Category: Comstock

I feel like a terrible new hire. This is my first job as a manager, and I’m in over my head. My employees ignore what I tell them to do. I went to HR for help, and the HR manager said I needed to figure it out. Help

I try to handle employee problems face-to-face and one-on-one. That’s what I was always taught — praise in public, punish in private. But the problem with this is that each of my employees feels singled out for their bad behavior. In their eyes, their coworkers never “get in

I have an employee, Bill, who’s been with us for four months. A couple of weeks ago, his manager called me to say that Bill had anxiety, clocked out, and was in the break room. The manager checked on him, and Bill said he was okay and needed

I’m new to investigations and employee discipline and also relatively new to this company. My concern is that I’m on my fourth investigation within one year about racial slurs and comments. The company size is less than 100 employees. Each incident has been in a different department, so

I own a retail business, and sometimes customers can be rude and inappropriate, but I’m worried about a recession, so the customer is always right. I can’t afford bad ratings on Yelp or whatever. But my HR manager says I can be held liable for what customers do.

I work at a small, privately owned company of 15 people. I am third in the chain of command. Our CEO/owner is near retirement and at this point in his career is really only acting as a figurehead. My direct boss has just put in his notice, and

Everyone always says if someone harasses you at work, make sure you document it, but what does that mean? Just write it down? Record the harasser with my phone? Do I get witnesses to write stuff? I have no idea how to go about this. To read my

I have an employee, Kate, who does mediocre work. Not good enough to be promoted, but good enough to keep from being fired. This isn’t a problem, except she’s constantly complaining about the job. I want to tell her to go find another job or shut up. The

The owner wants everyone back in the office at least a couple of times a week. This is a small business with only two managers: Jane and me. One of us needs to be in the office every day. This is fine. We worked out a schedule. The

I’m tired of having people get unemployment benefits when I fired them for being bad employees. Stealing, lying and coming in late — it doesn’t seem to matter. What can I do to make sure people don’t get unemployment payments? Can I document better? To read my answer,