I was forced to manage someone out years ago. It was awful. My bosses didn't like this one guy, and honestly, he wasn't the best employee, but just they told me to stop giving work to him. Nothing. No work at all. He would come to me and ask what he was supposed to be working on. I had to just say that I'd get him something soon. I had to tell others not to give him any work or go to him for anything. He sat there at his desk for months, doing absolutely nothing. Finally, he asked about his upcoming review, and I had to tell him that he was getting PIP'ed because he hadn't accomplished anything. He finally got the message and resigned.
That whole situation made me feel like shit. It still does. I never wanted to be a part of management after that.
The key phrase is they didn't like him. A lot of times it's personal rather than work related.
Folks, this is the purpose of performance reviews. It doesn't have much to do with your work or ability to do work. It's a bunch of paperwork to justify how management feels about everybody on a personal, not professional level.
Exactly ^^^ Here's how it went down in my case; it's so bad. ... The dude played in a rock band in his free time. He had a show up in LA (we're in San Diego) on a "school night". The next day, Wednesday morning, he showed up to an 8am meeting looking like shit. He said that he got zero sleep the previous night. He played the show up in LA, packed up his gear (he was a drummer), then drove back to San Diego, got home around 6am, unpacked and drove straight to the office.
No big deal, the meeting was boring, as usual, until a director from another group jokingly commented to our director, my boss, something like, "Gosh, your staff looks like hell. You must be working them to death." It was just a light-hearted, lame joke; got a chuckle in the room. After the meeting, I was pulled into my boss' office where he told me he was sooo embarrassed by the other director's comment. He was really mad. My boss was new to being a director and he felt as the other director was throwing shade on him, implying he doesn't know how to manage a staff, therefore he doesn't deserve to be a director. And everyone in the meeting was laughing, so they all must've agreed. So my boss told me to get rid of the rock-band guy. I rebutted, saying the fact that rock-band guy stayed up all night, and drove straight to work, showed that he was dedicated, and that he (my boss) was such a great director, cultivating a culture of hard work and dedication. My boss wasn't buying, and told me exactly how to manage him out: stop giving him work.
So yeah, it had absolutely nothing to do with his work. It was all because some dude got butt-hurt by a lame comment in a meeting.
I think the takeaways here are that: A lighthearted joke from a director is often power-talk that implies more, and that looking like shit in the office is a big no-no (some phrases that come to mind are "perception is reality" and "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down").
> A lighthearted joke from a director is often power-talk that implies more
> looking like shit in the office is a big no-no
Both of these can be true, for better or worse, but the director is probably also over-reacting. It doesn't seem appropriate to fire somebody over that. Such a director probably has an unhealthy focus on image.
That whole situation made me feel like shit. It still does. I never wanted to be a part of management after that.