Posting this for my husband.
Husband just started a new job a month ago, he's a librarian. This job has a 3-month probationary period and he got his first job performance review back this week, all unsatisfactory except punctuality.
They pulled him into the office to give him his review and made him sign it, when he tried to ask about it, they said they will set a meeting with him next week to talk more. They didn't give him a meeting date/time or say anything else.
Now my husband is not a bad worker, I know that could sound biased as the wife, but he has a ton of good references at other libraries, and has never before received an unsatisfactory, let alone all unsatisfactory.
It's really a personality conflict between him and the librarian who is in charge of training him (Calling her Supervisor). He's still new to the field and Supervisor has been there for 20+ years, she's very set in her ways but doesn't give any good feedback. Her two biggest complaints are that he is not formal enough with the patrons and that he doesn't ask enough questions. She's been very frustrated with him and rude.
The informal seems to be the customer service way he handles patrons, she takes a stiff approach to responding to patrons, and he uses a more friendly tone. Think DMV vs. friendly barista.
The asking questions thing is a struggle, she's rude to him whenever he does ask so he'll ask other librarians if he needs to. Also, the job of a librarian is to find information, so he'll start looking before resorting to asking about every little thing. Librarians also all have their own way of looking for info and interacting with patrons, Supervisor wants him to do it her way exactly and doesn't explain that way well.
For example, a patron asked if they had the lawyer book, I guess it's a phone book for lawyers. He asked another librarian if they do, and they said yes. He told him they have it but it was out of date so the info he gave him from the lawyer's website and explained it was probably the most accurate. (He wanted to know if someone retired, they had it said so on their website but he didn't see it even though he was looking at the website) so Husband was just trying to convince him that if he wanted to double check he should call them directly. Patron was somewhat fixated on the book but eventually agreed to call after Husband was trying to help him navigate the website. Supervisor's problem was that Husband shouldn't have even told the patron the lawyer book was an option.
Another example was when he was on the phone with a patron, and they asked about something that was library-specific, he turned to the librarian next to him, asked them, and then repeated that information to the patron on the phone. She came up to him as he was repeating what the other librarian had said and again reprimanded him. Stating again that he can't just know that and he should have asked. He should have replied he did ask but it was his second day, he was so bewildered by the whole thing and he's just not a 'confrontational' person. Anyway, this has happened many times since, they're just clashing.
Finally, other librarians have come up to him to advise him to just keep his head down and keep doing what he is doing, that he is not doing a bad job. Apparently, Supervisor is known for targeting people like this, and she moves on when another target comes in. They all also advised him to move to another branch as soon as possible. That was the game plan before the unsatisfactory review.
Sorry for all the backstory, but it was needed to explain the whole unsatisfactory thing.
His question and mine is, now with this bad review, what should he do? Does he go above her and let them know the situation? Would that just make him hard to work with? Does he start looking for other jobs? If he does. does he put this one-month job on his resume? If he omits it, will they see his employment history and call the library? Is he going to be blackballed forever from the industry because of this one person?
I suggested that he ask the other librarians to vouch for him, and he still might but he's said that everyone who has come up to him has asked him not to repeat this info to anyone, they're scared of her.
I'm sorry this post was so long, I've tried to condense as much as possible.