Time to Let Go

So it is time to let go.. of a staff member the other day.

I've had a hand in hiring a number of people - the psychic rewards are nice, but sometimes you have to experience the flip side of it.

It is never easy to fire someone. If it were easy, then that means that you made a horrendous mistake in the hiring process. This person was relatively nice and all, maybe a bit too pushy, using her age and the cultural deference towards such, to bully some of the younger co-workers. But she didn't cut it at her job - didn't learn and didn't improve, so we had to let her go.

I tried to do the professional thing by telling her privately, giving her time to digest and ask questions, and time alone. Also gave her ample time to transfer her work to co-workers before leaving at the end of the week.

I headed off to a meeting and came back to find that she flew the coop, collected all her pay, including pay for the next few days for which she wouldn't show up, and, most egregiously, deleted all the work product that she produced.

I was basically flabbergasted. This person got a job through a recommendation from a current manager - a cousin or in-law or some such - so that manager pretty much screwed the pooch on this one.

The deleted computer files was more of an annoyance than anything, after all, she was let go because her work product was severely deficient, but man, that'll teach me. Next time I fire someone, it'll be with ruthless corporate precision - lockdown of computers, 15 minutes of supervised clean up of their work space, security will escort them out, the whole nine yards. It's a shame really, but as the saying goes, fool me once...