Monday Drama

I’m starting to not like Monday mornings. That’s not completely true, but lately, or at least the last two Mondays make me wonder what next Monday might hold.

On Friday, one of my work crew members came to me and apologized for not being honest when confronted last Monday. He did, in fact, not start work until 7:00am. He stated that he had been instructed by the Team Production Leader to stick to the story that everyone started at 6:00. I called Dan on Saturday and shared the new information with him. We both felt that we needed to let the Team Leader go.

We are a ministry that majors in second chances. Many people who work for us have messed up, but been given opportunity to keep their job and start over. This situation seemed different. This leader lied, influenced others to lie (coerced is a strong term), and stole from the company. Dan and I both felt that it would confusing for the team to have this person step down to a line crew position. She’s going to start back at our office with the prep classes and maybe we’ll be able to find her something else. We haven’t written her off, we want to help her be successful—we just can’t have her on this job.

The whole thing makes me sad. But that’s not the end of the sadness. I divvied up the leadership positions between three people: production, office, and shipping and receiving. Part of the reason that they supposedly felt the need to lie about their start time was to cover for the S/R TL coming in to work a half hour late. They couldn’t start on time without him there and then covered up his tardiness by fudging the time and leaving an hour early. I had to meet with him and give him a day off without pay. It didn’t make him happy. I have a feeling that he might quit. I’ve already started praying about that one.

It was interesting when we were confronting people about the newly discovered information about the lie and theft. The consistent reason given for “why” was that they didn’t want to “snitch.” Somehow, in their minds it was more important to not be a snitch than it was to be honest and not steal from the company. The trust they felt more loyal to was that of their peers, who would stab them in the back in a heartbeat, over their employer who demonstrates grace upon grace with them. The thinking is mind-boggling.

As we talked about it, we came up with this analogy: they would rather choose a momentary reduction of pain which results in long-term negative over momentary pain and long-term positive. They were so focused on the moment that there was no consideration for the future.

The whole thing just makes me want to go home and make a batch of chocolate chip cookies and devour the batter before it ever leaves the bowl…but know the long-term consequences of that, I think I’ll grab a bottle of water instead.