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It's the very definition of real life management. juggling people problems. Look, I wish it were not the case, but once you manage a lot of people, especially if you aren't the one solely in charge of hiring, that's your job, like it or not.
Furthermore, everyone is a problem person to someone else, or under certain conditions.
Again, pros/cons. Struggle with English, but make it up in productivity...why is that so hard to understand?
I don't mean to say only people that trigger that get fired, only that it's the most common non-productivity related cause for me to fire someone. I can see how that could be interpreted the other way.
I'm simply pointing out that struggling with English as a second language is not in and of itself, under average circumstances, a reasonable cause for firing someone. You can, but I would think most people have a fair number of dings on their work ability, and it's expected that they make up for those in other areas, and are net-productive for the company.
I see people all the time with the white-American attitude that if someone doesn't speak English they are lazy assholes. I tend to take "can't speak good English" with a grain of salt. And what industry?...in technology, if you can't handle bad Asian accents you're in the wrong business
There are times when communication is so bad they cannot do their job despite efforts to communicate and work-around. In those cases, you fire them because they cannot perform their job adequately. The speaking bad English isn't why you fire them specifically, if that makes sense. Of course if it's your business, do what you will!
The OP stated that the employee that can't understand spanish is not doing the job he needs that person to do.
The fact that the person does not understand English is the problem.
I think the trick is to not hire problem people in the first place. I do not think if the person speaks another language is any problem at all if it doesn't affect their job performance.