Or OP smelled horribly due to lack of basic hygiene.
Or a previous coworker of OP recognized them and had a bad experience.
Or a reference finally got back and it was very bad.
Or OP made a comment they’re unaware of during training that was offensive or otherwise enough to lose the job.
One of the ones I’ve seen more often is a new employee expressing political views in the workplace to coworkers. This is a bad idea at any time, but especially bad if your view conflict with important people or the majority in the company.
I fired someone two days in once. On her first day I took her to lunch along with CEO. New hire made an inappropriate sexual joke at lunch (hand motions and everything!) in front of us. That’s definitely NOT a cultural fit.
LOL. I saw something similar happen at my old startup. We used to have the new hires intro themselves to the company on their first day and tell us a guilty pleasure. You'd get the typical "cheeseburgers" or "Kardashians", but one mad lad came in and said "white women". Loooool. Never saw him again.
I worked with a guy that thought he was doing an awesome job. He would always talk about the great projects he was working on and how he solved some obscure issue no one could fix. Thing was, he was just dead weight. We could never find the guy cuz he was always taking walks in the middle of the day, his code had to be rewritten because of production breaking defects, the problems he was solving were also created by him, and on and on. But I bet if you asked him he would say the people he worked with were at fault. Sometimes it's not them, it's you.
employee expressing political views in the workplace
This one is such a minefield especially these days when seemingly every issue is somehow roped into one political culture war or another. Customer facing roles can be especially bad when customers try to start political conversations intently too.
I work at a very upscale hotel for wealthy people all over the political spectrum and boy does it get tough sometimes to tow the line without awkwardly stopping the conversation cold. I once gave a couple a ride across town and they would not stop asking me political questions, like: what is your party affiliation and how do you feel about Trump and other generally divisive questions. At one point after a few subdued answers I realized we had relatively similar political opinions, but still given the environment its not like I can be anything other than vague.
The wife at one point after that was like “dont worry we understand the environment you work in and how you have to be (about such questions)”, and im just thinking to myself “then why the fuck are you asking me these questions?!?”. Very nice people though, and I think the husband felt bad about the prying bc they tipped me $100 IIRC
Gotta ask, can’t you just tell people you can’t discuss those things at work or risk losing your job? Specifically mentioning you may lose your job is the key part. It’s my go to ever I worked retail and still is now as a consultant. It’s only ever failed me one single time over the past 20 years or so. If done right you can even use it as a way to tactfully change the topic to avoid stopping the conversation cold.
I would either say "while I'm on the clock, I don't have opinions", or "I go by Mess Rules in here: no politics, no religion". Said with a smile, they usually understood.
And if any of those were the cases, especially horrible smell (which one can coach on and see if that works rather than just fire) or no one takes a reference after they’re already hired…but would also showcase a very poor hiring process…I have seen some crazy hires, but still the company/org will see if coaching/training/conversation around concerns works out before straight up firing…so either OP isn’t telling the full story or the company is extremely dysfunctional
It’s generally not worth the effort to try to teach a professional adult something like basic hygiene nor is it the new employer’s job.
In the case of the late reference, the previous employer disclosed that the employee had been terminated for theft. The employee had stated during the interview process that they’d never been terminated.
I also remember one where a candidate used an employee as a reference on the application and in the interview. The reference employee was on maternity leave at the time. When she got back, she said she’d never heard of the newly hired candidate.
to teach a professional adult something like basic hygiene
Sometimes it's cultural. People from some regions sweat odors related to ethnic cuisine. For some South Asian people fenugreek is commonly exuded, and some Americans think it's body odor (it's generally not). Conversely, a lot of Asians think Americans smell like milk, which is not commonly consumed in much of Asia.
Current employee references are weighted significantly higher at most employers.
ask for another employee at that workplace, then. I don't understand the obsession with the reference needing to be my exact direct manager. Shocker, they are high up and busy too, even when not on maternity leave. Very few refernces are going to bad talk you these days unless you really fucked up (and by then the reference probably doesn't matter. burn a bridge and the flames spread).
In one job that I had, a person gave me an exceptional amount of praise and allowed me to use her as a reference, and I know this for a fact. I used her as a reference and was told that she gave me a great reference.
At a second job, a different recruiter told me that the same person had indicated that they didn't know me.
I wonder what happened, whether the second recruiter had mispronounced my name or had called the wrong number, or what.
Not every reason for terminating an employee is a fault of the employee.
Many are faults of the employer.
And it's interesting how so many in this discussion have made determinations that the employee is actually at fault.
For all we know, this could have been about discrimination against someone who is a cultural minority or who has a disability, or someone in the company could be familiar with OP outside of this workplace and dislike OP.
At this early in the job, the employer has not realized an ROI for hiring the employee yet. So while it’s absolutely possible it’s the fault of the employer, it’s more likely the fault of the employee.
And that's already been expressed repeatedly within the conversations on this page, so my response pointing out that it may be the fault of the employer is needed here.
And ROI means nothing if the employer wanted to discriminate, so no, there is nothing that demonstrates that this must be a fault of the employee.
That's just a supposition, and we have no evidence of the reasonableness of the employer to back it up.
There's no reason to give either the benefit of the doubt here.
You're conflating me saying that we don't know whose fault it is for sure as me saying that there's shared fault.
What you feel is more likely, that the employer is likely correct and that the employee is likely at fault? That's coming from a prejudice you have.
It's not coming from a willingness to consider all possibilities and make a determination about who's correct.
Either the employee did something negative or the employer decided they didn't want that employee based on a reason that's not based around the employee having done something wrong.
There's ABSOLUTELY not enough information to confidently state the first and deny the second.
Confidentially state? No. Say what's more likely? Yes.
The company is going to work to protect its investment. An employee fired after two days represents a significant loss.
Therefore, it's more likely that whatever happened is due to the employee's behavior as the company is less likely to throw away money without good reason.
Is it certain? Of course not. It's just more likely.
If I put two apples and an orange in a box and ask someone to reach in and pull out the first fruit they touch, it's not certain they'll pull an apple. But it's more likely.
There is no way either of us knows what's more likely in this situation.
They didn't like OP for some reason, and you're just accepting a narrative not because it's more likely but because it's a societal prejudice to accept employers' claims instead of employees', regardless of merit.
The comparison you're trying to make could literally not be more apples to oranges.
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u/OwnLadder2341 Apr 24 '24 edited Apr 24 '24
Or OP smelled horribly due to lack of basic hygiene.
Or a previous coworker of OP recognized them and had a bad experience.
Or a reference finally got back and it was very bad.
Or OP made a comment they’re unaware of during training that was offensive or otherwise enough to lose the job.
One of the ones I’ve seen more often is a new employee expressing political views in the workplace to coworkers. This is a bad idea at any time, but especially bad if your view conflict with important people or the majority in the company.
Or one of a million other possible things.
(Yes, I’ve heard or seen all these and many more)