Shit-Canning: A Primer for Upper Management

Pretend like you’re Donald Trump, and six other helpful tips

By Caroline Kinneberg
Published: Dec 01, 2007

In theory, it shouldn’t be that difficult to fire an employee who just isn’t pulling their weight. You know what you’re doing is completely justified, but when said employee walks in your office, your heart starts beating quickly, your palms begin to sweat, and it becomes excessively difficult to look them in the eye and say the words you’ve been planning all morning. Here are seven rules for firing someone the humane way.

1. Only The Donald can make it look easy with his simple catch-phrase: “You’re FIRED!” For those without hyped up reality TV shows and real estate fortunes, sugar coating actually goes a long way. Try phrases like:
“give you your notice”
“send you away”
“terminate”
“remove you from your position”
“discharge” (although it sounds kind of gross)
“dismiss”

Unless you’re clipping a dump truck driver, by all means avoid these phrases:
“sack”
“give you the axe”
“can”
“eighty-six”
“drop”
“send you packin’”

2. Even better, fire your employee without firing him. In other words, “retire him” (Did you find him starring in an unseemly video?), “pension him off” (Is he too old to read Excel sheets properly?), or “lay him off” (Blame it on budget cuts.)—we know you’re not the bad guy.

3. We know you’re a sexy woman. Kate White, Cosmo’s editor-in-chief, holds ‘confidence is sexy’ as a high tenet (she would, wouldn’t she?). So fire with gusto—know that it’s best for your company. As White, formerly head honcho of Working Woman magazine, advises in her best-selling book Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do: Keep your eye on the bottom line. The Donald agrees. "Whenever you fire someone,” he says, “the result is always the same. They will hate you." So concentrate on the good you’re doing for your company, not on the person you’re letting go.

4. This can be easier said than done, since women seem to have a natural tendency towards empathy. But sometimes the pity party can be all for naught. In We Got Fired! …And It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Us, author Harvey MacKay interviews Billie Jean King. She tells him that in her very first sanctioned tennis tournament, she didn’t know all the rules—that liners are in, that best-of-three wins, or that girls had to wear skirts or dresses. She showed up in a pair of made-by-Mom, bright-white tennis shorts…and was forbidden to appear in the team photo. The experience made her determined to change tennis, women’s sports, and society. And she did. So although Ms. King at 12-wee-years-old was too young to get fired exactly, her upset was enough to teach us an lesson: If we somehow make a mistake and aim at someone undeserving—someone who’s intrinsically self-confident, a born champion, and resolute on getting gold—he or she will bounce back, regardless. (Aren’t sports analogies touching?)

5. A less legendary tale comes from Annabelle Gurwitch, who you might have forgotten as former co-host of TBS’s series Dinner and a Movie. She was all set to star in an Off-Broadway production by her idol Woody Allen—who dismissed her with the phrase, "You look retarded." (Maybe the Donald needs to talk business with Allen.) Stunned at first, Gurwitch bounced back and turned lemons into lemonade; she collected stories about other people’s rejection stories and made them into a play, which became a book, which led to a documentary. It’s less Michael Moore “exposé” than chicken soup for the fired soul. Or, depending on your point of view, a resource for ways to send someone bouncin’...

6. A tale from Gurwitch’s book: “Two former caretakers for Koko, the gorilla who communicates with humans using sign language, claim they were fired for refusing to ‘perform bizarre sexual acts,’ with the famous gorilla, citing Koko's alleged ‘nipple fetish.’ They are seeking more than $1 million in damages for sexual discrimination and wrongful termination. Kendra Keller, one of the women suing, was quoted as saying, ‘Koko's celebrity status doesn't give her a pass for inappropriate behavior.’”

Although you might not be dealing with horny primates, you, too, need to avoid legal battles. Julie Athey, an attorney for M. Lee Smith Publishers LLC, authored the special report How to Say You’re Fired. She refutes the conventional belief that an employee should be fired on Friday afternoon (so that his absence will be less obvious come Monday). Although flacks commonly release gossip-worthy news at the end of the week in the hope that Monday’s talk shows will have hotter fodder, your office ain’t ET. “If your boss waited until Friday afternoon to fire you,” Athey says, “wouldn’t you feel like you were being used to the very end? Employees fired early in the week…have a whole week to look for a new job rather than a long weekend to stew over the reasons why they were fired.” And then call an attorney Monday AM.

7. One last tip: Give your employee a chance to resign, even if your company doesn’t offer severance. “The employee will be more likely to find work elsewhere if his employment record is clean,” Althea says. “And by making the firing easier on him, you reduce the risk that he’ll dream up some reason to sue you. You may also reduce the chance that the employee will file for unemployment compensation.” Although the payout you’re offering will doubtfully be Daniel Goldin-sized (the man named as Boston University’s president in 2003, never entered office, yet was paid $1.8 million to stay out), you’ll at least be saving your company a few thousand (“The average American can expect approximately $10,400 in unemployment benefits,” Gurwitch says.)

And that’s how to fire someone without getting burned.