You're fired!

The other day my boss shouted at someone (it might have been me), "YOU'RE FIRED!" Then he disappeared into his office, slamming the door.

He was joking, but the incident gave me a terrible flashback.

I was sixteen, and working in an office, and we had a new office junior. He was supposed to do all the dogsbody work: franking envelopes, stuffing envelopes, filing, running errands and so on. His job did not require any great intelligence, but he was hopeless. He just couldn't get anything right. On top of that he was terribly nervous and would freeze like a hypnotized rabbit when you even tried to talk to him. I took him over all his duties, helping him with them, even writing them down for him, and he barely responded. He'd stare, nod dumbly, and do it all wrong. He found it all incomprehensible. He'd concentrate hard on his job, not talking to anybody, reading and rereading his notes, office banter flying over his head - and still he got it all wrong.

This went on for a couple of weeks. I thought his nervousness and his numerous mistakes were due to this being his first ever job. I thought if he'd just relax a bit he'd probably be fine. After all, it wasn't exactly rocket science. Everybody was patient with him, although it was clear he wasn't a terribly successful hire. But you don't need great intelligence in a job like that, and we all thought he'd be fine after a while. We tried to include him in the office banter, sharing jokes and so on, but he didn't respond. He'd stare blankly, and go back to painstakingly feeding the envelopes into the franking machine the wrong way up.

At that place you weren't treated with kid gloves for long, though. The new person would be treated nicely for a few days, but eventually somebody's natural exuberance would erupt and the new worker would fall victim to a sudden and surprising practical joke. In this case, the someone turned out to be me. This was unintentional, however.

It happened when New Boy, whose name I now forget, did something wrong. I can't remember what it was except that it was almost unbelievable that he could get it wrong even once, and it created a lot of work for me. I noticed, pointed it out, and explained patiently how to do it properly. The second time he did it, a day or two later, I explained it again and added jokingly, "If you do that again you're fired!"

The very next day he did it for the third time. I was just about to go to lunch when I noticed and pointed his mistake out to him. I showed him the instructions I'd written down especially for him the time before. (I think there were three steps in the procedure.)

"Tut tut! Remember what I said?" I said, waggling my finger at him facetiously. "You've done it again! You're fired!"

Then I laughed like a maniac and went to lunch.

When I came back from lunch he wasn't around. I needed him to run some errand for me, so asked if anybody had seen him. One of my office mates told me, in hushed tones, that New Boy had been fired.

"I saw him packing up his stuff and leaving, and when I asked him what was going on he said he'd been fired," he explained. "He wouldn't talk about it. I wonder what he did wrong? Not that he ever did anything right, but..."

I was aghast. Who had fired him? My joke suddenly seemed in horrible taste. I had pretended to fire him, and he had got fired for real, the same day! How awful for him.

(I know, I know. I should have known what had happened. I didn't, though. It didn't even occur to me. I used to fire my coworkers a couple of times a day. IT WAS OBVIOUSLY A JOKE. SIXTEEN YEAR OLDS DO NOT FIRE PEOPLE.)

I went to our boss and asked why New Boy had been fired. The boss stared at me.

"What? He hasn't been fired," he said. "What gave you that idea?"

"But he told - " I said, and then I sat down suddenly as realization dawned, covered my face with my hands and blurted, "OH, SHIT."

My boss sat up straight. He'd never heard me swear before. He thought I was a good girl. He was a great boss and I liked him, but he wasn't the sort of person you swore in front of because he never swore himself. (I glued his telephone together one April Fool's Day and made him shout "OH MY GOODNESS!" He was not normal.)

I confessed what I'd done, apologising profusely.

The boss looked horrified, and leaped into action. He grabbed his phone (and it didn't stick - that was a dramatically successful joke but not a repeatable one) and called New Boy's home. New Boy's mother answered, and said he was there. It took a while to get him to the phone, though, and longer to persuade him to come back to work. The boss told him to take the rest of the day off.

After he got off the phone I started apologising again, but he held up his hand and stopped me. He'd gone red in the face and looked as though he might burst. I cringed. My boss had never got angry at me before, but I deserved it. I braced myself.

When he exploded with laughter I went limp with surprise. I'd been feeling so guilty I hadn't seen it coming at all.

He laughed until he cried.

Then he wiped his eyes and sighed. "What on earth are we going to do with that poor lad," he asked, shaking his head. "He's hopeless."

New Boy came back next day, and I was repentant. I apologised to him very, very sincerely. He accepted my apology (or at least stared at the floor for a while and didn't try to kill me or anything). Then he went back to his desk and continued to get everything wrong and to never understand anything that was going on. Not all that long afterwards he quit of his own accord.

I never fired anybody again. The fun had gone out of it.


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