Welcome to “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager! Between now and the end of the year, I’ll be running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.
We have a lot of updates this year, so there will be a lot more posts each day than usual. Here’s the first one…
Ivy did not react well when I reached out to let her know I was reassessing the situation. She de-activated her remote software and went completely radio silent. My attorney advised me to write her an email with details concerning the issues (dates, times, issues) to highlight the software deactivation, and to let her know considering this, which in our state constitutes job abandonment, I was accepting her resignation. He also stated for the record that these issues were sufficient to fire her for cause, if it came to it, but that calling it a resignation might be kinder. I cannot give her a good reference but we both saw no need to pile on.
Her response was a LOT. She blamed me for laundry list of issues, but she didn’t address the actual issues laid out in my email – failure to respond to clients at all, failure to QA/QC work to the point we could have been sued, failing to send reports to clients after agreeing to do so, and throwing the part-timer under the bus when she was to blame for a late report. The issues she laid out were things she either never raised with me or made no sense to me. I’m not going to adjudicate whether her complaints were valid – but I will say that her failure to address my stated concerns was interesting, along with her choice to raise her issues only when she was presented with my concerns.
That validated for me that while her learning curves were real, her past success with the sub-contracting work I’d given her was not a sufficient predictor for success in this role. Looking back, I also tend to think that she overstated her current technical skills to some extent, but I’m not objective and honestly that’s not the point. Leaving aside my irritation at her response, I feel bad for her. But I’m feeling that compassion for her from a distance that does not impact my clients.
She sent a letter by certified mail a few months later asking that I “confirm that [I] had fired her”. It may have been a bid to support an unemployment claim, but she didn’t work with me long enough to qualify, and frankly, since I could have fired her for cause, she was disqualified on that point as well. I responded via email detailing her resignation and attached the documentation to back this up. Haven’t heard from her since.
Untangling the many, many mistakes she left behind in ongoing reports was difficult, and the part timer was an absolute hero in helping me handle that. We cranked out several complex projects, initiated a partnership with a larger company, and started discussions on a joint venture with another company. Business then got very slow over the summer, so the part timer has taken a different full-time role to pay the bills (which I cheered her on for doing). I’m about to ramp up again, but I have some backup help ready in the wings as needed.
While my decision to bring Ivy on board was not completely based on naïve hopes it was clearly based on incomplete information. I assumed that she understood the role of business partner in the same terms I did. Never mind whether my concepts of what a business partner is supposed to do are in line with typical norms. Without knowing for certain that Ivy agreed with me, we were bound to end up with mismatched expectations and thus a ton of difficulty.
I will keep this business as sole proprietor for the foreseeable future, also. I’d love to have a full partner at some point, but I need more regular work coming in. Seeing a pattern with slow summer seasons tells me I need to bring contracting into line with filling that gap, among other things. But I’m optimistic that business will get steadier as we go.
Thanks again to you and the commentariat!
#cut #business #partner #loose #Manager
