You're Not Scaring Me
I deal frequently with people who are less than pleased with a management decision. Usually this decision involves a layoff. Fine, I understand. I wouldn't be pleased with being laid off.
When this happens—and the employee wants me to say: "You are right. Even though you are screaming at me and using foul language, we never should have selected you for termination. Let me re-activate you right now or perhaps double your severance"—sometimes they pull out the "big gun."
"I'm going to call my lawyer."
I always respond, "That's an excellent idea. In fact, I encourage you to speak with an attorney."
The response is always dead silence. I think they think they can scare me into giving them whatever they want. (Hint: I'm much more flexible when you aren't swearing at me. I may even plead your case.)
Most of them don't actually get an attorney. It doesn't scare me when they do, though. Why? We don't terminate you without consulting our in-house (and, in cases we're nervous about, outside) counsel.
You may think that a decision to terminate was arbitrary and capricious, but only a bad HR department would do something like that. The rest of us have thought through the situation, advised line management and listened to legal long before you are notified.
I still encourage you to get a lawyer, though, especially if you have to sign something. It's for your protection. Just know that it won't scare me.
Suzanne Lucas has nine years of Human Resources experience, most of which has been in a Fortune 500-company setting. She holds a Professional in Human Resources Certificate from the Society for Human Resource Management. She blogs at Evil HR Lady.
Tags: careers | employees | management
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In HR, Customer Service, Wherever
We must see too many lawyer shows or commercials, because "I'm calling my attorney," does seem like the most often used argument by a lot of people. In addition to not scaring the object of your wrath, many times it simply makes them realize just how inexperienced and silly you are.
Great post
Great post -- I'm continually amazed by people who think legal action is the answer to pretty much anything they don't like.
Too many lawyers, questionable "laws"
After most people at most firms have signed the employment-at-will statement to get hired in the first place, they might as well know that calling their lawyer is most likely futile. I am constantly amazed that we citizens have all nationally rolled over to the idea of "agreeing" in advance to be fired for "any reason or no reason" ---and yet we have. Corporations put it all over the aps and the handbooks, and we lesser sheep just sign whatever is shoved over the desk at us.
The HR people, such as the author and posters above, have signed similar things to get THEIR jobs as well.
Curiously, the exceptional folks in our society, those that get individual contracts, are not nearly so careless in what they sign. If they're fired for "no" reason, they have compensation for that spelled out in advance. They're smart. But the rest of us have been too dumb to know that with the "union" of a national liberal government, we could long ago have had the coercion of one-sided documents outlawed. We would be well-served if the TV "lawyer" shows hammered this theme again and again and again---but, of course, they won't.
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