3 ms·
It is unreasonable for me to think that company owners should have the spine to say, "We take the decision to fire someone very seriously. We'll take your comme
by justin_oaks 10y ago
It is unreasonable for me to think that company owners should have the spine to say, "We take the decision to fire someone very seriously. We'll take your comments under consideration, but we retain sole discretion over such decisions."
It irks me that businesses fire people because of pressure from clients or social media. But having never been the boss, I may be missing something.
- Laforet 10y agoHistorically some cultures practiced mock firing as a way to appease an angry customer. This was back in the day when most business transactions occured face to face so the owner should demand the employee to pack their belonging and leave the premises in full view of the customer. Of course this is all for show but this kind of public humiliation seems to satisfy even the most difficult customers.
- jacobush 10y agoEven when the customer knew it was show, I see it as a way of saying, "yes, we acknowledge that we screwed up and make a public, highly visible note of it that will be recorded in the annals of peoples' gossip in this area".
- patio11 10y agoOne reason to like a facet of Japanese management culture: if a customer wants someone to rake over the coals you offer management, not employees. Internal repercussions notwithstanding, externally the company is a united front. It cannot cause mistakes by luck, accident, or happenstance, because the world includes luck, accidents, and happenstance, so any user-visible error is ipso facto a failure of management.
- mml 10y agoapparently this is (or was) a job in japan. companies would hire what amounts to an actor to get screamed at by the angry customer, and pretend to get fired on the spot. rinse, repeat whenever such appeasement is required.
- patio11 10y agoDo you have a citation for that? I am curious; it's something I've never heard of and goes against my intuitions/experience regarding what traditionally managed Japanese companies would do. (Entirely possible it has happened! Hence the cite request.)
- kriro 10y agoWell, well, well...scribbles note into Trello: "Today I got fired, it was all my fault, our poor customers suffered" Blog posts as a service.
- thr0waway1239 10y agoImagine if the customer saw the same actor getting fired in different companies! Is the customer going to catch on? More likely, they will think "Yeah, no wonder there was a problem. This same incompetent dude wormed his way into this company too" :-)
- Bartweiss 10y agoThere's a movie sketch in here somewhere. A guy has the worst day of his life, every single thing goes wrong, and at every single company the same person is "responsible" for the issue.
- thr0waway1239 10y agoAwesome! The first movie ever made based on an anonymous comment on HN. Wait. So I can't get a cut in the profits then?
- gioele 10y agoInspired by the Daniel Pennac's novels? https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_Malauss%C3%A8ne https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_Malauss%C3%A8ne
- marklyon 10y agoI know one person who does this for real estate developers. He gets involved in contentious projects early on, goes to community meetings, offers testimony before the city council, etc. When construction gets going and people inevitably get pissed about some aspect of the project, he gets publicly fired to deflect the blame while the project moves on. Have seen it happen on three different projects in two cities now and, somehow, nobody catches on.
- ascorbic 10y agoThe BBC staff have a term for the way the corporation almost does this: "deputy heads will roll"
- pilsetnieks 10y agoOn the contrary, I think it's quite reasonable.