Your buddy really is in jail…

OK, this one is for employees who incessantly whine and moan when a colleague is fired. “It’s that big bad mean company screwing the little guy again.” Oh please!

News you can use folks: Your company doesn’t typically fire people for no reason. It’s risky and costly. It’s been my experience that 99% of the time, when someone is fired (and particularly when you have an empowered HR staff who knows what they are doing) it’s for a damned good reason. You just don’t get to know what that reason is. Privacy laws and other reasons prevent us from telling you. So get over your victim syndrome and realize that most likely the guy deserved to be fired. 

We weren’t being mean when -

• We fired an employee because he didn’t show up for work. He was in jail. He couldn’t come to work. For like 6 months. Yeah, that’s right, jail.
• We fired an employee because he exposed his penis to a customer on the elevator. We frown on that stuff folks.
• We fired an employee because he shared with his boss that he intended to punch a co-worker. Excuse us for looking out for your safety.
• We fired an employee for using his company credit card to purchase porn and pay for 1-800 sex phone conversations. Nice wholesome stuff.
• We fired an employee for sending confidential company documents to competitors. We’d like to keep the company afloat and you in a job – so please don’t feel too sorry for this guy.
• We fired an employee for pissing off client after client. I know that you liked the employee and that you spent time partying with him. But listen folks, the guy was impacting the  bottom line in a bad way – and we really don’t want to do layoffs because we are losing too many clients.

So get a clue. When we don’t tell you why someone was fired it’s usually because there are privacy issues or out of respect for that person. Stop blaming the company.