sat in on termination this morning

[luckyjimm]

Does termination mean "sacking" or "abortion"?

I am British, you see.

[Dale Dough]

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But in these days of lawsuits, you really need a witness.

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Fill a non-American non-member of the workforce in please. Are we talking American Beauty here, or are there other practical reasons why 'you're fired' cannot be communicated without a witness?

[/ QUOTE ]

[Blarg]

Having a witness eliminates the possibility of some frivolous lawsuits.

First of all, you can't even be behind a closed door with a woman, or you open yourself up to charges of sex discrimination or abuse of some kind. Seriously, it's that bad. "Never close the door" is a big rule now.

This is just doubled when you're writing someone up or firing them. Because sex-based lawsuits are so common, even "at will" employees, who can legally be discharged at any time, are often fired only after an elaborate multi-stage disciplinary process is gone through. Many workers are quite savvy as to the state of things legally these days, and those that aren't, sometimes think they are. From there, it's a short step to ask a lawyer to find out for sure. Such suits can be virtually a slam dunk for the fired worker, as it's much more expensive to defend them than to have your insurance pay them or to pay them straight out yourself. And the threat that it could go disastrously wrong and wipe out your company goes away.

[KKbluff]

Where do you work that DEPARTMENT managers can fire someone?? Doesn't that have to executed by upper managment with a gender approved sit in?

Could you elaborate a little more on what kind(and size) of store you work for please?

[Howard Beale]

Get back to us when you fire someone a week before Christmas. My boss was always too chicken to do it so he left it to me.

[MicroBob]

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[ QUOTE ]

Almost all my co-workers liked me and vice-versa.
We all went out for Margaratias. They seemed more freaked by it than I was.

[/ QUOTE ]

This kind of thing kills companies. If you truly weren't a bad employee, but were just fired to "send a message" to the rest of the employees, it will inevitably have the opposite result than what management desired. People start realizing that no matter how hard they work, they can still get fired ("just look at what happened to Microbob!")

If a company shows no loyalty to its employees, its employees will show no loyalty back. It's a total morale killer to see good employees getting fired for no reason.

[/ QUOTE ]


I agree although my situation wasn't quite like that in the 'send a message' way.
It's a reasonably interesting story though just because the president was so nutty so I'll share.

I was the radio announcer and media-relations person for a minor-league hockey team and the owner definitely didn't care for my style.
Mostly didn't care much for my personality and probably my style on the air.

She was definitely a psycho though.
And more than half the office left that place or got canned within the next 6 months or so.
I was fired in Nov.

Then some guy she was sleeping with was fired in Dec when she broke up with him. A different guy who was an assistant to an assistant was promoted to Team CEO or Governor or some made-up position when she started sleeping with him instead.

Then some really nice girl left in Jan or Feb or so because she was fed up with the insanity and a couple people in the office made her feel really uncomfortable in a sexual-harassment kind of way.
And some other person was fired in March or so.

And the 2 people who were fired before I was.
And this wasn't exactly a big office.


I became decent friends with the guy they brought in from Idaho to replace me.
Hell, I showed up the next day all hung-over and messed up to show him how to set up the equipment because the poor guy had no idea.
He called me all panicked.
I said, "You mean you've NEVER worked with a Comrex Hotline?" (didn't know that was possible, everyone had them by then I thought).

Even loaned him a piece of my own equipment to make life easier on him.

Pretty classy of me I thought.
My game-intern was there waiting for directions from me and I explained that I had been fired yesterday and that Joe is the radio-announcer now but I'm sure he'll need your assistance so stick around.

The new guy would come over to my place to vent (we lived in same apartment complex) and say how nuts that place was, complain about the different people the president was sleeping with and how they would not-so-mysteriously get promoted to some made-up position after she would fire the previous guy she was sleeping with. etc etc.


I turned away from all that gossip stuff while I was there because I really didn't care, didn't think it was my place, and I was professional about my job.

Ironically, the guy she brought in who she actually liked (not in a 'sleeping with' way...just liked him better than me) was running around gossiping and bad-mouthing her every chance he would get to anyone who would listen and she had no clue he despised her so much.

At the end of the season he quit the job even though he didn't have ANYTHING else lined-up.


Currently there are allegations that she inappropriately used the funds from her foundation to buy the team in the first place.
She had gone to a couple hockey games, decided she loved the sport, went out and had drinks with all the players and had a good time, and eventually decided to buy the team with funds from the charitable foundation she inherited when the founders died in a crash.


In various depositions about her character it was revealed in the newspaper about how she bragged about sleeping with the governor of Mississippi in her office to a couple friends, how ridiculous drunkenly messed up they would get on her chartered flights to road games (I saw her and her clique showing up at our games TOTALLY plowed) and that the airline company didn't want their business anymore because they were that obnoxious and messed up the plane that much.

etc etc etc.

It was also revealed what is pretty obvious albeit only known unoffically previously...that her team is bleeding money. About $1-mil a year.

She still has the team and is fighting the charges that she used the funds inappropiately.
They also don't have a whole lot of fans attending their games because they are really clueless.

So lately I love reading about all these embarassing allegations in the newspaper that have come out against her.


I didn't even know she had slept with the governor in my time there and didn't know that any charges were going on.

Friend asked me how I came to Memphis in the first place and I explained that I used to do radio for the hockey team and she told me about this article about the psycho she had just read.

[Reckless1der]

Buck up you softy. Your role was to intimidate and humiliate the victim and your reservations indicate that you failed miserably.
You were supposed to be pissed that anyone ever hired the dude to begin and be glad that the Company can move forward without this deadweight pulling it down. Face it, your department would have met the forecast were it not for his ineptitude. It was right to get rid of him so you can bring someone else in who will do what they are being paid to do.

[Punker]

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I've had disciplinary talks with my employees already, but those were walks in the park compared to this

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he just sat there and signed the paperwork

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Those "disciplinary talks with your employees" must have been real tough.

[hamsamich]

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whew! i thought this was going to be about an abortion

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So did I. Was looking forward to a life changing moment from a hot shot med student who throws it all away on principal. Now my day is ruined [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[Blarg]

What's with all the "I thought this thread was gonna be about ..." posts lately? They're popping up in thread after thread, sometimes multiples in one thread. They lead to some completely lame joke that everybody else already thought of already and knew was too stupid and unfunny to post. I never thought these would become so popular, but they should become officially star-worthy.