Cathie's Corner Blog

(Published August 3, 2009)

Last week, I told you about some stories my friends and I had collected about hiring employees. I thought this week I'd go the opposite route and talk about terminations. No one likes to fire someone, but every once in a while you find yourself in a situation that makes you either shake your head or laugh.

The first person I ever fired was a woman who had overstated her qualifications and did a great job selling herself in the interview. She thought that she'd be able to learn on the job, but she kept getting in deeper and deeper. She practically hugged me when I told her we were letting her go.

Then, there was the woman who had a screaming fit in the lobby, where she could be overheard by the CEO, who was in the conference room with potential investors. We quickly hustled her out of the lobby and sent her to lunch early. She was preceded back from lunch by a city policeman, who had been sent to check on a report that this poor little lady was being "abused" by her manager and co-workers. Not surprising, the cop found no evidence to corroborate the report. We fired the poor "abused" lady the next day; whereupon she filed for unemployment, telling them that she'd been laid off for lack of work. Excuse me?

Another employee added the last straw to a very tottery pile when she sauntered in 45 minutes late, right past the manager who approved the time cards. She might have escaped termination if she hadn't then marked her time card as if she'd come in on time. Note to self: If you're going to lie about what time you come in, don't let the timekeeper see you.

A friend told me about a firing she was involved in where the employee was a foreign national, from a country where women are considered inferior. The manager who fired him was a woman, which he simply could or would not accept. He picketed, laid down in the street in front of the employer's location, and even sued in court (he lost, of course!). The employer eventually had to get a restraining order against him.

But the absolute funniest termination story I've ever heard came from a colleague in Georgia, who had an employee out of town at a sales conference. The employee decided that a woman on the potential client's team was interested in him. He followed her home, pounded on the door, and demanded her favors. Turned out that the woman's husband was a cop. You can draw your own conclusions about what happened next.

The rest of the sales team, not knowing anything about this, met with the client. The client brought them up to date. Needless to say, they failed to sign the account. The employee in question, not knowing that he'd been outed, met the rest of the sales team at the airport, claiming he overslept. There was a VP traveling with the team, who right then and there divested him of his laptop, phone, company credit card, everything. They only left him with his plane ticket home because they didn't think it would be a good idea to leave him in the same city as the client.

Got a termination story that makes you go, huh? That makes you chuckle? Post it below!

Catherine Bannon is an HR consultant in Marshfield, MA (catherine.bannon@gmail.com). Bannon worked for 10 years in HR management before starting her consulting practice.