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Disrespected at work

Veteran

Mario Lopez Sanchez Bakersfield, CA

Hello everyone,

I recently started in a new role as a service manager in a corporation, to make a long story short. We was in the middle of a production meeting and one of my salesman was upset due to a vendor not delivering the product to a customer. This salesman started going on a rant, and raising his voice and disrespecting myself and my branch manager stating we was not proactive in finding other alternatives which in reality we we’re working on. I asked him to calm down he decided to focus on me became aggressive and stated a derogatory word towards me and left. After having a meeting with HR and my district manager the final verdict was a written disciplinary action, there was no suspension nor termination. I stated my concerns such as what requires an automatic termination? Why do we have a progressive disciplinary action before we terminate an employee? I thought disrespecting a manager would be why is this not good enough?

After this incident really makes me wonder what type of future support will I receive from my HR and management team? I am very disappointed at the outcome and still feel very strongly the final decision was weak and opens up others to do the same with only receiving a written disciplinary action against them, what other actions I could do without upsetting my HR team or district manager.

I apologize for discussing this but I feel lost and I know in the military disciplinary actions are very cut and dry, this action just makes me upset unable to do much more. Your feedback would be appreciated.

Mario

30 July 2022 5 replies Mentoring

Answers

Advisor

Richard Byrne Hillsborough, NJ

The good news is your sales person is passionate about customers, & willing to take risks to support that passion. The bad news since he left, is he might go to a competitor & take the customer and other sales-people with him. Could this outburst have been avoided with an individual update on steps taken prior to the meeting? What do you need to do to get the most performance from your sales team? What have you done on communicating with your sales team to alleviate supply chain, or delivery issues?

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30 July 2022 Helpful answer

Advisor

Tristan Wagner Tampa, FL

Things like this will happen in a company with weak or aggressive culture. I experienced this type of behavior at my previous company with my director. I didn't mind the directness, but yelling and screaming is not something I will handle at this point in my life. ENS Wagner had to put up with that 20 years ago, but not now. I ended up giving back the same and screaming at him and hanging up on him. I will say after that exchange, he never raised his voice again and we got along great.

I am not recommending that type of response, just telling you what I did. Soon after that, I started looking for other employment as the culture was not for me. You might want to do the same. Just at though. Good luck.

Veteran

Mario Lopez Sanchez Bakersfield, CA

Richard,

There’s a fine line between passionate and disrespectful. The production meeting is created to communicate issues between departments since this incident happened five minutes before the meeting, My team was working with our dispatcher to come with an alternative solution. Creating a temper tantrum by a 46 year old man does not help. This wasn’t a young kid learning the aspects of sales.

Since I am not the branch manager and a recent hire my role is minimal with the sales staff. I appreciate your information, thank you.

Veteran

Mario Lopez Sanchez Bakersfield, CA

Hello,

One thing I learned from my years in the military is to create a log of events and I’ve done so. At this point I’ll just wait and see what happens. The biggest concern I have is that he’s done this before to other female co workers and unfortunately the previous branch manager never documented any of it. I appreciate your feedback it and feel the same way you feel about it. Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

Advisor

James Watters Norman, OK

Good morning Sergeant Sanchez

A Sergeant 1st Class army man knows all about respect and discipline and rightly so. The corporate world also places a high value on those things. However, there is one consideration that tends to subordinate respect and discipline… PROFIT. There’s no excuse for the way the salesman acted. HR is probably considering the person’s productivity (sales history), tenure, family situation and past conduct.

Nevertheless, since it’s your responsibility to supervise this person, the company should back your suggestions. The person should apologize for his behavior to you and all who were present. If the company doesn’t back you, it may be time to update your resume. In any case, document what happens.

Good luck Sergeant

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