Kathleen Doerder has set up a meeting with an employee, Janeen Winthrop, who has a recent record of poor performance. Although Kathleen has met with Janeen on two prior occasions to discuss the issue, the poor performance and frequent absences and tardiness, have continued. Janeen’s behavior has disrupted workflow, negatively affecting a number of colleagues within the department. 

Profile:

• Kathleen Doerder is the Manager of a 65-employee marketing department at Gen-Y.net, an internet travel agency selling customized surprise adventure trips around the world.
• Janeen Winthrop works with the creative marketing department to produce radio and print advertisements. She works within a team of 15, generating concepts and assisting in the implementation and layout of designs.

Back History:Janeen has never been known for her punctuality, which has never been a big deal – it’s actually become one of the running jokes in the department. But now it is becoming a big deal – very big. Janeen has been showing up later and later, more and more frequently over the course of six weeks. It is becoming problematic – Kathleen is quite torn: she feels she should be lenient, knowing Janeen is truly devoted to maintaining an enthusiastic and content staff and is always persistent in her efforts to make things work out. 

Janeen is a recovered alcoholic and has been sober for eight years. Over the past six weeks, she’s had a few relapses. Janeen has been very close-mouthed about her alcoholism and has shared it with no one – on social occasions, she claims to never have had any interest in alcohol and simply prefers to not partake. As of two weeks ago she’s been going to AA twice a day. She’s not drinking and is over the hump.

Scene Set-up: Kathleen meets with Janeen to discuss her tardiness and performance problems.

Scene Location: Kathleen’s Office

The Meeting - Summary: Kathleen explains to Janeen that she has noted increased tardiness and poor performance. Kathleen tries to get Janeen to divulge what is going on in her life personally that could explain this sudden downturn in performance. Janeen breaks down in tears and reveals that she is a recovering alcoholic who had a relapse in the past six weeks but she is returning to AA and is getting back on track. Kathleen is sympathetic to this issue and suggests that she take the rest of the week off and then return on Monday. Kathleen indicates that if Janeen continues to be late, she’ll have to report the issue to HR, otherwise, she will not share this information with anyone.

Two months later – The company has suffered financially and needs to lay off employees. Kathleen explains that Janeen is being laid off because of her seniority, not her performance. Janeen is outraged and accuses Kathleen of using the personal information she divulged against her. She threatens to sue and storms out.

Afterthoughts – Summary: Kathleen says that it was hard not to get emotionally involved with Janeen when she broke down and cried but she had to stay even-keeled. Kathleen says that being friends with her employees is a strategy she uses to improve relations among co-workers. Being Janeen’s friend made it hard to tell her she was being laid off. If she didn’t lay her off, others would think it was because of nepotism. When she did lay her off Janeen thought it was because of the personal information Janeen shared.

How did the friendship with Janeen affect Kathleen when the company decided to downsize?