The fun of HR

HRCathy

I need to vent. I am still banging my head against the wall after this problem. One of my employees came into my office to complain about another employee. This employee speaks only Polish and told me that another employee, who speaks only Romanian, was making faces at her and calling her names. Neither of these employees speak any English at all. The Romanian employee came into my office immediately after and proclaimed her innocense. It turns out that the Romanian employee piled boxes up by her work space so she would not be able to see the Polish employee. Another employee, while cleaning, removed the boxes and began an international incident. Now, I have to investigate this nonsense. The Romanian employee is 67 years old, and her supervisor told me that she has a problem with Polish people. Of course, there is no documentation of problems in the past, I only now have hearsay that she has done similar things in the past with other Polish employees. These are grown women giving me these headaches!! Why can't we all just get along?? x:'(

psrcello

I wish it were that simple! We have an elderly employee with a pack rat complex who rummages through the garbage cans in the canteen and outside the building to find aluminum cans she can take in to recycle.

First I get complaints from the other employees who find her "dumpster diving" to be totally gross. Now, she's accusing two other older female employees of stealing her cans that she's gone around and collected! The cat fights just never seem to run out of claws!

HRCathy

Maybe I should sent you the empty boxes and your employee can put a recycle sticker on it and eveyone can collect with her.

rad

Is it possible at all to move one of their work stations - or both so no one feels singled out? I have learned that some people simply do not want to get along with others, they enjoy being misanthropes.

HRCathy

I am going to look into that. Or else I will just pile boxes up around her every day and she can sit in her little cardboard palace.

Rockie

I feel your pain.

I had to haul two people in my office yesterday and have a talk with them. One was upset because the other one asked her to go downstairs and sign for some lunches for the department (paid for BY the company, mind you!). The one took issue because she was asked by this employee to do it. The other one said "Yeah, but you walked towards me shaking your finger and shrugging your shoulders the way you do!" They got kinda loud and this incident was reported by an "interested third party". The upshot was they both felt it was unprofessional and apologized to each other.

I finally said "Now, won't you both agree that this was a stupid thing to take up this much of all of our time?"

They both looked sheepish and said "Yeah, you're right."

These are the maddening things that make our hair turn gray overnight!

HRCathy

I'm glad I am not alone. I will talk to this employee tomorrow. I don't want to just let it go, I know she is going to cry. I hate that. After talking to other employees, I am certain that she really is making faces and name-calling. She has been with the company for 17 years, there have been problems, I found out, but nothing in her file. I hope that giving her a warning will make her think twice about acting like a 5 year old.

HRsage

I'm just curious, do you talk to these two associates in their own native language- Polish and Romanian or through interpreters? My hat is off to you. I have a hard enough time with my broken Spanish. Hope things get better.

HRCathy

I have interpreters. I also am struggling with Spanish. I would love to learn those languages, it would come in handy, but they are both hard to learn.

ritaanz

Being of Polish extraction, I can only add the following:
1. There will always be a problem between the two. SOME people never forget or forgive even the silliest of nonsense. If you decide to move one of them, the other will see it as a reward. (Don't ask me why, I don't know. It's just that way.)
2. If, and I do mean IF, the Romanian wants to make amends, she can do it with food. She can bring in kielbasa and kapusta (cabbage) or pierogy or nalesniki(blinzes)or ziemne nogy (pigs feet)as a token of friendship. This way the Polish person can always say that her cooking is better.
3. If you allow the cardboard castle, they will each decorate their side with doilies, flowers and pictures of family. This will give them another thing to fuss about.
4. The best approach is to threaten them both that you will call home and tell their children that they are misbehaving at work. The shame of that will set them on the straight and narrow.

Of course, my Polish relatives would never behave that way. The above suggestions are folk lore handed down from generation to generation. x:P

LarryC

We have several Bosnians working for us here, some speak English, while others don't. A quarrel broke out between two of them who fought on opposite sides of their war. Also, as I learned from the local Bosnian community interpretor, one of the person's family was directly involved in the murder of the other one's father. Now I'm thinking, "How do these two end up at our building #3 working 20 feet apart?"

During the meeting I had with these two, plus the interpretor, I had to speak in simple sentences so that it could be easily and accurately translated. These two were insisting that I have to understand the deep feelings here and what they went through. My response was this: "While I understand that your feeling s run very deep, I cannot understand the total brutality of what you went through. I can, however, appreciate it. You must understand that here in this workplace, there is no war, and we all must treat eachother with dignity and respect if we want to work here." After a few more exchanges, they went back to work and have been civil to eachother ever since.

These aren't easy.