Mentor Blog #3--O'Connor

When I talked to my dad last weekend asking him for a good story to write about, he chose to take a different route than I was expecting. He told me that he ran into an ex-employee on Friday when he was volunteering at the local food drive. What’s more is that this person was not just an ex-employee but one that my dad had let go. Now, we all know how awkward it is to run into an ex without expecting to, and my dad said this was a similar feeling. Neither of them knew what to do, so both just kept working. Eventually they had a moment alone to speak and my dad, prefacing this part of the story with, “I could have handled this better”, told me that he told this person that he was glad that they landed on their feet. He obviously meant this with sincerity but imagine telling someone you had fired this. It is just one of those things that you cannot say without sounding sarcastic or like you pity the person. My dad did say that this person was more suited towards the work he or she is doing now and is much happier with this new position. 

I think the important lesson to learn here is to never burn your bridges, even if you are required to end your professional relationship. You never know when you might run into someone at the food drive or when you might need to ask someone for a letter of recommendation. If you are the one firing it s important to be compassionate and not make things personal; on the other hand, if you are getting fired, see it as an opportunity to start over and improve on your skills. Maybe you just were not cut out for the job that you had in the first place. It is always better to try to end things on good terms to avoid situations where things are awkward. I guess this is just a part of being a manager, though. If you fire people, you run that risk of running into them in the community and you also run the risk that there will be long-lasting hard feelings. It is so much more beneficial to try to keep things civil and professional and compassionate in order to keep the professional connection alive and spare feelings.