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Steven Cesare, Ph.D.

A business owner from Michigan called me the other day to talk about designing and implementing a legal termination process for one of his longtime management employees who has demonstrated substandard performance for quite some time. As is often the case, the employee was once an exemplary Department Manager exceeding performance expectations without fail, routinely leading change management efforts with dazzling results, and consistently embodying the company culture as a true icon. Lamentably, as is often the case, for reasons unknown, the employee began to manifest unsuccessful behaviors (e.g., absenteeism, missed deadlines, detachment) about a year ago, which led to several coaching sessions with the owner, to try and get his commitment back on track.

No such luck.

The manager’s poor performance continued to deteriorate, culminating in the business owner’s impromptu telephone call and related Zoom meeting with me, clamoring for an exit process as soon as possible.

Predictably, during our Zoom meeting, we discussed standard dismissal components: documentation, termination meeting date/time, potential witnesses, final paycheck details, returned resources, potential wrongful termination allegations, EPLI overtures, severance considerations, succession plan, and so on.

As we were finalizing the details to this unfortunate but necessary process, the business owner’s wife overheard our conversation and forcefully decided to join our Zoom meeting. Upon repeating the details of the planned meeting to her, she first became cold, then agitated, and finally emotional, at us, for even considering such a business decision.

Without warning, she bellowed, “You cannot fire John!” Surprised by her emphatic outburst, her husband, the actual business owner, asked her to explain her resistance to this seemingly straightforward personnel action.

Are you ready?

The wife stated that she is Facebook friends with John’s wife and various other women connected as part of their social media group. She elaborated her position by stating that if her husband fired John, John’s wife and their related female connections would likely hold that termination decision against the business owner’s wife personally, eventuating in her being excluded from their social media group, with derivative isolation taking the form of subsequently shunning her from other private and public forums.

Instead of discussing this issue individually with the Michigan business owner, I guess we should have just asked Alexa what we should do in this scenario, and be done with it. With that decision now having been made, we could then have easily retreated to our “happy place” in the Metaverse.

The ensuing dialogue between the business owner and his wife became “interesting” to say the least. Passive-aggressive emotion quickly and completely replaced the rational decision-making tenor that once characterized the ambience of our executive-level meeting. Potential impact on the wife’s social standing, superseded any and all documented impact of John’s ineffective performance on company productivity, culture, or value. The business owner’s wife then thoroughly transformed the once bilateral conversation into a “spousal soliloquy” replete with thinly-veiled commentary, control, and consequences.

While the business owner tried to return the focus back to the actual business, it became all too clear that she knew, and he knew, and most importantly, she knew that he knew, the die had been cast.

John was not going to get fired, laid off, dismissed, paid out, etc., in any way shape or form, anytime soon.

We can only hypothesize what formal types of technological Artificial Intelligence will be used the next time a serious human resources decision has to be made by the company in Michigan.

What do you think Alexa? How about you Siri? Grok, do you have any ideas?

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