Emotional Reactivity

Oh the joys of having staff that need to travel for work. Over the course of my career, I’ve dealt with:

• An employee who had a heart attack while performing his job duties, in the middle of a prison, 2.5 hours away from our closest site. The employee needed to be air lifted to the nearest hospital and almost died. Luckily, he recovered and is still employed to this day, in his mid 70s. He’s amazing, and I love him. I just wish he would put his fucking hearing aids in at all times!

• An employee who had a “stomach virus” that lasted for days. After much convincing by HR and his manager, he eventually went to the ER where it was discovered that the “stomach virus” was actually a life threatening hernia that required emergency surgery. After being hospitalized for weeks in Bumblefuck, USA, his manager went to go pick him up 3 hours away because he had no family/friends to assist him.

But this is the one I can elaborate on, for this one is just ridiculous. And of course, like all of the fun ones, it happened over the weekend, so I was met with it head on the following Monday morning.

An employee, who we’ll call Christine, often traveled for work two weeks at a time, to conduct seminars for agencies who hired us. Our sales team was good, and for the most part, if the facilitator went smoothly, an outside agency would contract with us to provide the seminars multiple times per year.

Prior to departure, Christine, who was employed for over a year, called out sick. These seminars were usually co-facilitated, but since the group was so small, it was just our luck that the manager decided to staff this particular seminar with one facilitator to cut costs for the client. Therefore Christine’s supervisor was concerned that she wouldn't well enough to travel, and repeatedly and empathetically offered to send someone else in her place. Christine insisted that she could go.

In order to keep the story in chronological order, you’ll see later on in the story that we received a log of events from the hotel management, however I’m sprinkling these in as they make sense. They’re mortifying on their own, but Christine’s behavior progressively gets worse as the story unfolds.

After the first day, Christine called the front desk of the hotel at 12:53 AM enraged because the cable in her room was out. The associate apologized and explained that it was most likely due to the storm, but Christine was furious and hung the phone up on her. She called back moments later to determine what the status of the cable was. There was no update. Christine again yelled at the associate and hung up on her again.

At 1:25 AM, she called the front desk for a third time to say that someone was knocking on her door. The associate personally went up to Christine’s room to investigate. She went back down to the front desk after the floor and stairwells were cleared. Ten minutes later, Christine then called back and yelled because the associate was too loud while performing the sweep of the floor and because she didn't knock on her door while performing the sweep. When the associate offered to send up hotel security, Christine refused and yelled (again) because the security guard was a man. She told the front desk associate that she was a victim of sexual assault and was insulted that the front desk associate could even think about sending a man up to a woman’s room. She continued to scream at the associate, explaining that she was offended and didn't trust her or the hotel and hung up on the associate (again). She must have worn herself out from all the screaming and after that fourth call, finally left the associate alone.

On her third day, she called out sick at 5:30 that morning, leaving the manager to figure out how to shuffle the seminar around so that the client remained happy. During this coordination, the client complained the Christine was late the two previous days, despite the fact that she only needed to come down from her room and lead the seminar in a conference room in the same hotel.

Due to the fact that Christine was so far away from home, her manager called her to check in on her wellbeing. Christine didn’t answer the phone and therefore the manager e-mailed her and offered to send another employee to perform Christine’s tasks if she was unable to do so. Ignoring her manager’s e-mail, Christine e-mailed the client and her manager to inform them that she would return to work the following day.

Christine’s manager then called her a second time to check in on her, and to explain that it would be okay if she needed to send another employee to help. Christine raised her voice in anger, and explained that she was sent alone to perform the work of two employees and complained that she needed support. Her manager told us she cried throughout the call. She then demanded to change hotels, have her manager send another employee to assist her, and have the company pay for her boyfriend to travel to the site for the weekend. We were confused that she was so hostile when we continuously told her that she did not need to travel if she wasn't feeling good and that she was able to leave and we would send someone in her place and the point of the call was to offer support by sending another employee. There was truly no pleasing this bitch!

Her manager agreed to everything except paying for Christine’s boyfriend to get to the hotel, but offered mileage reimbursement for her to return home for the weekend. While attempting to further calm Christine down, Christine hung up on her manager while she was talking. Despite the blatant disrespect, Christine’s manager was still worried about her, and continued to try to contact her.

After hours passed, she then contacted the hotel to perform a wellness check, and Christine did not respond to multiple staff knocking on her hotel room door. The hotel staff even slid a note under her door, which she also ignored.

Eventually, when hours passed with no contact with Christine, the hotel staff also became concerned and called us. They knew she was in the room because they heard her banging around and voices on the television. We asked our Benefits Manager to contact Christine’s emergency contacts. When they explained that they had not heard from Christine, our concern grew, and we decided to contact the authorities to perform a wellness check.

After the police left, hotel staff strongly suggested Christine to leave, and she refused. She asked to be left alone and shut the door.

The following morning, at 3:10 AM, she called the front desk and accused them of calling her room all night. The associate explained that she didn't even call once, let alone multiple times. Christine got mad, yelled at the associate again (for the fifth time), and told the associate that she needed to find who was calling and to make it stop. At this point, unless Mother Theresa was on the other line, it was reasonable that anyone would finally have had enough of her shit. The associate told her to unplug the phone if she wanted to but that she had no way of stopping incoming calls to her room.

Between police intervention, aggressive phone calls to the front desk and hanging up on the staff, the next morning, the hotel contacted the Business Manager, who made the accommodations in the first place, to complain about her and sent the call log from the hotel that documented each call between the front desk and Christine. Mortified, the call was escalated to management, who apologized profusely for Christine’s behavior.

Her manager intervened and called Christine and told her that she was unable to finish the seminar and needed to come home immediately. She then repeated the instructions via text. Christine responded to the text, saying that she would involve an attorney due to the fact that she was being treated unfairly. Her manager did not respond.

When she eventually came home, she requested to take a week of vacation, without prior notice. Due to the circumstances, we approved the request, assuming she needed a mental break.

When she returned to the office she explained that she was “physically ill and sleep deprived,” while she was away, which was why she was so “emotionally reactive.” She also admitted times where she blacked out and/or did not remember events where she got angry, behaved inappropriately or “caused a scene.” Christine further described a recent situation during a staff meeting where she felt feelings of rage and had a blackout/no recollection of the situation except for her supervisor saying “I don’t feel safe,” and felt humiliated by her own actions although she didn’t know what she actually did.

Although we suspected that Christine may have been going through some sort of mental health crisis, we could not ignore the fact that she was insubordinate and disrespectful to her supervisor and co-workers, and that her behavior so negatively impacted our imagine, reputation, etc. Her supervisor further felt that Christine was not always honest, and that her trust in Christine was eroded.

Christine was given a first and final warning for her behavior in Bumblefuck, and our benefits manager also worked on preparing ADA paperwork and connecting her to the EAP. Christine was eventually terminated for other issues involving her attendance. Let’s just hope Christine’s phone etiquette was better when calling the EAP than when she called the front desk at the hotel.

Until next time…