Well kudos to you Mindy! I know it's only been short term but it seems like a good turn around has occurred with a great manager at the helm (and that would be you). Listening to his troubles --- sounds as if you've been treating him like a person and part of the team rather than someone who works for the company. Good move. I hope everything works out in the long run :)

Update. He is still with us. I talked with him about his behavior. Our team all agreed to not discuss their personal business with him.

We've been paying him a lot of attention, taking him to lunch with us, listening to his troubles. He's actually smiling a lot more. He's stopped complaining about the other employees (we would ignore it anyway).

He has previous long-term employment with another company and is a great worker.

So far, so good. It's been about a month. Lots of mentoring on my part.

Just re-read your post, your property manager wants you to fire him. Is he still there?

No respect for anyone or for the company he works for. The lying was addressed, he still does it and the tactic is to ignore it. He knows company policies, violates them and nothing is said about it. All I can say is not doing anything about it is the same as condoning it.

As a side note, as far as material orders, create an extra approval tier with HD. When an order is phoned in or entered online, it first has to be authorized (i.e. by you) before it will ship.

For what it's worth - I'm in the same boat. Have one that feels he's above it all, believes he creates schedules and decides what work he will and won't do, has started conflicts with other maintenance personnel as well as "tattling" on them. He tried to bait me and that didn't work out well for him at all. Regardless of whether or not "I put him in his place" he's taking too much energy from a good team. And while he's a highly skilled tech, background of commercial plumber, held a GC license for many years, does an exceptionally good job on construction related work he's just too difficult to work with so yes he will be leaving. Stop worrying about being able to replace this tech, you will.

Why on earth would you ignore an employee's bad behavior?? Call me cynical, but someone who has that much questionable behavior going on... it's going to get much worse, not better. He has keys that you were unaware of. He purchased personal items without permission. Can you honestly say he won't outright steal from the company - or worse - your residents?

No. His having his own key is not right. Fire him. He may be doing a lot of things on the property without your or your manager's knowledge and he is a liability to your company. People who tell lies about upper management without any bit of truth are not to be trusted and will never gain your trust. Trust is the cornerstone of a relationship. Cut him loose now.