[snarg]

I had a truck driver that worked for me several years ago. He was a total loser. He claimed his truck (my truck) was always broke down and there was some reason for him to be in the shop working on it. One thing after another. I told him several times that if he couldn't keep the truck running and producing income that I was going to have to let him go. Finally, I fired him one morning because he was sitting in the shop bullshitting with two of my mechanics.

A week or so later he filed for unemployment. I fought it, and provided months of documentation of how little he was driving the truck and how he spent all of his time in the shop pretending to be working on it. I showed them how much he had made in payroll and how little he was bringing in income. He admitted that I told him a week or so before he was fired that if he didn't make some changes to the hours he drove the truck, he was going to be fired.

Well, he won anyway. I appealed and I won, then he appealed the final time and he won.

It seems that it didn't matter what happened, or how good or bad he was at his job. What mattered was that I didn't "document" each time he was warned of unacceptable behavior. I did not give him "written ultimatums" saying that if specific things were not done he would be fired.

Basically, I didn't give him enough chance to find another job before I fired him. That's what they really want. They want an employee to have enough time and enough written big deal warnings that they just go find another job while they are still employed.

Then my unemployment insurance goes up and its "fuck the man" time again.

Oh, and the next driver I hired to drive the truck had no problems with it running okay. He made the truck very profitable immediately after he started driving.

my firing was "political" in that the bitch who fired me was mad at the person who hired me
she could not do anything else to "hurt" the man who hired me, so she got to him thru me
the fact that i organized the warehouse and inventoried for the first time made no difference
nor did the fact that i never missed work and did whatever i was asked to do
the fact is that i was never warned or given a chance to refute any "charges"

in the long term, i will be better off, but it was still a shock and very humiliating