Have you been fired from a job in the last 10 years?

Smeagol said:

What's interesting, I heard recently most people who are fired are not terminated for not doing a good job. Rather most people who get fired are let go due to personality related issues: disrespectful, conflicts with others, bad attitudes, combative personalities, abrasive personalities, insubordination, etc. There's patience for people who are positive and try their best but suck at what they do.

I have an employee who is late for work literally 95% of the time in a time sensitive position. Its hugely frustrating but she is a champion at apologizing, always commits to do better and has such a sweet, likable personality its hard to stay mad at her...until the next day when she's late again :. Plus she does a great job when she's there, would be very difficult to replace and adds enormously to our workplace morale atmosphere. I'm convinced its a mental disorder.

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On your part or hers? When late arrival is accepted it tends to spread. Perhaps you should tell her to leave early, to make up for coming in late.

sawyerloggingon said:

I don't mean to derail the thread, I think this fits in. I have had to fire people in the last 10 years and believe me it was no fun. Neither man was up to the job but they both had families and mortgages etc. Being on the other side of a firing is maybe even worse than being fired.

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BTDT.

A couple of times, frankly it was a real pleasure to see the last of someone who'd been a worthless pain-in-my-ass for too long.

And some other times, it was terribly painful. There was this one young woman, single mother... bless her heart she meant well and she tried, but she just didn't have what it took to do the job. I let her ride and gave her more chances as much as I could, until finally MY boss told me I HAD to fire her. It was very unpleasant and upsetting; she cried, and I almost did too. I hated having to do that.

But I dunno about worse... in the end, I still had my job, even if I felt like a great big dirty heel. She didn't.

"Fired" should be more closely defined for the purposes of this question.

Generally, when most people think "fired" they think fired for cause. I do. Though a person could be fired for other reasons, too.

I have never been fired for cause. I have, however lost two jobs in the last 5 years for other reasons. One I was a victim of the "great recession". The other was a new company and the partnership fell apart. One guy left the partnership and pulled out all his money. The other guy couldn't afford to keep going by himself, and closed the company... which left me with no job, unfortunately.

Nope. Only time I was ever fired was from a company that was desperately trying to downsize so they were going around trumping up causes to terminate their highest paid employees so they didn't have to pay unemployment. I took it to the unemployment "court" and won and they had to pay me a lump sum. It didn't matter to me, I had a much better job after that anyhow.

radcen said:

"Fired" should be more closely defined for the purposes of this question.

Generally, when most people think "fired" they think fired for cause. I do. Though a person could be fired for other reasons, too.

I have never been fired for cause. I have, however lost two jobs in the last 5 years for other reasons. One I was a victim of the "great recession". The other was a new company and the partnership fell apart. One guy left the partnership and pulled out all his money. The other guy couldn't afford to keep going by himself, and closed the company... which left me with no job, unfortunately.

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Some people say to-ma-to. Some people say to-mat-o. Laid off is a nice way of saying fired.

What I meant was being involuntarily seperated from a job due to the employer's decision rather than you're own. It seems that I didn't make that clear.

In most states I'm sure it's hard to tell the difference. Sometimes the unemployment system penalizes employers for "laying people off" or firing employees without cause. This gives companies the incentive to creatively fire employees with cause in order to efficiciently administrate a RIF.

Sometimes a company needs to get rid of 5 employees. They dig around to create 5 dirtbags rather than laying off 5 people at random. Does anybody believe this has ever happened since the beginning of unemployment benefits?

Cephus said:

Nope. Only time I was ever fired was from a company that was desperately trying to downsize so they were going around trumping up causes to terminate their highest paid employees so they didn't have to pay unemployment. I took it to the unemployment "court" and won and they had to pay me a lump sum. It didn't matter to me, I had a much better job after that anyhow.

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That's exactly right. :yt

Goshin said:

BTDT.

A couple of times, frankly it was a real pleasure to see the last of someone who'd been a worthless pain-in-my-ass for too long.

And some other times, it was terribly painful. There was this one young woman, single mother... bless her heart she meant well and she tried, but she just didn't have what it took to do the job. I let her ride and gave her more chances as much as I could, until finally MY boss told me I HAD to fire her. It was very unpleasant and upsetting; she cried, and I almost did too. I hated having to do that.

