Employment: Firing Stories

[Timber Loftis]

The ABA asked attorneys for employment firing war stories, and this is what they got:

I am an in-house lawyer for a large corporation. A few years ago, a human resources staffer and I were assigned the unpleasant task of firing an employee with a long history of performance problems. When asked to come to a meeting at human resources, the employee apparently knew her time with the company was over. She brought a wicker purse to the meeting and set it on the floor. Each time I spoke to her from one side of a desk, she would quietly move the purse to my side with her foot. When the HR employee spoke, she would push the purse to his side of the desk.

After a few minutes of this, I asked whether she was recording our conversation. She became very flustered, jumped up, told me to go to hell and went for the door. I yelled to her that I needed her badge. She turned and threw the badge at me. It bounced off my eyeglasses (luckily, I had them on) and straight into the hands of the HR employee. That was the last we saw or heard of her.

Thomas
Midland, Mich.


Several years ago, the large firm for which I was an associate had a "purge" which included firing about six associates and eight partners. After the fact, the managing partner sent around a two-page letter to the firm explaining how the firm was adapting to the changing legal marketplace, etc. The only reference to the firings was this one line: "As a result of this restructuring, the career paths of several partners have been altered." Ouch!

Elizabeth
Chicago



From 1992 to 1997, I worked for a major aerospace firm that had been hired to close down a Department of Energy facility in Florida. Because the planning for the cleanup and closure was extensive, we were able to build very detailed planning charts that reflected the entire work force of more than 1,500 people, and we knew within plus or minus 30 days when each person was to be laid off. We made sure that the message was clear: By the end of 1997, each and every employee would be gone. As a result, many of them had almost five years’ notice of their termination date.

Despite this, early in 1997, I called one of my employees in and announced that this was the day we had told her about four years previously. Whereupon she broke into great tears and sobs and said, "I can’t believe this is happening to me!" I felt like jumping up and throttling her, shouting, "What rock have you been sleeping under for four years?" Instead, I reviewed the number of notices she had received, noted the number of going-away parties we had had where the discussion always turned to "What’s your date?" She had received the final and formal confirmation of this date almost three months previously. Makes you wonder what it takes to get the message out sometimes.

Tom
Denver



Many years ago, in my role as an HR supervisor, I told an employee he was being terminated. He told me that I could not terminate him—only God could terminate him.

Rhea
Toms River, N.J.



As a plaintiffs employment attorney, I thought I had heard some pretty callous ways of terminating an employee. During a consultation with a recently fired young woman, she told me how she received the bad news on Valentine’s Day. She was in the office, rather weepy, in the afternoon and she went into her boss’s office to fill him in. She told him that she had just found out her father had a serious medical condition and she felt quite bad because she had argued with her father the day before receiving the news. She apologized for being teary-eyed at the office but thought the boss would understand. The response was, "Well, since you’re having a bad day anyway, it won’t matter that you are being fired."

Katherine
Knoxville, Tenn.



I fired a secretary for habitual tardiness. When I applied for a district judgeship, she wrote to the state bar commission charged with selecting candidates to give to the governor that I was every kind of evil there was—misled her as to the firm’s income, beat my dog in the office, committed malpractice more often than not, was a demon to my daughter (whom I’d raised by myself since she was 4), and on and on and on. I was not among those selected.

Gary
Red Lodge, Mont.



I worked at a small but growing startup company in an in-house law department. When the mastermind of the business retired four years after I started, his successor was not convinced of the need for all the lawyers. He fired our general counsel.

A few weeks after he started, our new general counsel dismissed half the law department. The morning I was let go, I listened stoically to his comments that I had made great contributions and he was sure I would be successful in my future endeavors.

No one questioned why when I left, after four years, I did not need to pack anything. I merely took my coat, turned in my security badge and left. This was because two weeks before the new general counsel had begun, I had been in a subordinate’s office in a meeting. Her office shared a wall in common with the human resources department. Imagine our surprise when we realized that the loud conversation occurring next door was a conference call on speaker phone with independent outside counsel retained by the human resources department to manage the reduction in work force.

As the lawyer discussed the various legal issues, we became increasingly shocked to hear decisions had already been made about the law department and about us in particular. Because of this, not only was I unfazed by my termination, I had already been offered another job I intended to take (and did).

I was lucky because I came out of that first round of terminations without an interruption in my career. Here is what I learned from that experience: to approach subordinates humanely and not underestimate their intelligence, to give out only the information that is necessary, to refrain from fabrications, and to insist on good soundproofing in one’s office.

Brad
Paoli, Pa.



I had been clerking for a one-lawyer office in a small town, awaiting bar results. The news came, I passed, and a week later I was sworn in. My boss doubled my salary on the Monday morning after swearing-in and sent me out of town to take care of a bunch of his criminal case appearances. When I came back to the office the following week, he told me he could no longer afford me and wished me luck.

Mike
San Jose, Calif.



