This sounds like a slam dunk, but after a management career of 25 years, I heard some strange responses and questions when I had to fire an employee. Don't get me wrong. I certainly didn't enjoy doing it, but there were hopeless cases where the firing had to be done. However, I worked for a very large company, and the logistics of firing someone were even more bothersome than the act of termination itself.

I had to document every little infraction on the employee's record, then meet with the employee one-on-one each time there was a major infraction. I had to answer all questions, hear all excuses and clearly explain the situation. No one could be recommended for firing in our company until the manager had recorded no less than three warning sessions. Even at that point, the manager could not actually fire the employee, but only send him/her to personnel (all right, human resources) with the recommendation of termination.

Several times, after I had sent a real bad apple to personnel for the final axe, he/she came back to the division with a big wise-guy smile, informing me that personnel had granted one more chance. I hope my anger didn't have any influence on our future working relationship, but in every case like that, I had to go through the same long process again. It usually happened within a year to get the final termination to stick.

During the whole tiresome firing process, the problems with each foul-up took a lot of my time away from doing my job of managing a division of 40 people. It not only wasted hours and days, but I resented being forced by company policy to give that person three or four chances to keep fouling up again. The disruption always hurt my relationships with the other employees who were doing their work well.

Does the a professional foul-up really deserve an explanation? Of course. Inevitably the culprit had the guts to ask me during our third or fourth one-on-one session why I was firing him/her. I often had a tough time keeping my temper from exploding.

However, whatever the reason for firing an employee, it is the duty of the manager to explain why. Maybe I can list some of the most frequent reasons I had to give when I got the "why me" whine:

1. Your quality and/or quantity of work is below standard, and has not improved since our last three interviews.
2. You have too many unexplained absences. Fortunately, there was a strict company numeric policy I could cite.
3. You are disruptive and unruly. I remember one guy who kept wandering around the building during work hours hitting on women employees. Even before the era of ERA, this was unacceptable both because of missed work and the offensive messing with a ms or mrs.
4. You are constantly defiant, combative and uncooperative with your supervisor and/or manager. Belligerence and battling are unacceptable. Attitude is just as disruptive as wandering away from work. The Navy had it right: shape up or ship out!
5. You have done something illegal and/or dishonest. A supply clerk was raking off money from a supplier. When I caught on and showed him the fake paperwork, he tried to grab it from my hand. This guy I got fired immediately, because I marched him down to personnel myself and declared I didn't want to ever see him again. Personnel got the point.

In my experience, I'm sure in every case of termination, despite the feigned innocence, that person knew exactly why it was happening. This has to be true, particularly if there is a long process of interviews and warnings before it happens.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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