We shouldn't have been surprised

(See part 1)

There's a routine task that's rather involved that one of the other managers is responsible for. Usually she does it, sometimes she delegates it to someone else. It didn't really matter who does it, as long as it gets done regularly, and gets done WELL. The other manager was sick and tired of doing it herself, so since it involved the guy's specialty area, she trained him how to do it so she wouldn't have to do it every single time. Well, the manager wasn't supervising the guy as closely as she should have, and he wasn't doing it as thoroughly as our regional manager demands it to be done. We didn't discover this until a few days before the regional manager was due to visit.

So on this particular day the manager who's responsible for it and I spent ALL DAY doing the task, together, to make up for the slacking-off the guy had been doing and getting the area up to where it had been so the regional manager would be satisfied. I planned on having a "chat" with the guy about doing things thoroughly, but I needed time to cool off first, plus the task had to get done.

The guy was in a bad mood that day, upset because he had misread the schedule and come into work an hour early and I wouldn't let him start work early. Occasionally I will let someone start before they're scheduled, if there's something to do. (Some of the high school kids use the bus system, which isn't particularly good, so in order to get to work on time they leave home/school/wherever REALLY early so sometimes arrive at work REALLY early. Sometimes I let them start early, sometimes I don't. Most of them bring homework with them to do on the bus and/or when they arrive at work. The break room looks like study hall some days.) But there was nothing for this guy to do that early, so he left and came back when he was scheduled to start.

He might have also been upset that we did the routine task because it's somewhat isolated from customers. Instead, he was cashier, which should have made him happy because all he'd really have to do all day is talk to customers. That particular day there was no cleaning or stocking to be done in the front. Just check out customers. That's it. No exerting himself or anything. I didn't really care if he was happy or not. Because of his negligence, the area was in bad shape and it was taking a lot of effort to get it back to where it was.

Despite all that, we weren't quite to the point of firing him.

Where is he? (part 3)