RE: FWD: What to do about a recommendation?

["technical writing plus" <doc-x -at- earthlink -dot- net>]

With Al, and Ken, and Jonathan. The person should have been kept apprised of
the situation all along. Anyway, now what do you do? Well, I suppose that
there must be some (fairly) or (somewhat) or even (outstanding) positive
aspect of the contractor's work, otherwise you wouldn't have wanted to keep
him or her on the project. Maybe this kind of thing is small. Yet, I suppose
that it must be there, in the work product. Focus on that, and after
analyzing it you can still fill in the box that says 'will not hire again'.
If you really want to, that is.
  There's also the idea that the contractor's work was indeed up to snuff
and that the problem mentioned by the poster was that there was some kind of
interpersonal relationship thing, or a communication problem, that arised
out of the contractor's presence that the poster does not know of. Jim Jones

-----Original Message-----
Forwarded anonymously on request. Please reply to the list.

     ***********************************************************
     We hired a contractor several months ago.  We weren't unhappy
     enough to fire the person, but we also weren't happy enough that
     we'd hire them again.  We made a tactical decision not to try to
     address the person's shortcomings with them.  We thought that would
     require too much time, and we'd make better progress on the project
     if we just worked around the problems with the contractor.
     Unfortunately, since we haven't told them about the issues that we
     see, and we are also about to deliver the project on schedule, the
     person now wants to use me as a reference.  So what do I tell the
     person?
     *  No, with no explanation
     *  No, because I wouldn't be able to give you a good reference
     *  Yes, with no explanation
     *  Yes, but it won't be a _good_ reference
     *  Some other option I haven't thought of
     Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

   THis is a classic case of you should have been upfront with this
   person all along.  Since you never told him/her there were any
   problems, this poor sap was led to believe that you were really happy
   with their work.  Now that he/her asks you if you can be used as a
   reference, are you going to tell this person "no, 'cause you suck as a
   writer"? .. Al

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