The Firing Line

A thing happened and I feel the need to talk about it.

Before we get to the main event, I want to tell a work story that is related. At one point in my work life, the guy who sat two offices away was a lead patent attorney for the company. Nice guy. Our work didn’t overlap so we didn’t interact much but we didn’t totally ignore each other either.

One day, I’m sitting in my office and I see an HR flack walk by my office. A few seconds later, she and this attorney are walking together past my office heading upstairs. And we never saw him again. A little later in the afternoon, we saw his assistant cleaning out his office so we all knew what had happened.

Now this guy was in a visible position and people just don’t vanish from the face of the earth in the corporate world. You have to say something to explain the absence but you can’t say that he was fired. Well, actually you could since it would be honest, but it is a little harsh and they probably felt that if it looked like they were trying to destroy his reputation, then he might sue.

So they came up with something along the lines of “X has left the company to pursue opportunities outside the company”. I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the first or the last time they had used the phrase “opportunities outside the company” but it was the first time I had seen the process in action.

Of course, it isn’t factually incorrect. He did leave the company. It just wasn’t his choice and he certainly didn’t have any “opportunities” lined up but it at least let people know that he wasn’t going to be answering any email or returning phone calls anytime soon.

Now we knew what happened. And I’m sure HR knew that we knew what happened. But we just all played along and didn’t ask any questions of those in a position to know things. Not that people didn’t talk because, of course, we all love gossip and having someone essentially run out of the building was too good to ignore. There were rumors about why but nobody could really speak factually to what had happened.

Last week, one of the instructors was fired. I’ve heard the rumors but I’m not going to repeat them since I don’t know the truth and it is better to say nothing. I did hear that the firing was maybe a little more public than you’d like which is never a good thing. Normally, when instructors are fired, they just disappear (and this typically happens to the newer ones who may still be in their probationary period). But this one was in the studio when it happened so several other students witnessed parts of it.

Now the studio doesn’t have an HR department so there is no announcement about this person leaving for “other opportunities”. They were here one day, gone the next. Their name tag was removed from the lesson folders (why am I imagining some ceremony where the rip the label off and shred it into multiple pieces). The studio does have a TV screen that randomly flips through photos taken at various events. I wonder if someone has gone through and scrubbed any photos of this instructor which would complete the unpersoning.

I suppose if I asked, I would have been given some kind of cover story. I did see two of their students on Friday night who showed up for party but just ended up having a short conversation with OwnerGuy and then leaving so they had to tell the students that were impacted something. But the rest of us are kind of on a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” basis. I decided not to ask because it seems like that would be uncomfortable for the instructors to talk about so better to just pretend that everything is just like it always was.

And I suppose this is a situation where honesty is not the best policy. Certainly, the studio could say they fired this person for reasons x,y and z but the person isn’t there to defend themselves so there would always be questions about the real truth. Typically, when someone leaves on good terms, there is an acknowledgement so when you get nothing, you can easily infer that the leaving was not on the best terms.

Again, it is certainly possible that the reasons I’ve heard were valid and the action was justified. I kind of have my doubts as this feels more like a clash of personalities that maybe had been brewing for a bit. Either way, it sucks.