Redundancy

Last week, I was in Korea doing some reviews. This week, on the way back, I had to stop bye Hong Kong.

I had a mission. And its a mission of its worst kind. I had to make redundant one of the guys working for me.

Now with close to 15 years of working experience, I have never had to tell anyone that his or her job is no longer in existence so you must imagine that it was a traumatic experience for myself too.

This guy who I had to terminate, sigh.. long story la.. I actually am ok with this fella, but this fella somehow just rubbed the Asia CIO the wrong way. Yes, given, this guy is a Hongkie, and given that sometimes the way Hongkie's say things in a sarcastic manner, when this guy first started working on my project, he used to piss ppl off quite big time with his mannerisms. I really had to work on this fella, but somehow the Asia CIO felt that this guy is not "value for money".

So to cut a long story short, I had to go into the HK office, bring this fella into the room with HR and tell him the bad news.

And before doing that, I had to read the dummies guide of how to make someone redundant, what to say, what not to say etc etc.

So with my most professional voice, I had to say the memorized script of "After an operational review of the current projects in the region, it is a business decision that your role has been made redundant". Jialat.

And this guy didn't take it likely man. The guidelines say "plan for 30 minutes". The entire affair took more than 3 hours!

First, this guy insisted that he wanted to talk to the CIO of all CIOs. Then I arranged for a call with this Asia CIO instead. And all this time, we have been trying to get him to review his redundant package (which I must say is A LOT OF MOOLAH!) but he kept saying
"I won't sign"
"This is wrong"
"You can run thru the package but I won't listen"
"You can post this letter to my home address"

Wah.. all these reactions, the dummies guide never prepared me for it.

In the end, after 3 hours of ding dongining, he stood up and said "I'm taking sick leave".

Now the even trickier bit is that today is actually his last day. So we had to make it clear to him.

And this guy refused to leave his laptop behind. "You can call the police if you want my laptop". Sigh.. I didn't have the heart to wrestle his laptop away from him.

I feel very shitty today. So I did what any woman would do - I went shopping. G2000 had a sale!

But seriously, I felt crap. Never had to do this before. Felt that the company could have handed things better like creating a place for him to go, but I guess somehow the Asia CIO is so pissed that there was really no more avenues for this guy.

I hope that one day if I am in a position of power, I will always strive to create positions for one to go to...