When Management Should Be Fired..Immediately!

Pay close attention AT&T. If you monitor mentions on social media print this one in Red.

I received several emails starting early this morning. The subject lines were some variation of "What Should I Do"?

The emails all related to the AT&T area manager telling all employees of the sales call center that they must report to work today. What's wrong with that? Just one little thing. Amarillo, Texas is in the middle of the worst blizzard we have had since 1903. It started at 6:00 last night. By 10:00 PM all of our freeways and highways were closed due to whiteout conditions. Schools closed from New Mexico to Kansas. City offices, DPS, courts closed and only essential personnel at the local nuclear plant and hospitals asked to try and report. Office of Emergency management telling people to be sure they have water drawn in empty milk cartoons in the event of power failures and be sure flashlights are handy.

One young woman emailed that she had called, told this idiot woman that she was not going to leave small children at home alone in the midst of a dangerous storm , if he could get through the five foot drift blocking her garage. She was told she would have to take a vacation day. My emailer does not have vacation days available. When she told the manager she had no vacation the manager told her that was not the manager's problem, but my emailer would have an attendance occurrence in her personnel file sice she was not at work. The manager was told that the snowplows had been pulled out of service because they could not keep up with the blowing snow and we have hurricane winds at the airport with the airport closed.

Now AT&T, if you happen to pick up this post, I have a question. Do you really empower your managers of sales call centers to demand that 75 people put their lives at risk to come to work when the police are insisting that people stay off the streets because there are only two emergency units running, trying to reach stranded people or people in crisis who need to be transported to the hospital.

Further, AT&T why is this person with no common sense being allowed to threaten people with discipline that might result in a job loss when a city of 200,000 people is for all intents and purposes shut completely down. Is there not one person in your Dallas office with enough sense to call this lunatic and terminate her over the phone before she intimidates someone into trying to get to work for fear of losing their job and instead loses their life.

Wake up AT&T the conditions here are on the national news and it is getting worse by the minute. Fire this lunatic. We have 17 inches of now and winds at 52 miles an hour. For the record, I have advised these people to call their union rep, your internal complaint line, the PUC and. Labor lawyer..not necessarily in that order.

But most of all, I have advised these people to use their own good sense, listen to local authorities and above all do not leave their homes.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on February 27, 2013 at 12:43pm: This is "bubba" country around here. When we have a snow every bubba with a four wheel drive pickup thinks they have to get out in it. This time the "bubbas" got themselves stuck right up to their gun racks and their "jesus saves" window decals. The story emerged from one very frustrated DPS officer who had to dig bubba out. Seems after an hour of digging he looked at this guy and said, "ok, bubba, now let me tell you what jesus would do. He would take his big ass and his big ass truck home before he derailed a snow plow and he would get that dog out of the back of that truck in this weather before he caught an animal cruelty charge."

I guess it's the code of the west that the bubbas have to do it but this time bubba got busted.

Comment by Valentino Martinez on February 27, 2013 at 7:57pm: Sandra, the supervisor in question here is in trouble for ordering employees into life-threatening conditions; her supervisor is also in trouble for not intervening and countermanding the original supervisor’s direction based on dire weather conditions; and senior executive management are also culpable for “after-action” results, i.e., personal injury, damage to POVs, etc., based on those orders for employees to report to work in validated “significant unsafe travel & road conditions”.

I understand from commentary in the Amarillo Globe-News ,by Dividend 02/25/13 - 06:24 pm(http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news/2013-02-25/blizzard-buries-tex... ), that of the 75 employees ordered to report to work or suffer penalties, only four reported – and after the two hours it took for them to get to work – “they were sent home at noon”. Suggesting that 71 employees decided life and limb and child safety trumps AT&T nonsense orders – and refused to report to work at their Call Center.

I suspect the fallout within the AT&T employee population, local to Amarillo, Texas & nationally, will be in support of their fellow employees who refused to report to work in such life-threatening weather conditions. So not only has the bad press begun thanks to this frontline manager’s bad decision representing AT&T – the event has stirred their rank-and-file and is reverberating with customers, consumers and the general public.

Your outrage in this matter and alert to the recruiting community is important because we should be cognizant of employers and their managers who uphold and/or defend practices that are contrary to employee safety and good common sense.

With luck hopefully those four AT&T employees who reported to work made it back home safely -- and completely avoided running into the Bubba's out there doing brodies in the yellow snow.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on February 27, 2013 at 9:03pm: Good to know Valentino, what is your source so I cn pass it on. I had not read the comments in the paper but I got almost the same information from some of the people who had contacted me when they were again told to report yesterday. I have not heard any reports about the four who reported except that one was the local union president. I thought that a bit strange but there were a lot of Facebook posts saying they needed a new union pres.

Stupidity always irritates me but stupidity that jeapordizes the health or safety of a person or an animal makes me madder than the fires of hell. When a stupid person in a position of power uses that power destructively putting people at risk I would relish seeing them fired, sued, and publically excoriated.

Comment by Will Thomson on February 27, 2013 at 9:31pm: I am late to the game reading this. It amazes me that in Amarillo you are having the worst storm since 1903 and in Austin our grass is turning green and it is 75 in the afternoons. Stay safe!

Comment by Sandra McCartt on February 27, 2013 at 10:34pm: This is Amarillo, if you don't like the weather hang around for six hours it will change. On Sunday afternoon at 4:00 PM while I was frantically hanging extra water buckets and piling hay in stalls to get horses set for this mess it was 68 degrees and sunny. When I headed back to the city at 5:00 it was 28 degrees, 40 mile an hour wind and blue/black clouds.

Comment by Valentino Martinez on February 28, 2013 at 12:43am: My source would be a company Personnel Policy Manual that has sections addressing Training & Safety with subtitles, Safety Program Policy & General Safety Rules and Precautions. AT&T’s Paid Time-Off Policy (I didn’t find anything more current than 2007 but all companies keep such policies handy and current) speaks to Re: 5-5 Employee Responsibility and 5-6 Supervisor Responsibility, page 25 (http://www.cwa3407.org/CWALocal3407/Education_files/attpaidoff.pdf).

This AT&T policy manual outlines to the supervisor’s responsibility to see that each employee take their vacation and personal days off. However, it makes no mention of emergency situations like for taking paid time off due to a record setting blizzard. That direction will come from the HR Policy Manual. My HR Problem Solving Handbook does emphasize that “management must focus on a style of leadership and interaction to individuals by (based on) situations, and to embrace rather than resist changing conditions.” (People in Organizations – Problems of Workplace Behavior III.13 – Joseph D, Levesque).

I expect HR & Senior Management at AT&T are going over their manuals as I write this.

Comment by Greg Downs on February 28, 2013 at 10:34am: I would tell that manager that he could come pick me up and bring me home after work. Otherwise he would see me when the travel ban is lifted.

Comment by Kelly Blokdijk on February 28, 2013 at 10:50pm: Sounds like someone needs to implement an inclement weather policy STAT. And, not that I would encourage outsourcing or off-shoring under normal circumstances, but part of a business continuity plan is to have alternate resources on stand-by in the even of an emergency, natural disaster or other conditions that render the primary work location or workforce inaccessible. That may mean internal employees located at another site or an outside vendor domestic or international.

Another alternative is to outfit select CSRs with telecommuting equipment for situations like this. Either way, it seems unreasonable to put public safety at risk or to expect (most likely lower compensated) employees to figure out how to plan around mother nature to avoid attendance policy violations.