Before I start, I want to say that firing people is not fun. If you’ve done it, you know what I mean. I’m sure Donald Trump doesn’t even like it. And for those of us who have been on the receiving end of the boot, we also know it’s not that much fun. In every case, before I’ve ended someone’s employment, I’ve lost sleep. I think and rethink and over-think how it’s gonna go down. I wonder if they’re going to cry, or lash out, or even if this is the time I’m going to get beaten with a chair… Luckily I haven’t been beaten yet. The reality is that you’re changing someone’s life unexpectedly, and it’s a big deal.
That being said, sometimes the circumstances surrounding a termination are pretty funny, if only in retrospect. Think back to my young friend Skater Boy who came and went so quickly. He didn’t get out of bed that day expecting to get busted while busting. It’s always unpleasant, but there were a few situations that make me laugh when I look back.
About 15 years ago, I had just become the acting manager of a small branch office. Someone I had hired was just not cut out for the work she was doing, and she had to go. The team knew it, I knew it, and I’m pretty sure she knew it too. So I went through all the required steps to end this woman’s short career with us. I had the paperwork in hand, and I called her into my office. I was clearly nervous, and she decided to take advantage of the situation. I uttered those nasty words, “I’m sorry to tell you that we’ve made a decision to let you go, effective immediately.” I’m not sure what I was expecting from her, but I sure as hell was not expecting her to say, “No.” I was shocked, and she launched into a hundred reasons why she shouldn’t be fired, and somehow, and to this day I don’t know how, she left my office with her job intact.
Everyone knew she was in there getting canned, so imagine the crap I took when they all found out that she was staying. It was an unpleasant Friday afternoon, after publicly failing in my first grown-up manager task with that team. Thankfully, this woman went home, thought about it, and called in on Monday and quit. It took a very long time for me to live that one down.
A couple of years later, with a few more terminations under my belt (I’m not saying it that way because they’re badges of honour, they’re more like battle scars), I got a call from a customer. The last thing I expected him to be calling about was to tell me that one of my staff had just threatened to kill him. It’s a shock, right? Turns out that he owned a bingo hall, and the husband of one of my staff was unemployed, and spending lots of time there. Apparently he got mouthy, and managed to get himself banned from the bingo hall. He called his wife at work to tell her, and she immediately got on the horn to Bingo Dude. You’d have to know this woman to really understand the situation. Dainty and delicate she was not. Much of her working life was spent in the railroad unions across the prairies, and she was about as rough as they came. She was initially hired by us to work alone overnight, but when that shift was eliminated, she was moved to days. With people. And customers.
She informed Bingo Dude that if her husband’s bingo privileges were not reinstated, like NOW, she’d gather up her biker buddies and head down there to put him out of his misery. Since Bingo Dude was a customer, he of course called me, demanding that something be done about her. All it took was one call to my friends in HR and wheels were in motion for a termination. They were genuinely worried about what could happen to me. They insisted on having both security and an outplacement consultant at the termination, and they were demanding that we hire security for my house. I figured that was taking things a little far (but it was good to know that they cared), so we settled on security at the office during the termination. She obviously knew what was happening because she called in sick on termination day, so I sent the security and outplacment folks away. Everybody came back the next day, and she showed up. To her credit, she was one of the most respectful, polite people I’ve ever had to terminate. And she didn’t firebomb my house.
Sometimes the circumstances are just bizarre. I had an employee who’s downfall was that he obviously didn’t really understand the company’s acceptable computer use policy even though he signed it on more than one occasion. Before I tell you about that situation, let me put some context around this guy…
I once walked into the men’s room, and if you’ve been reading these posts, you’ll remember that I’m not too cool with public washrooms, even at work. I walked in, and saw him, at the urinal. I almost turned around and walked out, but I was sort of frozen, stalled there in awe. There he was, pants round his knees, one hand on the wall, as if holding himself up, and in the other hand, the newspaper. Not just holding it, but holding it up and reading it. For the ladies, I’ll just tell you, that this is an exercise that should not involve multi-tasking. You’re there for one reason, and you should give it all your attention (and at least one of your hands). And, men's pants and underwear are both designed in such a way that they do not ever have be down around your knees while you’re using the urinal. Just as I was starting to back out of the men's room, in one quick motion, he turned around and said, ‘Hey Sean, how you doing?’. He didn’t turn at the neck, he turned at the ankles. You’ll understand why that image is forever burned into my mind.
That, of course, was not the reason he got turfed. For weeks, every time I walked by his office, he would quickly switch programs on his screen. I began to get suspicious, and with the magic of the modern network, it turns out that corporate security is constantly taking screen shots of everything that is on your screen, and archiving it. One call to security, and twenty minutes later, pages and pages and pages of your online activity can be forwarded to your manager’s computer. Remember that. It turns out that he was having X-rated conversations using three different identities with multiple unsuspecting women across North America. All day. Every day.
Now anybody can do whatever they want in the privacy of their own home and it’s none of my business, but when it turns out that you log into your various chat room accounts the minute after you log into your work account, and you post every five minutes for the full day, logging out just in time to go home, it becomes my business. Add to that all of your complaints that you have too much work that you can’t get done, and that you really need an assistant. The most shocking thing was that even after a warning and a second chance, he was surprised to be terminated after getting busted again.
Terminations suck. Ask anybody who’s ever got the boot or given it. In over 20 years of doing it there’s been lots of unpleasantness, lots of tears, and even a few laughs. No regrets. Except for one. And that’s a completely other story.
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