'She's going to owe us about $18,000': Karen employee causes workflow interruption by changing doorknob to storage room, quits and gets fined

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    "I don't want that door locked. I quit"
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    She thought she got revenge, but it was mine.
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    I work for a small municipal department in a rural area. We have ten employees and some volunteers. I am in charge of daily operations, and I answer to someone else. One of my team decided what she did not like me anymore when I was promoted to this position a couple years ago
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    and had generally been a pain in for everyone. She the complains about everyone endlessly, about how nobody ever does anything except her. When I work with her, I'm in my office from 8am until 9 or 10 PM working while she sits on the couch and watches TV most of the day. Most days she'll clean for an hour,
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    occasionally she gets in a mood and cleans for several hours. She worked with a volunteer the day before but had already left work by the time I got there at 0645 for my 0700 start time.
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    So, we have a rather loose uniform standard in my department for the volunteers. Basically, they need to wear a T-Shirt identifying them as a part of our department. When they're responding in an emergency, that requirement is extremely lax. These are all kept in a closet in the station and issued
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    to new volunteers (full time personnel have a $500/yr clothing allowance). I replenished these t- shirts far too often for the amount of people being onboarded. I don't think anybody is stealing them, I think it's more along the lines of "I'm here to respond, but I don't have a T-Shirt with me" so they grab a new shirt.
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    So we are approaching the end of our fiscal year, and I still have money in my uniform budget. I place a large order of shirts and these get folded nicely and organized then placed into the same closet, but this time the door
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    get locked so a hundred shirts doesn't wander off in a couple months. I left a note on the door that I had locked it and to contact me off access is needed. This went on for a couple weeks, and my pain in the employee was extremely vocal that she believed
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    it was stupid that the door was locked. There were a few other things stored in there, but mostly just junk that needed disposed of properly and couldn't go into the trash (old laptops, computer monitors, etc).
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    The way our schedule works, I was out of the office for a week. I got off work at 7am on Friday, and I was not due back in the office until 7am the following Friday. I worked one day covering at our north station, and then the Friday I returned is my weekend to work.
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    On the Monday where I was out of the office, I received a phone call from my pain in the employee stating that she needed to get into that closet. I didn't ask for a reason why because I didn't think it was necessary. So I told her that the key was in the safe (which all FT employees have access to). I really thought nothing of it.
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    So, Friday rolls around. I have a meeting with a county administrator at 0700. I get to work at 0645 and open the door to find a large pile of things that had all been in storage with a note "we need to get rid of this stuff".
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    Okay, it's springtime, we're probably due for some spring cleaning, but if you're going to clean, have a plan to get rid of the that you're pulling out of storage, don't just pull it out and hang a note on it for someone else to deal with.
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    Some of it was from that closet, some of it was not even ours to get rid of, and some of it was stuff we are absolutely not getting rid of and still needed. I found the original blueprints to our station buried in this pile of stuff to get rid of... So the county administrator walks in... he's instantly p because the pain in the
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    employee spent all day the previous day whining about how I hadn't been there, and nobody is doing anything, and she had to clean this whole station by herself, same old same old. Her big pet peeve is garbage cans. If there is a single piece of garbage in a garbage can when I leave, she will call the administrator and complain... when she leaves, if she collects the garbage, it's all stuffed into one can and not taken out, but I'm more the type to just take it out and move on with my day.
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    Take the high road because the low road will get flooded eventually. So, instead of having our meeting, we start digging in to this pile of stuff because we aren't going to be able to do anything to get rid of it on a Friday. The dump isn't even open, and there's no place around
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    us that recycles electronics. I got to put some of this stuff back in the closet... I go to the safe, the key is missing. Weird. Whatever, there's a spare in my locker. I go get it, and try to stick it in the door and the doorknob has been changed to one that doesn't lock or even accept a key.
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    I'm stunned. She was so annoyed by that one closet that she changed the entire doorknob. The levee just breached. The low road is under a flash flood warning. County administrator calls her immediately. Tells her to turn around and come back to work and change the doorknob back. She tells him "no, I have an appointment and even if I didn't, I don't want that door locked, and I quit".
  • 20
    The best part is We are paying for some education on her behalf, and she's going to owe us about $18,000 now.

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