AITA For Firing An Employee After His Parents Died?

The poster is the VP of Sales at a software company. A 22-year-old employee’s parents tragically died in a car accident in early April. The company granted him a one-month paid leave, but after returning, his performance declined significantly.

Despite his previous potential, his lack of motivation and failure to meet expectations led the management team to decide to terminate his employment. The employee reacted angrily, telling them to “go fuck themselves,” which the poster views as unprofessional.

The poster’s boyfriend criticized the decision, calling them heartless. The poster now wonders if they were in the wrong for firing the employee under these circumstances.

‘ AITA For Firing An Employee After His Parents Died?’

I’m the VP of Sales at a software company and one of our sales development reps parents passed away at the beginning of April, sadly they were involved in a car crash and both lost their lives. Now the employee in question in very young 22 year old guy and has been with us for about 10 months now.

He’s a great employee and we were thinking about promotions in the next \~6 months for him. His job is a high paying one for a new grad, about \~90k with commission and base so we expect a lot from this position.

Because of the accident we let him take a 1 month paid leave of absence from work and he’s returned a few weeks ago and his performance is severely lacking. He’s super unmotivated, not cold calling, out reaching to prospects for the last 2-3 weeks enough since he’s come back.

Our whole mgmt team has noticed this and we decided to let him go because we feel like he’d need months and months to be able to produce again and we can’t just wait that long.

We called him into a meeting on Friday afternoon and gave him the bad news, he was very calm and rude about it. Told us to go f**k ourselves and got up and went to his desk grabbed his few things and left.

I thought this was very very unprofessional and extremely rude. I told my boyfriend about all of this and he said myself and my mgmt team are a bunch of asses and pricks with no hearts.. AITA?

Check out how the community responded:

milee30 −  YTA for firing him without first going through the steps of describing his issues to him and giving him a chance to improve. He’s been back for only 2-3 weeks.

It’s not about “having heart”, it’s about making a dumb business decision for both you and him. So much smarter to work with this guy to get him back on track after a temporary setback than to push the eject button and have to find and start over with a new person. Dumb.

queencuntpunt −  YTA, generally people receive a warning about their performance before they get fired. You gave him bereavement leave and then fired him immediately after because he wasn’t performing.

Shortandsweet33 −  YTA. Surely this is a shitpost.

gratespeller −  Yup, congrats YTA. If this is isn’t a shitpost well done, you pulled a poor mourning kid’s remaining stability and livelihood out from under him. 4 weeks after his parents passed away. Hope the rest of the team’s moral stays high after this one.

damlamelody −  YTA. Without a doubt. You gave him 2-3 weeks after he came back before you fired him? That’s not enough time to start underperforming and be fired for someone who DIDN’T experience such a tragedy.

If you really cared or were a decent company, you’d find him a mentor, maybe start pulling him aside and coaching him, find ways to bring up the problems but making it work for you both for at least a couple months. Wow.

PennyPopPop −  This is a bs story. 1) You’re the VP of sales and are firing inside sales reps? Huh, ok… 2) you gave him a month paid leave? Your company is so small you personally fired him, but large enough it can pay a full month of leave?

Even large companies don’t offer that. 3) Almost all sales organization will have a performance improvement plan (PIP). You put under performing sales employees on a PIP which includes clear measurement for improvement.

If they don’t improve within the time period allotted, then you fire them. Whose ever heard of a few weeks lackluster performance = firing? This story is garbage or your company sucks.

blackmetalwarlock −  You are absolutely the a**hole. 100% YTA. D**th is incredibly serious and takes time to heal from. He is a human being, I am so appauled that you made the decision to do that. The stress of losing people you hold close is completely unimaginable.

I can’t even begin to understand how much worse that gets after you lose your income directly after. Seriously, I am just so disgusted with this action. Especially considering he was a great employee who you seemed to feel had room to grow with the company.

HardBoiledLibrary −  YTA- There were better options than just straight up firing him. Maybe have a meeting about his job performance? See if he needs counseling? This dude is clearly in the depths of despair, firing him was immature.

Pukit −  YTA. I’ve been a manager for a fair while and this is a horrid way of dealing with it. Id be surprised if he doesn’t take your company to an onbudsman for an unfair dismissal. Where was the caution, warnings, written letters? Hopefully he’ll have your company and you over a barrel.

Edit. Ty for the silver. And holy s**t, who knew the states was so backwards that you can’t take your employer to court for an unfair dismissal! Glad I don’t live there.

RelevantLeg −  YTA, you didn’t even give him a few weeks slack after he lost not one, but BOTH of his parents! Instead of firimg him you could have made a plan to help him get back on track, show him you cared (which you obviously don’t, but still) .. yeah, major dickmove!

Do you think the company acted fairly in letting the employee go, or was there more room for compassion considering the tragedy he experienced? What would you do if you were in the management’s position?