May God forgive me.
I have just signed the papers approving an employee's termination. When he gets home to his mother that's the news she will see on his face. He will either be quiet or the opposite. He will procrastinate or blurt out after his mother's greeting: "Kumain ka na ba, anak?"
And what did I do? I simply read a page and a half report, sans attachments, and I served him and his family this bleak immediate future. Of course, I brooded over it a few seconds, but what the heck, he defied The Rules. There is no room for emotions.
How does it feel firing people? I'm no Ryan Bingham (Up In The Air) who can make employees on the hot seat feel you're giving them the opportunity of a lifetime in letting them go. You feel like a complete fool, an asshole, a motherfuckingsonofabitch.
Then tomorrow comes and you forget about the person, now you see him as a person, whose life you've screwed because you are oh-so-perfect, a textbook example of a living saint.
I've done some firings myself. I do not feel sorry at all for the people who deserve it. I actually feel relieved by it. But the worst firings I had to do was when I had to streamline our small and fledgling company to survive the Asian financial crisis. That really hurt. Tell me how do you decide between the guy who really needs the job and the girl who was really good at her job?
ReplyDeleteI never get used to this part of my job. I should be numbed by now with the number of employees whom I've got axed. Incompetence and negligence and misconduct could be a reflection of how I managed our organization. The finger points at me. Not really being too harsh on myself but I hate knowing I could have avoided it. But after all IOH.
ReplyDeleteKL,
ReplyDeleteMaybe this will ease you burden a little. I took a day to seriously contemplate my predicament on who to cut between the one really needs the job and the one who was really good at her job. My final decision was based on what was good for the company. In the end, I realized why we are letting people go in the first place. We are trying to save the company. I do not fire people on a whim. It is always a very HARD decision. But protecting the company means protecting EVERYONE else's job. Mine included. That's the bottomline (not just to max out profit, some employees always think of us like that). Any fool that weakens the company by action or inaction or by plain stupidity threatens the company and everyone's livelihood in that company. SO yeah, I sleep very well at nights.
Too early for correct grammar apparently. Lol.
ReplyDelete