According to the Labor Department, the economy lost 651,000 jobs
in February as unemployment crossed the 8 percent mark, the
highest since 1983. Amid all the debate about economic policy,
the only consensus seems to be that things are going to get worse
before they get better.
So it’s not surprising that the relatively elemental question,
“How should you fire someone?”, became the subject of a web
column in the New York Times. It’s a perfect match
of topic and venue: supervisors and managers are getting lots of
experience answering that question these days, and the Times
never met a simple problem it couldn’t complicate.
As with so much writing today of a counseling nature, one is
alternately touched by the idea that people are thinking about
how to treat one another better and dumbfounded at how
mind-numbingly obvious the advice tends to be. That’s because
while firing someone is hardly more complex, at least in human
(as opposed to legal) terms, than it was several generations ago,
our attitudes toward it have become engulfed in theories about
stress and psychological trauma. Accordingly, the
Times column dispenses advice from “experts” who talk
about the event in language not immediately distinguishable from
the well-known stages of grief: “Be honest…Listen…Let them vent,
if they must…Let them experience the whole range of
emotions…Consider those who are left.”
Unemployment does produce its share of horrific stories — in
January, a couple killed themselves and their five young children
after losing their jobs at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in
West Los Angeles — so such concerns can’t be dismissed. And our
culture in general has been transformed by the ever-lurking
specter of the lone gunman bearing a grievance or a deranging
sorrow. The therapeutic model for handling difficult events is
deeply embedded in the culture by now, and those of us who find
its methodologies oppressive have learned to live with them.
Besides, the old days were no bargain. Getting fired in 2009,
even in this climate, sure beats getting fired in 1929.
Certainly losing a job at any time is not pleasant, especially if
one has dependents. For people at certain stages of their lives,
it can be the hinge point pushing them over the edge into
despair, up to and including the suicides that make the news. The
American notion of pulling oneself up from the bootstraps doesn’t
always work with Newtonian reliability. Sometimes people feel
they’ve run out of slack.
Still, other than being extra vigilant about employees who may
have emotional problems or are in such difficult personal straits
that breaking the news warrants some kind of special care, there
really isn’t much one can do beyond using his common sense and
professional discretion and extending whatever personal decency
he may possess. It’s best to be somewhat British about it on both
sides and maintain one’s dignity.
When I lost a job seven years ago, I was grateful for how British
the whole process was. That’s because it was a British company,
though my supervisor was American. He called me into his office
and said with impressive economy, “Close the door, please,” and I
knew I was cooked. We went through the formalities, he gave me
information on Cobra and unemployment benefits, and we shook
hands. He made no attempt to acknowledge my feelings or project
what they might be, which I appreciated, since they were mine. I
didn’t care much for the job and had expected the ax to fall for
some time, as layoffs had been ongoing. I didn’t have a family
yet. So my experience was easier than most.
Still, even for the hardest cases, it’s important to maintain
some perspective. Losing a job really isn’t like death; only
death is. (Or as Bob Dylan put it more enigmatically: “There’s no
success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.”) Most of
us will find some way forward. Wrapping a merely difficult event
in therapeutic trappings patronizes the individual and reduces
him to a stock character in a trauma that always has the same
script. Now that, I’d think, might set somebody off.
As one might expect, the Times column is geared toward
those who work in office settings, pitched to a readership
already expert in tiptoeing around social life’s
ever-proliferating minefields. Yet even to such a self-conscious
audience, the column feels compelled to dispense obvious advice
like this: “Treating the person you are firing with respect is
simple human courtesy.” So obvious, you wonder why people need to
be told.
Probably they don’t; those stunning job-loss numbers tell us how
many Americans are getting bad news these days, but they also
indicate that layoffs and firings seem to be proceeding in
orderly, if painful, fashion. At least by our standards on this
side of the pond, Americans are keeping a stiff upper lip. As the
British know, or once knew, stoicism can be a therapy of its own.
