I fired someone over the phone once. I know. Believe me, I know. I was told that day and many times since, how utterly and completely fucked up it was. What a dick move it is not to fire someone to their face.
Let me explain. I am not a coward or a dick. I wasn’t an inexperienced manager and I wasn’t afraid of this girl. I wasn’t scared of her retribution or that she would pull out a weapon and open fire on the staff or me.
The thing is that I’d been fired once before. I’d been fired in a back room, after coming in dressed and hopped up for a jamming shift with my staff (that’s right, I was the boss) and I had to walk the walk of shame past my staff, through the dining room, gather my stuff while (unsuccessfully) holding back tears and (poorly) answering queries of “what’s wrong” and “why are you leaving?” (You see, I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone I’d been fired, lest there be a mass exodus during a busy lunch shift-later they would announce that I’d abruptly decided to quit.)
Fast forward a ways, not that long a ways really; I found myself in the uncomfortable position to fire a server who thought she was coming in to make a couple hundred dollars. If I’d been able to leave to drive to her house to fire her I would have done so. If I could have met her for coffee next door I’d have done it. I just didn’t want to fire a dressed and jazzed up server ready to sell some good food and expensive wine when it was too late for her to put on her interview clothes and go get another job because that’s what I would have done in her situation. I called her before interview hours at the other restaurants were over and I told her I’d give her a good rec anywhere she went. My reason for firing her was solid, even though I doubted myself for months and had been commanded to fire her by the owner anyway.
My point? I did a stupid, stupid, unthinkable, unacceptable thing as a manager because I was trying to manage the emotions of the employee who deserved to be fired because of MY previous experience and how I would have preferred to be fired. I was fired by the book; the legal way, the professional way, the corporate way. The RIGHT way.
I fucked it up. I thought I was doing the right thing. The HUMAN thing. I put my personal spin on it. I thought my special and unique touch would make the experience better for this poor girl and instead she hated me for it. She ranted and railed about how I didn’t have the balls to look her in the eyes and say it to her face. There was nothing for me to do after that but say to the person who relayed this (a better, more experienced manager than I who was working for me as a server in this restaurant because as a server he tripled my paycheck) but “I fucked that up” and offer no excuses.
A redundant conversation in my life is where I say X and it reads Y. Where I go through life wearing what I think is a green sweater with a kitten on it and years later I realize that what everyone sees is a shirt that says “go fuck yourself”. In Jr. High school I could be standing beside another kid and we could tell the SAME JOKE and I’d get beat up because of it while the other kid would get a laugh. It’s my delivery. Or my hair. Or my tone of voice, or my smile. I long ago stopped trying to figure out the why. That’s not true. I spend many nights awake trying to figure out the why.
It’s just THERE. My Dark Passenger. The point is, in business and in adult life, it’s not my PROBLEM how the story ends. Here’s the price. Here’s my take. Here is WHAT I HAVE TO SAY. The end. I can’t manage the reaction on the other end! I can’t be in charge of how this girl walks through the dining room and whether she cries or people stare or wonder what happened and whether she gets another job! SHE screwed up and got fired! That’s her problem! That’s not my doing, that’s her doing! SHE GOT FIRED! What happens after her getting fired is NOT UP TO ME. What happens after I submit an invoice is not up to me.
What is expected of me is just that I communicate! Just that I DO! Just that I say it, and then move on, and that’s not my style. MY style is to say it, and then brood. And brood, and brood some more. Alternately, I contemplate saying it. And then I’ll contemplate for a while, and contemplate some more. Once, I took almost a YEAR to invoice a client because I could not figure out how much to charge her per hour for the work. I mean really. Did I think she was going to come over and rebuke me? Would you like to know why I didn’t invoice her? Because I didn’t talk to her ahead of time about the rate.
THAT is why I snicker when people tell me in passing that they’ve hear me described as “cold” and “harsh” and “bitchy” and “emotionless”. There I am in the funhouse mirror, wearing that kitten/gofuckyourself sweater again.
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