What did the first time that you fired someone feel like?

It never feels great.

I didn’t feel too bad about the first one though. He was an adjunct instructor I chose note to hire back for the next semester. I knew he was an awful teacher so when I became chair, I let him go.

Necessary.

Most times it is not a good feeling. I’ve had a few employees that I was glad were gone, though. We had good rules for behavior and they were all terminated for those rules. As we said, we don’t fire these people, they fire themselves.

Firing someone is NEVER fun!!! My very first one wasn’t my idea & I didn’t agree with it, so I found it extra hard to tell her. I kept up with her through friends & rehired her after the big boss calmed down. She was a good worker…HE was the problem, but I couldn’t fire him!!! Then came the 2nd one & I received much relief from that one as she had been the cause of a LOT of my grief on the job & I was NOT going to miss her. Actually, I smiled as I watched her walk out the door for the LAST time!!! Normally, I tried to be honest with any of my staff in order to give them the opportunity to correct the problem. Those who cared about their job figured out a way to be happy & still follow the rules of the company. Those who didn’t care, continued to screw up until I had NO other choice…not that that made it any easier, but it did help to clear my conscience on the final decision. I NEVER had to fire that many people & I was NEVER fired from a job although I did quit quite a few over my career!!!

I would agree with @Acrylic ‘necessary’. The employee had gotten into a physical fight with another employee (both women!) and it had been witnessed by me and by others. I really had no choice but to fire her.

Sadly, when you work for the County, you have to go through 10 levels of personnel to get things to happen – and I was white and both of the women were black – so we had to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’.

But the firing was upheld and she was canned.

I have known a lot of first time managers, and nearly all of them were eager to fire someone/anyone.
It made me sick to watch.
I had a good friend who fired someone. I know it just killed him inside to do that, but the employee gave him no choice.

Some of you may consider this a stretch, but as the consumer, any doctor I have works for me. I’m sorry to say that I’ve fired more than a few of them. It never felt good, and sometimes they left me with a bigger problem than I had before.

Nowadays I try to do my research and know exactly what I’ll be getting if I hire a certain doctor. unfortunately thats not always possible.

It was bad and sad.

I had to be the witness (2nd person present) at a firing. It was really sad. The guy was trying to keep his home life together but that made him unable to be at work reliably. Nice guy too, just bad circumstances.