1. Do you think that the Chevron supervisor explained his disciplinary actions to Ion sufficiently? Was it the supervisor’s responsibility to help Ion meet the goals of the performance agreement and attendance improvement plan? How could Ion and his supervisor each have communicated more effectively?

Todd Ion had worked at a Chevron refinery for several years without incident before he was labeled a “problem employee.” His behavior became erratic. His performance started to slide. He took days off without his supervisor’s OK. He even had an outburst on the job.
Within weeks, Ion was fired. What caused his downfall, and how did his supervisor handle it?
Ion was clearly under a mountain of stress. His wife had recently taken their son and moved out of state.
Adding to the strain, the boy was having great difficulty adapting to the new arrangement. As a possible solution, Ion was awarded custody for six months. Spending more time with his son meant spending less time at work. Ion asked his supervisor for the company leave policy so he could review his options.
Soon after, Ion took it upon himself to disclose his personal circumstances to a more senior supervisor.
He would need to take longer lunch periods to be with his son, he explained. He also asked the supervisor to sit down with him in the next few days to discuss a leave of absence so that he could focus on his son fulltime.
Whether the supervisor never received the request, forgot it, or chose to ignore it, the meeting was never held.
More than a month later, Ion’s supervisors suspended him for five days. They said that he was not working up to company standards and that he was taking overly long lunches. They placed him on a performance agreement and an attendance improvement plan. All of this compounded his level of stress.