When Right and Wrong Collide

Today was a sad day for me. It was the last day on my staff for a woman whose employment I terminated. Her termination was unusual, in that I did not have her leave the building the moment I fired her. Instead, I gave her a month between her notice and her departure, I agreed to pay her for another month beyond that, and I told most people her departure was her choice. The story was that she needed time to deal with her illness. The fact was that her performance was simply inadequate and very nearly cost me a client...and would have cost the client had she stayed. And the results, for her, would have been the same. But the result of losing the client likely would have been that additional jobs would have been lost, and my own income would have been reduced, and my business would have been in jeopardy.

I have gotten used to the fact that I had to fire her. I have not gotten used to the fact that my action could very well lead to her filing for bankruptcy. I have not gotten used to the fact that she is still battling cancer and that her disease seems to be insufficiently responsive to radiation and mild chemotherapy and that she has just begun a more aggressive, and more debilitating, form of intravenous chemotherapy.

The fact that I had to make my decision to fire her, when coupled with what I know she is going through, makes me wonder whether I've ever been suited to be a hard-nosed business owner. This truly sucks. I hate being responsible for making a decision that weighs my company's continuation against an individual's life. Even in my bravado, I am not strong enough for this.

When I'm in my 'business' mode, my metrics are all about performance. In that mode, I'm a demanding son-of-a-bitch; I don't tolerate anything less than 110% effort and I don't accept anything less than devotion to getting the job done.

When I'm in my human mode, my metrics are all about humanity. In that mode, people matter. In that mode, I feel shame about the way I think and behave when I'm in business mode.

Sometimes, I don't see an intersection between the two. They are parallel paths and one must choose between them. We humans get in trouble when we try to put our wheels on both tracks. We're pulled apart when the tracks diverge.

I'm glad I did not lose the client. I'm devastated that I may have ruined a former employee's life.

And it becomes clear that there are, indeed, circumstances in which the "right" thing depends on one's perspective. Situational ethics may be legitimate, though they are most certainly painful to someone, sometime. The right thing really isn't black or white; it's a mottled quilt of grey, black, white, and chaos. It's a formal statement that the right thing is always wrong from someone's perspective, and the wrong thing to do can be right, in certain circumstances.

It doesn't matter, though, does it? When right and wrong collide, it's just godawful painful.