In our “things are not exactly as they seem file,” I know a fellow in another state who had an interesting (negative) turn of event at his place of employment.   My friend is a commission salesman who has spent the last three years building a large and lucrative client base.  A few weeks ago his supervisor came and informed him they were giving his position and all the associated residual income to someone else in the company.   He would be working in another area in the company that would never have the income potential of the one he was in.

Now, this sort of thing happens all the time to salesmen.  It might not be right, but it happens.   If that was the end of the story it probably wouldn’t be noteworthy, but it gets worse.  After about two weeks in his new position, his supervisor informed him if he was going to continue his employment he was going to have to meet some astronomical minimum sales.  The fact is, nobody in the company had ever sold so much (or even come close for that matter.)

What’s your take on this?  It’s obvious to me they want him to quit.  They could just fire him, or downsize his position or whatever you want to call it, but if they did that, they’d have to pay some sort of severance or at the very least unemployment.  The problem with paying unemployment to people is your rating (and by extension your unemployment insurance premiums) go up.   If the person quits or is terminated for cause, they aren’t eligible for unemployment and the insurance premium of the company are not affected.

So can you see where they’re going with this?  They obviously don’t want this person working for them anymore.  They thought he would quit when they took his sales clientele and gave it to someone else.  When that didn’t work, they set up a scenario where he would not “perform” (more accurately not be able to perform) his duties so they could fire him for non-performance — all without paying him a cent.

That slow windup leads us to this fast pitch:  Is it moral for the company to avoid paying this three-year employee some form of severance or unemployment?  Are they justified in working the sytem by cutting him loose without giving him something?  If it was your business and you were hurting financially would you do it?  Would your answer be the same if you were on the other side of the desk?

Business ethics are a very personal thing.  They are almost never black and white.  They are often influenced by innumerable factors that render them in myriad shades of grey.    In this case if you were to take the individual events at face value, you’d say they were justified in what they did.  But when you look at the events as a series, you see clearly that things are not exactly as they seem — not even close.