I was laid off on my birthday, which was also coincidentally my four-year anniversary. It was not the usual celebration for me at my family birthday dinner, but I did not tell anyone until the end of the meal. I did not want to spoil everyone’s dinner.

I did learn to take vacations early in the year. I was laid off late in the year, a few weeks before a planned vacation. I did not take that vacation because of money concerns. Now, I am on my own, and it has been 2 1/2 years since I’ve had a vacation.

Art
Raleigh, N.C.



Manager: The reason I called you in today is to talk about the job you used to have. Uh—that is to say the job you don’t have anymore—uh, that is to say...

Response: Am I being fired?

Manager: Oh, no, no. Well. Um, sort of. Thank you.

Rob
Richmond, Va.



I was hired by an insurance defense firm. I moved from my home for what was represented as a position in the "appellate division," my area of interest. That turned out to be nonexistent—one senior partner tried to be a one-person division. I did a lot of pretrial work in priest-pedophilia cases instead.

My first four annual reviews were good with raises and even one bonus. At my fourth review, I was told that if I billed 2,400 hours the next year, in addition to two nonbillable marketing projects I was assigned, the firm "might" consider junior partnership.

That next year, I developed an idea for a summary judgment motion in one of the priest cases, and the senior partner in charge approved filing it. The plaintiff did not respond but discontinued the suit. In my required self-evaluation for review, I noted an ABA survey that 1,800 to 2,000 hours were the norm with only a few firms requiring 2,200. I walked into my next review expecting to be the hero for winning the high-profile, emotionally charged, publicized case. I knew a female partner had recommended me for junior partner and at least one or two other partners gave me good reviews.

I was bluntly told by the five-man compensation committee that the committee—not the firm, mind you—decided to terminate my employment because I "don’t want to work hard," as shown by my "focus on numbers." This had been noticed, the committee said, "ever since you started here." Funny, they’d never mentioned it before. Also funny is that they gave me three months’ full pay and benefits after such poor performance.

Maria
Reno, Nev.



I joined a patent department of a corporation with an extremely small staff. I reported to chief patent counsel.

A legal assistant reported to a corporate lawyer serving as vice president for administration. The assistant was untrained, vain, arrogant and vindictive. When I did not seem to be subservient enough to her, she began to wage a 1 1/2 year behind-the-scenes campaign of totally untrue complaints to the vice president, without the knowledge of chief patent counsel or even myself.

The vice president was overworked with legal matters, untrained in administration herself, and had no time for such matters. I quote her: "These administrative duties are trivial compared to the important legal work I do."

The complaints, I found out just before termination, included being jocular and congenial during a (nonexistent) crisis and doing administrative work instead of legal work, such as getting files, making my own copies. Other unjustified complaints included "being disrespectful of the support staff because they were women"; communicating with outside counsel without "express written approval of chief patent counsel"; and violating various department guidelines (none of which were in writing and all of which were in the office manager’s head).

The vice president did not seek to corroborate any of the many complaints, did not even verify the poor performance complaint with chief patent counsel (who, in fact, often commented to me about my fine performance). Other co-workers told me they had no problems or issues with me.

I was ordered to improve my attitude, but given no specifics. I apparently guessed incorrectly on how to change. I was fired without my superior’s knowledge in a kangaroo court proceeding where I was not permitted to talk, explain, deny or rebut anything. When I asked the vice president whether she wanted to know the truth, she haughtily replied, "I know the truth!"

Tony
Mechanicsburg, Pa.

[Chewbacca]

LOL!!! Firing people, like being fired can suck, but it can be so funny as long as your not the one getting fired.

Some of these stories remind me of someone I fired last year.

I run a small entertainment store, and we have a fairly typical package and coat inspection policy with regard to employees. Every time an employee leaves the store they "check-out" by having thier coats patted down and thier bags inspected for any pilfered cd's, dvd's, and/or games.

I had recently hired an assistant manager who interviewed well, but was having alot of performance issues like tardiness and training issues during her month-long employment. I was informed by other employees that when I wasn't around she was leaving the store and neglecting to volunteer for "check out" as is clearly required and demonstrated during the first day orientation and every shift there -after. Due to the high level of loss caused by employee theft in my industry the next day I called her into the office and gave her a very serious verbal and written final warning at the end of her shift. She totally and completely denied any wrong doing.

At the end of this meeting after agreeing that she would "check-out" according to store policy or be fired, she got up, grabbbed her coat and bag and left the store in the PLAIN SITE of myself and the rest of the managment staff with-out volunteering to have her stuff inspected.

When I fired her the very next morning she could not understand why.

[Harkoliar]

some of them wuz pretty cruel you know..

[/)eathKiller]

I once had to fire a guy from the Halcyon Corp, I said "Alright show me your best penmanship" and he drew a stick-like figure. I then drew a peice of paper in the guys hand with a pink felt tip marker and said "That's you" and left him where he stood with his mouth gaping open