14. Cutting Ties
I had to send a guy to a remote gas/petroleum refinery site for an inspection. He had previously been reliable on most occasions. However, on this occasion, he never showed up for the pre-substance screening test the day before he had to fly out and gave me a long-winded excuse, basically blaming car troubles. At that point, I would have gone myself to the site; however, I was just back from a bone graft to my collarbone, so I wasn’t going anywhere.
The director made the final decision to send him anyway, against my recommendations. We flew him to the site to do his onsite induction, where he would do the screening test anyway. Partway through his induction, he got up and left. I called him that night but never got an answer. So, I checked with his accommodation, and the hotel claimed he had checked in within the last half hour.
I was just glad nothing major had happened. The next morning I spoke to the client, and the client informed me that the staff member apologized for leaving abruptly and had to rush off and deal with some personal issues. I didn’t press it any longer. Two hours went by, and I got a call from the client stating that they’d booted him off the site because they found him asleep on the job, and when they woke him up, he became extremely aggressive.
The consequences were devastating. The client was furious about it and said we were a cowboy of an operation for sending someone like that and told us to fly someone else up the next day to finish the job. That night we had a conference call with the client stating that we were no longer going to be working for them due to this issue, which cost our company roughly $1M from the loss of the contract.
We brought the employee in the day after he flew back to ask about his actions. I was supposed to head this up and get his side of the story, except before we even got into really discussing things, my director asked him, “If we are to test you today would you fail”? He answered, “Yes”, and he was told he was being let go instantly.
He started yelling at the top of his lungs and blaming his actions on everyone else. I told him he needed to leave straight away, or the authorities would get called, and he left. Then for the next month, our administrator received emails stating how I was terrible at my job and that I should be fired for not listening to his problems, which he had never spoken to me about. But that’s not the worst part.
The employee was my brother, and I found out he was an addict. My dad and I paid for his rehab, but he never stayed both of the times he was sent. Then there were physical threats towards my mom and my family for not giving him money. That is where I cut contact. The whole situation gave me severe anxiety and depression.