I have a guy working here who started at the bottom years ago and has worked his way up. He showed a lot of promise managing other people and had some experience in the past, so about a year ago he got promoted to shop foreman. Prior to him, we went through a few month transition from when the previous foreman was fired for stealing and I was doing the best I could to manage everything.
So far, he's done a fantastic job at getting things more streamlined, tightening up our lead time, improving efficiency, and maintaining the shop. However his biggest downside is he has a bit of a short temper and easily can lose it on someone if they're being dumb. The first time he snapped on someone, I pulled him aside and warned him that he can't lose it on people like that. It was nothing physical, but "verbally abusive". He hasn't done that since, but he will frequently yell at someone for being stupid or for wasting time and he'll throw in a couple of choice words in there, nothing that's personally offensive to the employee, but they come to me complaining that their supervisor is swearing at them and that it's totally unprofessional and they ask me to tell him to stop talking to people like that.
I still think we're dealing with some aftermath from a "co-worker becoming their boss", as most of the current staff was here before he was promoted. So I think they're just being salty when he calls them out for something, and they come to me complaining about his word choice.
How do you guys feel about this type of language? I'll give you an example of a conversation that someone complained to me about recently:
Bob - Uses a grinder to clean up a weldment, drops it on the floor when he's done.
Foreman - "What the F*** do you think you're doing?! No wonder all of our F****** tools keep breaking, because you treat them like S***! If I catch you doing that S*** again I'm going to F****** send you home for the day!"
Bob - "You can't talk to me like that!"
Foreman - "Just get back to work!"
Bob walks right into my office to complain.
I'll give my opinion. Personally, I would never talk to someone like that, but that's because I'm too "nice"/soft, but I don't necessarily have a problem with it. I've had bosses like this in the past, and I feel like most people in the trades are accustomed to supervisors who talk to them like this. There's a part of me that just wants to tell the "Bob's" to put their big boy pants on and grow up, but I also don't want a foreman who's going to be pushing away good employees because of the way he talks to them.
So far, he's done a fantastic job at getting things more streamlined, tightening up our lead time, improving efficiency, and maintaining the shop. However his biggest downside is he has a bit of a short temper and easily can lose it on someone if they're being dumb. The first time he snapped on someone, I pulled him aside and warned him that he can't lose it on people like that. It was nothing physical, but "verbally abusive". He hasn't done that since, but he will frequently yell at someone for being stupid or for wasting time and he'll throw in a couple of choice words in there, nothing that's personally offensive to the employee, but they come to me complaining that their supervisor is swearing at them and that it's totally unprofessional and they ask me to tell him to stop talking to people like that.
I still think we're dealing with some aftermath from a "co-worker becoming their boss", as most of the current staff was here before he was promoted. So I think they're just being salty when he calls them out for something, and they come to me complaining about his word choice.
How do you guys feel about this type of language? I'll give you an example of a conversation that someone complained to me about recently:
Bob - Uses a grinder to clean up a weldment, drops it on the floor when he's done.
Foreman - "What the F*** do you think you're doing?! No wonder all of our F****** tools keep breaking, because you treat them like S***! If I catch you doing that S*** again I'm going to F****** send you home for the day!"
Bob - "You can't talk to me like that!"
Foreman - "Just get back to work!"
Bob walks right into my office to complain.
I'll give my opinion. Personally, I would never talk to someone like that, but that's because I'm too "nice"/soft, but I don't necessarily have a problem with it. I've had bosses like this in the past, and I feel like most people in the trades are accustomed to supervisors who talk to them like this. There's a part of me that just wants to tell the "Bob's" to put their big boy pants on and grow up, but I also don't want a foreman who's going to be pushing away good employees because of the way he talks to them.