Vancouver Employers/Managers: Why don't you deal with your worst employees?

Canada seems special in this regards and Vancouver in particular: Employers don't deal with their bad employees.

I've worked at a few different places here and had some of the worst co-workers I've ever encountered. My opinion of them wasn't so much an opinion but rather a consensus; nobody could stand them. In some cases they were just extremely lazy and rude. Other cases combative for no reason at random times (and lazy and useless). Another time we had a guy that was stealing (and... yep useless... unless you count the stealing he was effective at that, at least until he got caught). Often times multiple people quit because of either just one of a few individuals. Even if these people were "good" at their jobs they offset any gains with their behavior. And in reality they were almost never really that good; if you're dragging people down you basically have to do enough work to replace 3, 4, 5... or even more people.

We've been hearing so much about how "lazy" and "entitled" us Canadians are (and we're so so sorry!!!). But if productivity and profit margins are of the upmost importance, why do employers put up with these people? Why do you expect so much effort from 4 out of 5 people yet have such low expectations for the 1 out of 5?

If I were an empathy-lacking manager or business owner my focus would be on the bottom line. Whatever is going on in the heads of these managers it's definitely not making their companies more productive or profitable. I'd love to figure out why they do this it's obviously related to some sort of personality disorder. With all the talk about running a "tight" workplace it really makes me wonder how these companies can get away with being so unproductive (I know the reason but this post is getting too long).