ULTIMATE NECROBUMP!
Never before or since has there been a NECROBUMP of this magnitude or minimal impact. Let it be known for all EO time that I am the first to Necrobump their quit thread an exact 10 years later! (Actually, last month I got nostalgic, and I noticed I left almost exactly 10 years ago, so I thought I would wait another month to hit 10 years on the spot).
So I would like to share with you some of my time since I left EO and what I gained from this experience and how I applied it as a manager making decisions in real life. So if you bear with me through this long winded story, maybe you’ll get something out of it.
What this taught me more than anything was:
The importance of perspective.
For those that don’t know/remember, I originally left over the Zannefair booting incident. I believe that had I the same information today, I would have probably still made the same decision, but I didn’t have all of the information. So I made a decision I would not have had I known what had happened.
My understanding of the situation was complaints like this:
She cured with a Dark Staff, she didn't rest with an Errant's Houppelande. MP efficiency and hate control was defined by Curaga IV whenever needed. She would Haste herself, but not the tanks.
None of that really warranted the magnitude of the attention it received as that was worded, and that is what I understood of the complaints. All of that seemed petty to me and I ignored it whenever I heard it. Maybe perception came into play here, my Pld was somewhat decked out with a Sattva Ring and other equipment, for all I know I was covering her when that happened, then got hate back by spamming job abilities, so for me hate control wasn’t a problem.
What DID warrant attention and what was NOT widely publicized was the following event: Zannefair threatened to train mobs and kill us all in Dynamis Xarcboard. As it so happened that very event, I had connection issues and missed 90% of it. So I didn’t see any of that happen. Locke told me this after I had left.
We paid $1 mil gil to enter at that time, and maliciously slaughtering us would have been unconscionable thus warranting a no pay out boot. When Cynric applied, he specifically stated the following:
Zannefair is my wife (real life). We are both interested in your link shell, but only if you can make room for both of us. We like doing game events together.
In that scenario, I would actually probably booted him along with her. Separating a husband & wife isn’t something that would work for anyone. He set the condition that both of them would be in the LS together, and her offense was egregious enough to boot, so I probably would have kicked him at the same time. Would have shown some mercy and offered him a payout, but that would have been it. Less mercy than Markus showed.
Now the above reason wasn’t widely publicized, even in the face of a flame war, and I can think of a few reasons.
1) It’s bad form to talk poorly about former members, current members can take that very wrong.
2) You aren’t trying to cause more harm to the person you already booted. You aren’t trying to get her booted from all LS, you just want her to leave yours.
Later on I will address how much you say about former members/employees.
Also of note, years later Zannefair would level her Blm to 75 and I would play with her, and what would she do? Hit the mobs with staves the entire time. No nuking. She was as useful as a lead brick that drew agro and fed mobs TP. Maybe that’s what everyone was complaining about and I didn’t understand the magnitude of it. Her Blm was 100x worse than her Whm from what I saw. I would have kicked her from the LS for that. Maybe it happened that I quelled the crazy in her enough to do an ok job for me at the time, who knows.
Now I would like to relate this to my real life experience…
I am an Engineering Manager, I train Program Managers and Engineers. I used to train Technicians, but don’t do much of that anymore.
Had an employee (technician) that worked hard, always helped, everyone liked him. That was what about 50% of the people thought.
What they didn’t see was the constant absenteeism from being “sick” or that he would often do tasks without being careful. What they didn’t see was how many mistakes I had to correct from him ramming things through. But when he was there, he did work hard, so I tried to work with him.
During the last 2 busy months he worked there, he asks me for a day off after having been sick several days, and I had to work 80 hours/week partially because it was busy, partially because he kept being “sick”.
1 day he comes up to me, tells me he has been offered a higher paying contracted job. Him staying with us might not be the best decision for him. So I talk to him, try to figure out what’s best for him and where he is in his career. So we talk about it for a whole week with him not getting to the point and then he’s in my office and finally I blurt out “what do you want?” “I want more money” was his response. (I thought he actually wanted a new experience/opportunity, hence the week conversation).
So I match the value of the offer (several dollars/hour raise). He was offered a contracted position, no benefits, 1 year position. I had a permanent position, with benefits, but paid less/hour (because of the benefits). He wanted $1.50 more/hour than what I had already offered. At that point, it was clear he was just trying to pump me for whatever he could get, and was clearly abusing how busy we were. I declined and said “nope, I matched the offer, that’s it, you have 1 day to accept or decline, we have now discussed this for a week”.
Then what does he do? Declines, and calls in sick for 4 days, then arrives the 5th day to get his paycheck. His sick time was unpaid because he actually had already exhausted it.
I work 80 hours/week the next 2 months and train a new staff. Only reason the management team offered him that much was so that I didn’t have to work 80 hours/week. But I refuse to be treated like that. I put a lot into my employees and have done several promotions and raises, but not by that means. I promote and give raises by means of hard work, not by extorting the busy season.
Anyways, what does this have to do with the above situation?
Later on I ran into coworkers complaining and they were mad he left and said “we can’t believe management didn’t match his offer”. They didn’t realize the role I played in the whole thing. Apparently he had told anyone who would listen we didn’t match his offer, and all they saw was a hard worker.
I said “let me tell you a different side of this, and then I will let you feel however you want about it”. All I did was say “he took over 5 weeks of intermittent sick time last year, and when I matched his offer, he wasn’t happy it wasn’t about it he called in sick 4 of the 5 days his last week here. He did work the last day to get his paycheck.” I did not say anything about his performance, that’s where perception might have worked against me.
They listened, and their response was “wow, we didn’t realize he was calling in sick all the time and that you matched the offer. He certainly burned bridges and that isn’t something you want to do”.
So this experience taught me the following, how much information to give remaining employees after someone has left. You do NOT want to keep it all hush hush if people are disgruntled. They will start coming to conclusions about you based on wrong information and it will result in more departures.
If they prompt you for it, you give them enough information so that they understand what the situation was that you were in and you keep it short and present only facts. Maybe they come to the same conclusion as you, maybe not. Best case scenario, you quell some resentment from building. Worst case scenario, if you don’t do it right you start some resentment. With practice, you learn what does and doesn’t work. (What works are facts and very short specific summaries).
So that was my story, I learned a lot about perspective form that whole ordeal 10 years ago and I applied what I had learned to real life. Thank you for everyone who treated me with respect and befriended me after I had left the shell. Several people replied to me with respectful comments and I was invited to the other shell, I think I added about 10 people to my friend list upon leaving.
I really appreciate the times that I had with you guys, and I am glad that we were able to stay on good terms. Maybe I’ll run into some of you again in another online life. Trying to facebook connect with members that I can find nowadays.
