Taking off a tie is a reasonable request. The tie went against the dealership's image, and possibly impact business in a negative manner. After the 5th time, I think the GM had every reason to fire the guy. Should he have taken care of the situation before the 5th time? Yes, but that doesn't make the employees actions okay.
Oh I have no problem with the firing itself. I think it was silly, but the dealership has every right to do it. I'm saying if I were the owner of that dealereship, I wouldn't want a GM that did that and they would also be fired. That it played out that way shows me that the GM is simply not very good at his job.
The GM might not be great at his job but the employee was being insubordinate if he refused multiple request to remove the tie. It wouldn't surprise me too if there might be more to this story and perhaps the GM and the employee had a history and this was something that was coming sooner or later. On a related note a friend of mine had a similar experience. She is a huge Packers' fan but lives in MN and works for a non-profit. She used to have a Packers' Favre jersey hanging on the door of her office and one day Red McCombs paid a visit to her non-profit to make a donation. She kept the Packer jersey on her door and McCombs saw it. McCombs though laughed it off and she kept her job with no complaints from her boss.
Just wondering out there for all of the Clutchfans who live in DFW and/or San Antonio. If the Rockets beat the Mavericks or Spurs in the WC Finals how many of you would show up at work the next day sporting some Rox gear?
See - this is the appropriate and rational response. If A&M beat UT to knock them out of a national title opportunity and one of my employees came in decked out in Aggie gear, I'd laugh. We're in central Austin, so the vast majority of our customers are Longhorns. If any of them really had a problem with it and wouldn't buy coffee from us, that's their problem. No way am I picking a customer over my employee if I don't think my employee did anything particularly bad. That's what generates loyalty and trust and lets me get the most out of my employees. That salesman - who was apparently a really good salesperson - sold about 15 cars a month. That's one every two days. So the chances of that dealership losing any customers was minimal. At most, you're talking maybe one customer. If, as a boss, I'm willing to trade a good salesperson for a single customer, I'm a terrible boss. And my other employees now know how little I value them. Like you said, there's potentially much more to the story. I am only going on what we know so what I say should be taken with a grain of salt. But from what we know, this reeks of incompetence. If a Packer tie truly was a problem, then explain that he can't work having the tie on. Send him home if need be. Maybe even tell him you have to re-evaluate his employment if he can't do it. All of these are reasonable if you really believe this to be a key problem. But to fire him on the spot because of a tie? That's just bad leadership.
It pretty much is - I mean, doing the same thing over and over doesn't really change anything. One warning or 20, it's all the same attempt. I mean, did the GM really think the 5th warning was going to have a different result than the 4th? "Take the tie off." "No." "Take the tie off." "No." "Take the tie off." "No." "Take the tie off." "No." "Take the tie off." "No." This is not a productive leadership strategy. As I've said, the employee should have listened, and I have no issue with him being fired. I have a problem with the way the GM attempted to resolve the situation in the first place.
But it is. From the article: General Manager Jerry Roberts asked Stone to remove the tie five times, saying it might aggravate Bears fans and make it more difficult to sell cars. When Stone refused, he was fired. “He said, ‘You have two options,’” a furious Stone said later Monday to the Chicago Sun-Times. “Remove the tie, or you’re fired.” “When I didn’t, he said, ‘You can leave, you’re fired.’ The more extended version of what I wrote: "Take the tie off" "No." "Take the tie off" "No." "Take the tie off" "No." "Take the tie off" "No." "Take the tie off or you're fired." "No." "You're fired."
"On the spot" to me implies that he was fired without warning, or without being given a chance to *not* be fired, and neither of those is the case here.
Here's an example of a GM, if they really felt like this was a problem: "Tie the tie off" "No" "Go home. You're a good salesperson, but you can't work here wearing that tie. When you're willing to do that, come back and we'll get you back on the schedule." At the end of the day, you've resolved the problem and you still have your good salesperson, without any negative publicity or staff morale issues, and you don't have to go hire and train a new person, or address customers who were already working on deals with the old salesperson. Simple, effective, gets all the good results without the negatives.
Gotcha. Sorry - I didn't mean it that way. I was just meaning that he fired him right there without really reviewing the situation or analyzing the bigger logic or consequences of it.
"...who had worked at the dealership for a month and a half" _____ He already got a new job at a dealership down the street, but it seems with two kids at home and a crappy job market one might want to lose the attitude.
It's all about perspective. That could be good results from your POV. At the same time, the guy has only been there 1.5 months and refused to do something as simple as take a tie off. From the GM's perspective, maybe this is a sign that this guy will have bigger problems down the road and it's better to part ways now than later. Not worth the headache of bigger clashes in the future. From this employee's perspective, getting sent home could mean an extra day to celebrate and he got to dictate his own terms of working there. The lesson? I get to do what I want as long as a I make sales. Also people get fired every day, the GM probably didn't expect this to make national news.
To me... It's not about the tie, the fact that he was REPEATEDLY told to take it off is the key. He had six weeks of tenure and refused to follow instruction several times. He was fired for insubordination. Sounds about right to me. This is open and shut. The guy won't even qualify for unemployment benefits, much less have a chance in a wrongful termination lawsuit.
There's got to be more to it...he has to have a history of insubordination, IMHO... However, if its just a tie, c'mon, that's BS...
