Cleaning house

I started my job as Director of Residential Care on January 2, 2007.  My job was kind of a reshuffle of two or three previous jobs, a new meal made entirely of leftovers.  It was created as an opportunity to restructure when a guy retired, to move things around that had been put in place to shore up the weaknesses of some of the key people. Dysfunctional systems are in place to support dysfunctional people who are not going anywhere.

Maybe that is why there tends to be a certain amount of turnover whenever there is a change in leadership. Not only do people get used to how a supervisor operates, but the system itself develops certain methods to shore up weaknesses that are in themselves fucked up.  In my inner circle we call it "cleaning house" when folks can't get used to new tolerance levels, new procedures, or just a different style when there is a new supervisor.  Ideally we are able to do what we call "counsel them out of the job", or talking people into quitting.  Not talking them into it exactly, but talking with them, listening to what they want, and asking them to decide if their needs would not be met better someplace else.  This is helpful in many ways.  Typically, no one wants to get fired.  Also if someone quits we definitely don't have to pay unemployment.  Tip:  if someone says "I'm quitting" get it in writing, right then and there.  BOOM.

I'm proud of the fact that I didn't fire any of the staff that left in the year or two after I started my job.  Quite a few people quit though, and some of that was due to "counseling" or them knowing the ax was coming down eventually if they couldn't get their shit together.  There was some further shuffling of supervision as well, and the two previous directors who stayed on to work part time in certain roles moved to different supervisors.  Supervising the people who had my job before me was awkward.

I didn't try to predict who would chafe under my new leadership and supervision, and eventually have to leave.  Some of the people I now supervised were strangers to me and those I did know I didn't know well, at least not anymore. I had supervised a few in the past or we had been coworkers years before, having lunch together or socializing on the weekends.  I had a history of some kind with most of them.  One person made me very anxious.  I had many drunken flirtations with her years before and thought she was interested in me.  Maybe she was, but when I was direct and asked if she wanted to sleep together, she handled it by asking her boyfriend if it was okay for her to sleep with me.  Unsurprisingly, he thought it was a bad idea. He doesn't really like me but that is fine; I don't like him.  Now they are married and have three kids.  My directness in asking her if she was interested in exploring something sexual was the death of our friendship.

Hmmm, what is the count?  At least four people quit in some dramatic way in my first year and a half or so. That is a lot when I have a total of twenty people.  It was rough, that period of cleaning out the baggage that was awkward or uncomfortable or didn't fit any longer in this space.  Like all housecleaning, it was worth the effort and freshened up the joint.