Dear Death,
I’m a manager leading a team of junior salespeople. One in particular is coming up on his third month and it is not working out. He’s defensive when I try to train him. He rolls his eyes at meetings. And because he won’t take direction, his results are not meeting expectations. And to make matters worse, he is disruptive and distracting to his peers. Zoom meetings are hard enough without his bad attitude. I think I have to fire him but have some major misgivings about doing so during a pandemic when I have some leeway to make the call. How long does it make sense to delay the inevitable?
Boss of a Brat
I’d like to remind you, Boss of a Brat, of what you can know and what you cannot. It is when people pretend to know what they cannot know that they act cruelly even when they are trying to be kind.
What you can know is your role. You are the manager. It is your responsibility to bring out the best in your team. It is your role to mentor them, evaluate their performance, recommend them for advancement when they do well and fire them when they cannot succeed. It sounds like you have finished that evaluation. So what stays your hand in acting out your role?
You think what is stopping you is kindness but it is not. If you have finished your evaluation, then delay is not kind here.
You imagine that firing this employee will be bad for him. That may or may not be so. The future is not your domain. You cannot know if he will find a job much better suited to him. You cannot know if he will rise to the occasion and change the bad habits that are holding him back as a result of the pain of losing a job. It is as likely as not that letting this employee go will be the best and most effective thing you were able to do for him as his manager because, after all, you failed to motivate him or mentor him while he worked for you.
Don’t offer him false hope if you desire to be kind. Human life is precious and short. You cannot know what will happen next. His story is not yours to write.
Deliver him back to the unknown and let him spin his wheel of fortune. Don’t lie to him and say you still want him on your team when you do not.
If you want to be kind, there are methods that don’t waste this young man’s time. You can give him the maximum amount of severance your company allows. You can use your position to advocate for better severance policies if your company isn’t doing enough today.
Dear Death,
I lost my job doing digital marketing in March and haven’t connected with new work yet. At first, I thought of it as one of those historic moments and didn’t let it get to my head. But in the last few months most of my friends who also ran into work trouble have gotten jobs. My confidence is crushed and I had to ask my parents for money for the first time since I graduated college. Sometimes I look at my resume paralyzed checking it over for typos for the thousandth time and never send it out. How do I shake off this funk and find confidence again?
-Empty Pockets
I really love your name Empty Pockets because it points to a way of seeing the world that will help. You will lose every job you ever have. You will lose every dollar you ever earn. You will lose every career you ever worked hard for. I will take it from you if life doesn’t first. It’s good to start by remembering that your pockets are always empty from the position that I see you. Feel grateful for what you have while you have it and don’t be surprised to see it go because through the eyes of death you have nothing. Nothing but a little time.
You lost your job. You felt humiliated asking your parents for money. You feel like you lack confidence because your resume is not perfect and you can’t make it perfect. You compare yourself against your peers and feel less than them. You are afraid that by sending out your resume you will lose still more with each rejection. You expect more rejection.
Stop. Turn all of that on its head.
You had a job the world never had to give you and you gained experience and skill you did not have before. You are in the fortunate position of having parents who can support you. Your resume will never be perfect. Your peers will also lose everything so they can’t be better than you for having more now. You lose nothing from rejection no matter how frequent. You only need one “YES!” from a good employer to earn money while doing worthwhile things with your time. You can even become your own employer if you can find something to sell that people will pay for.
Having nothing is paradoxically an enviable place to start because there is nothing holding you back. Think about what makes you happy. If you love the outdoors more than digital marketing, or food more than social media ads, consider career options that put you closer to what you enjoy.
You don’t know what the future will hold for you except that it all ends in loss. It isn’t pitiable. Loss is life. Accept loss and you can dance with the ups and downs of life and have more fun before you die. No matter how much wealth, prestige, fame or professional respect you acquire, never forget that your pockets are empty from where I see you.
Sincerely Yours,
Death
P.S. You are getting the Ask Death Advice column Newsletter because you signed up for the WeCroak App Newsletter. We couldn’t think of a fun thing to email you for a while but now we have. We are answering your questions from the perspective of death. I hope you enjoy.
Do you have questions you’d like Death’s perspective on? Send them to askdeath@wecroak.com
About This Advice Column
Ask Death is loosely inspired by an ancient Stoic spiritual exercise called The View From Above. It’s about looking at your problems from a larger perspective. When done well, this perspective leads to transformation of our views on the world, deeper meaning and equanimity where before there was confusion and stress. We know The View From Above works so we’d like to share it with you in this advice column. Also, getting advice from death is hilarious and fun. This is content you don’t want to miss before you die.
If you must know, the person writing for Death is WeCroak App Co-Founder Hansa Bergwall. He is doing his best to set aside all personal opinions and views to answer questions from the perspective of death. So Death may say lots of things where Hansa would have a different perspective. But hey, Death is probably right.