Getting Rid of an Employee


One of the ways I do these articles is I have a list of essay topics or essay questions I've made for every day of the year, February 29th included. To date, only the first Daily Roger blog was done this way. Other topics were generated by current events, thoughts on my mind, and more organic thinking around the time I needed to write the blog.

The topics list was something I made ages ago as a teaching tool, and part of my reason to do this blog is to go through a chunk of those essay topics on my own. The suggested topics don't have to be essays, I should add, and the writing they inspire could take any form. It doesn't matter if the writing is a story, rap lyrics, a script for a commercial, a parody of a Nostradamus prediction -- whatever genre I think of, I can incorporate some element of that essay question as I please.

The topic on April 2nd is exactly my area of incompetence: "If you were an employer, under what circumstances would you fire an employee?" I think it's best to take this topic straight, since it's of recent interest to me anyway. I'll reflect on this with absolutely no attempt at style, humor, or creativity, since it is an area I've been concerned about lately, and since I should grapple with this issue more seriously.

Some background: My own experience with management has been that it is hard to push out someone incompetent or problematic if nobody else is available. That has been in two contexts: running a children's English camp and being president of a Toastmaster's club, both of which I have been many times. 

In the case of running a children's English camp in Korea, the contract for teaching was for 2 to 3 weeks anyway, and I was middle management. Essentially they could not be fired because of the limited contract time and the inability to find a quick replacement. More or less I could nudge people in the direction of acceptable performance, and that simply could not happen. Performance of the camp fell on my shoulders, and yet finding people capable of good performance worked out in general, except for people who fell between the cracks and couldn't perform.

That suggests one part to answering the question: that an employer have options to pursue to keep production going, and without those options, it's not recommended to dismiss an employee. Those options include finding a replacement, being able to shuffle the work around, and being empowered to fire (the last bit being what the essay question assumes).

In the case of being president at a Toastmaster's club, "firing" does not exactly apply to officers in a club, members of the club, or guests to the club. In the case of guests who cause problems, they are easily discouraged by not encouraging them to attend. In the case of members, the same thing also applies. Both would have to do something heinous to get noticed enough for a president to kick them out of a club.

In the case of officers, it's trickier because 1) they were elected, 2) it's on the president to work with an officer as much as possible, and 3) their loss means their work needs to be picked up by someone else. You're asking yourself how best to accommodate their strange behaviors and talking yourself out of getting rid of them.

I can think of about four or five problematic people I've had some administrative influence over in Toastmasters. Often at meetings they were fine, but in texting or in getting things done in the COVID era, they did bizarre things that made work worse and added a bit of discomfort to the club. In the last year and a half, I've been subjected to one drama-prone officer after another -- not the majority, but that one or two that occupy our time with their madness and inhibit our attempts to grow and improve the club.

In retrospect, I think I was too accommodating with these people. I think I should have found a way to make replacements more assertively to avoid the drama and nonsense they would bring to the organization. I suppose part of that was hoping things would work themselves out. Laying down expectations is not my strong suit, I think.

It may be in my own past as a managerial person I expected a minimum common sense from people that I never got, and instead chafed at the idea of teaching them basic use of reason. I am loathe to criticize people, and that hesitation has made me less effective in removing dead wood from whatever I was managing.

I believe firing someone requires some pre-firing skills of having a feasible plan before someone leaves and stating expectations before firing becomes an issue. These expectations should include a clause to the effect that 1) people should be rational, and therefore 2) people should be moral, and 3) if they have a problem with 1 or 2, they should reconsider joining. 

Of course, those items could be unpacked in greater detail, perhaps in a longer article. However, for the sake of today's topic and my own personal reflection, I can leave it at that for the moment.


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