"Can I Still Come to the Christmas Party?" ... and Other Tales of the Lighter Side of Redundancy

[approx. 5-minute read ... but hopefully worth it ... even just for a bit of a chuckle!]

I appreciate that it comes with the territory, but speaking to people about redundancies and “organisational realignments” can sometimes pull on the heart strings – especially when the person I’m speaking with hasn’t had to let anyone go before and starts to get emotional as we talk through the realities of the situation and the upcoming process.

I found myself in one of these situations the other day, when on our Zoom call, the person I was talking to started wiping away the tears as she talked about the several hundred people being impacted by an upcoming change in her organisation.

“I know how you feel. I know what you are going through”, I said quietly.

“You’re just saying that”, she replied.

I explained to her that throughout my career I, too, have personally had to let hundreds of people go. Granted not all at once, but I have been in her shoes ... many times.

“Does it ever get any easier?”, she asked?

“Maybe not necessarily easier”, I replied without really thinking about it. “But some scenarios are certainly more memorable than others”, I said.

I then told her a very quick story, and although I certainly hadn’t intended for her to react the way she did, she ended up wiping away more tears ... of laughter.

Since our call I've remembered quite a few 'more memorable' experiences when parting ways with a team member, so I thought I would share them in this post ... and, for what it’s worth, bring some humour (or at least a somewhat light hearted side) to the redundancy process.

After all, well before he was President, Donald Trump made it look so straightforward on The Apprentice. Decision made … “You’re Fired”. And in Up in the Air, George Clooney, playing a ‘corporate downsizing’ expert, made his career out of bringing other people’s to a grinding halt.

Of course, in real life it’s never like it is on TV or in the movies.

What’s my number one piece of advice? Expect the unexpected …

Sticks and stones may break my bones ...

It hadn’t been an easy decision at all.

I knew Barb was a single mum but like all the leadership books had said, decisions need to be made in the best interests of the business and I’d tried my best to remove the emotion.

She’d gone through half a box of tissues during our difficult conversation. She was very emotional but understood the decision wasn’t personal. Eventually Barb had walked back to her desk, said goodbye to a few of her colleagues, packed her personal stuff into a box, and I then walked her out of the building.

I’d offered to carry her things but she’d said she was OK. As she stepped off the last step on to the footpath, Barb totally lost her balance. I heard Barb shriek, heard her coffee mug smash as the box fell to the ground, and I heard breaking bones.

We went straight to the hospital in a taxi.

Sitting in Emergency waiting for a doctor for nearly four hours next to someone you have just retrenched and who has just broken her leg isn’t exactly easy. I mean it wasn’t like I could talk about how we’d look after all her clients until she was OK to come back to work. And she didn’t exactly have any more sick leave entitlements either.

I wasn’t sure if her tears were from the pain or from the shock of the events in the office earlier. Poor Barb was in agony. But sitting there at that moment I didn’t feel too crash hot either.

There’s no need to make a scene

I had walked up to Gerard and asked him to follow me into the boardroom.

“Are you gonna fire me?” he snapped as he slammed his chair in against his desk.

“Let’s just go into the boardroom”, I repeated.

“If you’re going do it why don’t you just do it right here!”

By now the entire office was watching.

“Go on. Fire me! This place won’t survive without me. I’ll just take every client with me. You can all go to hell!”.

He picked up his bag and he threw his security pass on to the ground as he walked out before I’d even had a chance to explain the process.

Within 24 hours Gerard had received all the required redundancy paperwork along with a document reminding him of the restraint of trade clauses in his contract.

He returned all the signed documents and we didn’t see or hear from Gerard again.

I thought it was all just a bad dream!

I’d asked Charmaine’s Team Leader to be present with me in the redundancy meeting and to say Charmaine ‘flipped out’ would be an understatement.

She’d waved her arms in the air, then banged them down on the desk and started screaming when I said I was going to have to call her boyfriend to come and pick her up.

I waited with her in the boardroom while her Team Leader packed up her desk.

Charmaine’s boyfriend arrived about 45 minutes later and we said goodbye.

You can imagine my surprise when she walked into the team meeting on the following Monday morning. “Sorry I’m a bit late”, she said.

I stood up and took her into another meeting room and I reiterated that that her position had been made redundant.

“Really? I thought it was all just a bad dream. I thought it must have been the Prozac messing with my head!”.

Her boyfriend came in to pick her up again. He assured me they wouldn’t be back.

Tyrannosaurus Text

We’d had the difficult conversation and Patrick seemed to accept the situation and he left the office.

I’m not exaggerating here when I say that for the next week I received at least 50 text messages every day … as well as hang-up calls in the middle of the night.

They all came through from his mobile phone. He didn’t even try to block his number. Messages ranging from “You’re going to regret what you did”, to “You’ve made a bad mistake”, “I hated working for you anyway”, and “I hope someone fires your a*$e one day!”.

I never responded to any of them and after a week the messages stopped.

Two weeks later my phone buzzed on my desk and I saw a text from Patrick.

“Hi Paul. Do you think it would be OK if I still came to the Christmas Party on Friday night? Hope to see you there! Cheers! P :)”

Don’t cry for me, Argentina

We’d arranged to meet at 8:00am.

“I’ve got a feeling I know what’s coming”, Stephanie said as she sat down. Her eyes were already welling up.

“It’s never easy”, I said before talking her through the proposed career transition process.

She nodded and then burst into tears. I suggested that she stay in the meeting room and then come out to say goodbye to her colleagues when she was ready.

About an hour later I realised that Stephanie hadn’t come back to her desk so I assumed she must have gone outside to get some fresh air. She still hadn’t come back two hours later so I called her mobile and left a message telling her I hoped she was OK and that I was happy for her to head come and come back in the following day.

I had a really busy day and it was only at about 4:00pm that I realised I hadn’t heard back from Stephanie. I saw that the door to the room we’d met in was closed and I could hear someone crying behind the door.

I opened the door gently and she looked up at me … her eyes now totally bloodshot. There were literally hundreds of tissues scrunched up all over the table.

“Are you OK?”, I asked (stupidly).

“I just can’t stop crying so I thought I’d wait until everyone went home and then just leave if that’s OK”.

She’d apparently been crying non-stop since 8am … eight hours earlier.

We both waited until everyone had left the office and I helped her pack up. She was still sobbing at 6:00pm when she finally said goodbye.

The next day I received a hamper filled with wine, fruit and chocolates along with a card that read, “Sorry about being such a cry baby yesterday. I’m feeling a lot better today. You’ll always be my favourite boss. Steph”.