Company Fired An Employee Because His Performance "Became Severely Lacking" After His Parents Died

"We feel like he'd need months and months to be able to produce again and we can't just wait that long."

Ayoub

• Published in Interesting
• January 24, 2023

Many companies don't perceive their employees as autonomous human beings with emotions and personal preferences and only see them as "human resources." Once their employee stops performing as expected because of psychological or emotional reasons, they instantly lose interest and opt for more uncomplicated alternatives. 

These are the same companies that try to delude their employees into thinking that "they are a family," but the second they need to act like one, everyone loses interest. It's easy to make these claims to manipulate your employees to perform better, but it's much harder to mean it.

A Redditor who goes by the username u/Resident_Occasion made a post on the r/AmItheA**hole subReddit where she explained how the company she works at fired an employee when his performance became lacking after his parents died. The company never formally warned the employee about his lacking performance and immediately fired him.

The user was unsure how to feel about the situation after her boyfriend reacted negatively to her story about what happened. So she decided to consult with the Reddit community. 

The Reddit community had a lot of different reactions to u/Resident_Occasion's post. Scroll down to check out the full Reddit post, and scroll a little further to read the comments from the original post. 

Here's the original post by Reddit user u/Resident_Occasion:

After OP told her boyfriend about the whole situation, his reaction made her doubt how she dealt with the situation.

OP eventually modified the post to include an "Update" with more context about the situation.

Here's how the Reddit community reacted to u/Resident_Occasion's post:

Even Batman couldn't get over his parents' death.

A warning would have been more appropriate.

The work load will pile up after being away for a whole month.

"Workers are still people and not your property..."

They ensured he would take even more time to get over his parents' death.

People won't perform at their best while mourning.

OP should not feel safe in this company because this could happen to her at any time.

They never mentioned that he's underperforming and straight-up fired him.

"Death is incredibly serious and takes time to heal from."

The company made a dumb business decision for both the employee and themselves.

Everyone involved in the decision is an a-hole.

They could have at least given him a second chance to get better.

"Hopefully he’ll have your company and you over a barrel."

The company didn't even try to be understanding of their employee's situation.

It was a major dick move from the company.

We all hope this didn't actually happen.

Some employers are absolute monsters, and they're not even trying to hide it.

OP and the company she works for could have attempted to do the humane thing and give their employee more time to heal. Instead, they picked the easy route by getting rid of him completely, which is absolutely heartless and cruel.

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Ayoub