Member- n00bee
- 2 weeks ago
- Wedding: September 2017
Hi everyone…wanted to go anon for this but I’m too tired to make another account.
I recently took over ownership/management of a family-owned service-based business. It’s been a big learning curve for me, and I was brought in by my family to clean things up, deal with some issues and get things on a better path.
There is one employee, “Mark,” who I immediately had a good rapport with. He was polite, communicative, and we established an organized way of getting things done. He has issues with another employee, but everyone has issues with this person (he’s toxic, but has a stake in the company so it will take some time to work this out). I told Mark a bit about what I wanted to do with the company over the next few months and he expressed that it sounded great to him and he wanted to stay on board. He also got a raise during this time. I’m doing what I can to mediate the issues with the other employee and Mark knows he can come to me with any concern, and he’s done so.
Mark is also prolific Facebook user and is one of those people who often posts short cryptic missives along the line of “Its times like these you know who your real friends are” and “Trying to stay strong today”…some positive, some negative…you get the gist.
Recently, Mark has made several of these posts that say things about his “breaking point” and being disrespected, and I know he’s referring to the issues he’s having with the other employee. But his most recent one said “Maybe I should take the advice of my clients and go out on my own and I know they’ll come with me.”
So now I’m trying to figure out how to handle this. On the one hand, it’s his personal Facebook page to share his personal thoughts. On the other hand, he’s basically threatening to take customers and undermine the business, and he’s doing so on a public platform. I’m also starting to suspect he’s the kind of person who would constantly talk about quitting and how much better he could do elsewhere, without actually doing it.
I’d hate to lose him because aside from this behavior, he’s a good employee and most customers have good things to say. However, I feel like this Facebook stuff is unacceptable. I have a meeting set up with him this week to talk about some stuff he’s unhappy with (relating to the other employee) and I plan to let him know I saw that post and just see what he says about it.
Any manager/business owner bees had to deal with something like this??
