Working with Friends

amother

Thu, Jul 24 2014, 3:19 pm

** Cross-posted from Friends and Friendship **

I am amother because I do not want anyone to guess who I am. My husband and I have a business. We have several employees who are paid by the hour. We both have worked extremely hard to get this business where it is today. We are not wealthy, but we do support our family with this business.

A very dear friend of ours lost his job. My soft-hearted DH told him he could work for us while he looked for something else in his field. BIG MISTAKE. What we thougt would be a few weeks turned into many months, and he turned out to be a terrible employee. He was habitually late, destroyed our equipment and lied about it, etc. He ended up costing us a lot of money in equipment and payment of our other workers to stand around and wait for him to show up to work.

My DH found out he was badmouthing us all over town. He finally became fed up and told my friend's DH there was no more work for him. Well, as you can imagine, that did not go over well.

His wife and I have been good friends since they children were little. She was quick to defend her husband, and just cannot see that his behavior caused this to happen. I get her loyalty is to him, but there is no way my DH would have let him go for no reason. And, we are far from the first employer to fire him.

So now I am without my friend. I am embarrassed to run into here, even thought I know it is her DH's behavior that caused this mess. I guess I just don't know how to handle it.
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justforfun87

Fri, Jul 25 2014, 12:43 am

Sorry, this does sound incredibly akward. Hopefully it will blow over or wait until she approaches you and asks why you fired him. I do not think you need to approach her with an explanation at this point. It was nice of you to employ him in the first place. Out of curiousity, did you give him a warning of his behavior before firing him?

HonesttoGod

Fri, Jul 25 2014, 10:35 am

Ouch this sounds hard op!

Just tell it as it is. You were hesitant to hire him in the first place as a friend and you offered it to him temporarily! It didn't work out for whatever reasons that is not a reason to break up a friendship.
Not everyone is a good match for every job!