Tradition says the sacking manager will be paid more than the sackee. The justification being that managers carry more responsibility and are required to make harder decisions than those they manage.
In fact the decision to sack someone is usually quite easy to make. Bad behaviour and/or bad performance are readily identifiable. Where things get sticky is in the procedure. When, for instance, the sacker must gather information and write out reasons for the sacking in language intended for wider scrutiny. Stickier still when details – often entirely irrelevant to the main charge - emerge that seem to blur what now seems like a hard-hearted conclusion: in my case the (erroneous) belief that my secretary had not previously been given a good shake; in Avus’s case the sackee had children.
From my own experience and observations elsewhere, “hard decisions” are quite rare. A bit of a straw man. Such that when a perceived “hard decision” (usually not all that hard) crops up it is turned into a pointless meeting or shoved under the carpet.
How about a cut in salary due to this faulty job description of a manager? Or, very rarely, rewarded by a bonus if the manager were able to prove – rigorously – he’d truly done something “hard”?
I have never been sacked. Although in earlier life I often walked out of a job because I had found something better or more interesting. I became a local government officer in 1972 when the County Road Safety Officer, a retired brigadier, heard that I was good at my voluntary work of training child cyclists to ride safely. (I was an avid club cyclist and teacher and policeman manqué). He called me in and offered me a job as a Disrict Road Safey Officer. Thus began an ascending career until early retirement in 1997.
ReplyDeleteIn those happier (for employment) times) I think, on balance, I would rather have been sacked than been the other side of the desk doing the sacking.
Avus: Which seems to confirm the point I'm raising. Given your willingness to endure self-sacrifice it seems you consider sacking someone to be a "hard decision", despite being raised to manager status where your pay should, or would, have reflected an ability to take "hard decisions".
ReplyDeleteI too have never been sacked but I've been made redundant twice and faced a further threat of redundancy which I forestalled by getting a better job (actually my first editorship). Journalism is a volatile business. On another occasion, in the USA, I was poached to a much higher paying job but resigned after four days, having been discouraged by a managerial request that I get my hair cut and that I be measured for the company blazer. Amazingly, my earlier employer, a harsh guy with dubious political roots, gave me my old job back. I fear I paid him back by accepting a job elsewhere a year later. Volatility thy name is magazine publishing.
I've written comments on your last two posts, but they never showed up. Either I keep forgetting to publish them, or they are going to your spam folder? Or something. I'm about ready to fire blogger.
ReplyDeleteColette: As you see, this one has got through. An earlier version of this comment was labelled "Draft" therefore you didn't send it. A second version got through to my phone (for some reason) and also appeared in my Junk folder, the first part of the incoming (ie, your) email address being "no-reply, comment".
ReplyDeleteI have trawled my post and found that Blogger does not like the quotation marks I used in the headline round the word Go., replacing them with gobbledygook. I have now deleted these quotation marks and I'm wondering whether doing so freed this latter comment to appear where it does.
Your earlier "real" comment (to the first part of this post), which talked about your experiences of hiring and firing appeared on my phone and has now, alas, disappeared. If you feel up to it, would you like to try to send it again to Tone Deaf, given that I've removed this headline glitch which may - fingers crossed - have been the stumbling block, even though three other comments did get through.
It's all such a mystery.
DeletePointless useless meetings. There are few things worse. Particularly when “decision makers” can interview anyone reachable by telephone, but choose rather to drag them in from hither and yon, on dates and times that may be inconvenient to many. Meetings may help some to feel useful and “included”, but I think many meetings are held to help time pass easily, usually with a good bit of extraneous chit-chat and, if possible, refreshments. I worked as a maintenance man for a church and had to endure many such meetings under a particular priest. I told him on many occasions that “I don’t think we need a meeting”, but on they came. One in particular concerned replacing flooring in the church sanctuary. The project donor wanted to carpet not only the center and side aisles, but the entire floor - the extra being beneath 80 pews and their 80 swivel up kneelers. I explained to the priest that it would be impossible to keep the carpet clean in these multitudinous hard to reach nooks, particularly in snow(salt) and mud country, but we had to have a meeting. A meeting attended by the entire Parish Council, where Jake the donor, in deference to my advice said “We have carpet all throughout our house and we have no problem keeping it clean.” And so I was forced to say “Well Jake, I can’t imagine that you entertain 150 people in your home every weekend without asking that they remove their shoes”. The decision was deferred of course - and refreshments served to all.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: It has been said meetings have only one purpose, that of legitimising delay. Perhaps, also, a way of giving the impression that something has been done about something else. I was forced to to attend magazine management meetings These were chaired by a middle manager called a publisher whose nominal job was to supervise the two arms of a magazine: advertisement sales and editorial content. Since all publishers had been promoted from the sales side, none knew anything about what was in the mag. As a result I was left to my own devices while the publisher harassed the ad manager. My last manager made one decision: that I should write the minutes of the meeting. I made it a rule that the minutes should never exceed a single sheet of A4 paper. When all the spoken blah-blahs had been discarded I usually squeezed the rest down to a half-sheet. At least I was getting some professional exercise.
DeleteOnly one thing worse than a church meeting and that's a meeting where drinks are served. A nightmare of boredom.
Must not be pleasant to sack someone, for any reason. I was fired just once. I had just arrived in San Francisco, California, and this was my first job. They said they would start me selling over the phone. But after 2 days they told me, it would not work, as customers hang up on me as they could not understand my French Accent. I had to say “Quality Office Machine Systems, may I help you?” and I talked very fast – I scared the customers away!
ReplyDeleteVagabonde: Only a sadist would enjoy sacking an employee. On the other hand, it isn't much fun being part of a small team where one member is incapable of doing the work he or she has been allocated. Of course, the onus lies with whoever interviews applicants for the vacant job; as editor I got better at this with experience. But the fact is some people are good at being interviewed and no good at anything else. And judging whether someone is good at journalism is very much a subjective proposition.
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