
From Your HR Director:
Getting Crappy Employees to Quit so You Don’t Have to Fire Them
Firing people, while fun, typically costs your organization money, especially as it gets increasingly difficult to contest their unemployment. How can you cheaply rid yourself of your admin who can’t type? Or the engineer who can’t read a CAD drawing? The woman whose perfume you hate, the guy whose breath smells like the ass-end of a skunk-sprayed dog, or the grown-ass woman who giggles like a middle grader?
Unfortunately, convincing the chaff to self-select for the ranks of the unemployed isn’t as simple as you might believe. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for driving out the worst your company has to offer. But all of them can be driven out. You just have to make them miserable enough, in ways that are legal.
GENERAL TECHNIQUES
Favoritism is iconic in its ability to enrage people. You can flip the script and practice least-favoritism: give whoever you want to quit ALL the work. Load them up while giving other people free time to focus on social causes, their kid’s school play, extended lunchtimes, their health, or some other nonsense. Even employees with the best work ethic will be hard-pressed not to be resentful when confronted with colossally unequal workloads.
Giving employees work well below their abilities is another favorite. It’s best to give this kind of assignment in person. It is much easier to convey condescension in person than through email. Make sure they know that you don’t have any confidence in them and that nothing can change your perception. Backhanded compliments go a long way toward convincing the undesirables to take their first step out the front door.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is giving your please-quit-now people assignments far beyond their knowledge skill sets. Also, keep them confused about what you want. Make sure that they constantly must ask you or their co-workers for help. Demean when possible, insinuating that their assignment could be done by a college freshman. Be brutal in your assessments. Finally, never let the project end. If there’s an end in sight, it gives your employee hope. You must dash all hope!
Take credit for their work, while also making sure to blame them for your mistakes. This is an oldie, but a goodie, and for good reason. Nobody likes a credit hog or a boss that shifts blame.
You can crank this technique up a notch and give terrible suggestions during revisions. Then, when the why-are-you-still-here employee incorporates those suggestions into their work, tear the work apart at a big meeting full of important people.
If there’s one thing employees hate worse than a boss basking in the accolades resultant from their hard work, it’s when a boss lays the blame on his or her employees for their own terrible ideas. Hatred means frustration and high enough frustration will eventually be the catalyst to new job seeking.
Another good all-purpose method for running off your showed-up-again-today-huh? employees is to shut down any suggestion or idea they bring. Tell them that someone else already thought of that idea. Insinuate that their suggestion is ridiculous. Or you can just tell them, “I don’t think so,” without giving any justification. Make sure to include some demeaning eyerolls.
Micromanage the lousy employees you hope call in dead. Make nitpicky changes to their work. Require constant updates. Offer constant, often contradictory, guidance. This is an especially helpful technique with the self-confident types of incompetents on your staff. Nobody who thinks they know what they’re doing likes to have their work second-guessed. This method works wonders in conjunction with credit-hogging and blame-laying.
For the less confident worker: Don’t manage them at all. Never offer help, guidance or solutions of any kind. Let them wander in the dark, ignorant and slowly beginning to question their value as a human being. Occasionally you may have an employee commit suicide, but that’s only a problem if they do it on company premises. Either way, you won’t be on the hook for paying unemployment.
TECHNIQUES SPECIFIC TO MILLENNIALS
A fantastic way to convince the youngest of your crummy employees to quit is through creative project management.
Assign an employee an intensive, detail-heavy project. The kind of assignment that they’ll be forced to live, eat, breathe, and shit for weeks. Then, when they send you project updates, send one-word responses or no response at all.
In face-to-face meetings, do not ask any questions regarding the project. Nod along in feigned interest, but never make eye contact. Make it clear through your body language that you consider the project slightly less important than choosing that morning’s flavor of coffee pod.
This technique is solid for most employees, but especially useful with millennials. They’re (in this case, conveniently) needy, so that if you don’t demonstrate the proper absorption in the brilliance of their project, they’ll just wander off.
TECHNIQUES SPECIFIC TO GENERATION X
Members of Generation X are tough nuts to crack. They’ll put up with low pay, mindless work, and a generally terrible working environment. Luckily, when it comes to making a Gen Xer want to leave, there’s one sure-fire method: feign incompetence.
There’s nothing that a Gen Xer hates more than working for someone they believe is incompetent.
Ask them for help attaching a file to an email. Misuse lots of business jargon whenever you talk to them. Or better yet, force them to rewrite reports multiple times, ensuring that the final draft reads almost precisely the same as did the first did.
Hiring mistakes happen to the best of us. Using these techniques will help you rid yourself of these accidental employees, while also saving on unemployment payouts. As an added bonus, you can enjoy crushing the hopes and dreams of your (soon-to-be-former) employees using these passive-aggressive methods.