But I dunno about worse... in the end, I still had my job, even if I felt like a great big dirty heel. She didn't.

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I think when you are the actual employer it's worse because you feel responsible. I too have fired culls that had it coming and was happy to do so but a couple of guys were trying their hardest but they just couldn't do the work. I hated letting them go.

vasuderatorrent said:

Some people say to-ma-to. Some people say to-mat-o. Laid off is a nice way of saying fired.

What I meant was being involuntarily seperated from a job due to the employer's decision rather than you're own. It seems that I didn't make that clear.

In most states I'm sure it's hard to tell the difference. Sometimes the unemployment system penalizes employers for "laying people off" or firing employees without cause. This gives companies the incentive to creatively fire employees with cause in order to efficiciently administrate a RIF.

Sometimes a company needs to get rid of 5 employees. They dig around to create 5 dirtbags rather than laying off 5 people at random. Does anybody believe this has ever happened since the beginning of unemployment benefits?

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It has become that way, no doubt. I know many people that will use "laid off" as a euphemism when they were really fired.

Now, this is how *I* differentiate the two, and it goes back to how I recall most people differentiating the two when I was a kid back in the 1970s...

"Fired" is when you screw up and are terminated for cause. Or, for vindictive reasons such as a personality difference.

"Laid off" is when you didn't do anything wrong at all, but for whatever reason your employer just cannot afford to employ you any more. May be due to a drop in income for the company, or whatever, but nothing of your doing specifically.

Yes, and no. I'm not sure how this actually works, if I was fired or if I quit. I think I've mentioned that trying to return to accounting after 2005 when google earth put me out of business, I found that the ethics in business had gone to hell. Previously, back in the early 70s to late 80s my job was to squeeze as much as I could out of the numbers, LEGALLY. When I returned in 2005-2008, my job was apparently to put altogether known false numbers into the reports so that it was truly fraud, not toeing some legal line. Over and over across five places, and of course we had the whole Enron debacle going on during that time, and what's-his-face was blaming his accountants, who were in fact the ones required to sign the docs that went in.... So of those five I quit four, but the first I gave an ultimatum. I told him he had to make absolutely sure that if he was going to continue to do cash jobs on the side, with the crew, with the homeowners therefore not under his business insurance umbrella but on their own homeowners' insurance due to the fact that he was not acting as a business at that time.... anyway, he had to assure that I had nothing to do with any of it, not invoicing, not recording any of the workers' times, etc. Otherwise I couldn't in good conscience sign any forms, and he'd have to sign them. Note I didn't demand he quit doing it, though I did try mildly to suggest it. Anyway, it was either keep me entirely in the dark so I could honestly say I had no idea. Well I went ahead and signed and sent in that first quarter of bogus data... Did he keep me in the dark? NO! So next quarter I refused to sign the docs and left them for him to sign, and he fired me. Now, I was already looking for another job because he had failed with my ultimatum, and would've quit asap, but legitimately, I had not yet quit.

radcen said:

I don't think that counts as firing.

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Ah. Well. "Laid Off", if you will, I guess.

ttwtt78640;1062606844[B said:

]On your part or hers[/B]? When late arrival is accepted it tends to spread. Perhaps you should tell her to leave early, to make up for coming in late.

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Both :lamo

Part of her deal was the way she was raised. Her parents owned their own business and had faithful dedicated staff. Because of this THEY didn't have to live by a regimented schedule; just call and make sure things were covered and go in when they felt like it. Part of it is her own carefree personality. She's really good at what she does when she's there but... Her personality type actually helps her at what she does; artsy fartsy creativity stuff.

Perhaps you should tell her to leave early, to make up for coming in late.

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Done that. Its now costing her, a single mom, $150 a month because her kid now has to go to extended day care after school because she can no longer leave 15 minutes earlier.

Fired once at a pizza joint cuz i couldnt "flip/through" dough evenly. Pretty much i couldnt make a perfect circle with dough and cook a pizza evenly. AKA: I CANT COOK WORTH ****

I've never been fired, let go, downsized or otherwise separated from a job except by my own decision

no, never been fired, was laid off 30 years ago while in college, had another job two days later