a tough decision. I'm sorry. Sorry, Lance in your lap. Yeah. Yeah, if I'm in your situation, I decide to do it like I'm Friday, then call in sick and make my boss do it. I think that's the only right decision at this point. Good luck to you, Molly. We'll follow up with you shortly, okay? Okay. Hey, the bird show warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder know you can feel frustrated for Lauren even like your efforts are futile.

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18:50And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that. And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite effort. In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic! So, whether you need to hire four, forty, or four hundred people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip to try Zippercruder for free. Don't forget that zippercruder.com slash zip. Finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip. The sun shining, birds are singing and all feels right in the world. Until the season changes and suddenly you lose your motivation to get out of bed. In fact, one in five people experience some form of depression no matter the season or time of year.

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