I'm not sure what you're saying. All of his ideas, even "rewritten without pollyannaish nonsense", seem to me like essential components of firing someone the right way. Could you contrast these steps with how you believe people should be fired?
Summary: Cover your ass.
Certainly doing the right thing is one way to cover your ass.
Step 1: Have a gigantic book of employee guidelines. At any point in time, you should be able to pick an employee and find something you can write them up for. Have the employee sign a piece of paper on day 1 that they are aware of the book.
Are you saying it's better not to have clear employee guidelines or not to make sure they know them?
Step 2: Before you fire the employee, make sure you've written him up more than once. Lay your groundwork a week or two in advance. Find something else, and do the paperwork from step one. You don't fire an employee for walking in on the VP banging a secretary, it's because he wasn't filing his TPS reports properly.
Are you saying it's better not to wait for repeat offenses, or better not to have clear reasons for firing?
I have no idea where you got this "VP banging a secretary" interpretation. He's talking about his furniture company of 6 carpenters, for goodness sake.
Step 3: When actually firing somebody, have a witness + a recording device in the room. This protects you from sexual harassment lawsuits.
It only protects you from sexual harassment lawsuits if you don't sexually harass them. It also only protects you from any other kind of lawsuit for wrongful behavior if you don't behave wrongfully. Isn't it a good thing for them to not sexually harass employees?
Step 4: Explanations: Blame the economy. If that doesn't work, blame the phases of the moon. Anything you want, but not something that is grounds for a wrongful termination suit.
Is it better to have no reason, or not to explain to the employee that there were external factors in the decision, or to lie that there were no external factors? Or are you saying external factors never dominate and blaming them is always lying?
Of course you shouldn't fire some one for reasons that would be grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Because those would be wrongful terminations!
You seem to be narrowly interpreting his attempts to do the right thing as just attempting to cover his ass. I don't see where you got this, he repeatedly agonizes over doing firing the right way. Could you explain what you think he'd do differently if he were actually a good boss, as opposed to just trying to cover his ass?
Summary: Cover your ass.
Certainly doing the right thing is one way to cover your ass.
Step 1: Have a gigantic book of employee guidelines. At any point in time, you should be able to pick an employee and find something you can write them up for. Have the employee sign a piece of paper on day 1 that they are aware of the book.
Are you saying it's better not to have clear employee guidelines or not to make sure they know them?
Step 2: Before you fire the employee, make sure you've written him up more than once. Lay your groundwork a week or two in advance. Find something else, and do the paperwork from step one. You don't fire an employee for walking in on the VP banging a secretary, it's because he wasn't filing his TPS reports properly.
Are you saying it's better not to wait for repeat offenses, or better not to have clear reasons for firing?
I have no idea where you got this "VP banging a secretary" interpretation. He's talking about his furniture company of 6 carpenters, for goodness sake.
Step 3: When actually firing somebody, have a witness + a recording device in the room. This protects you from sexual harassment lawsuits.
It only protects you from sexual harassment lawsuits if you don't sexually harass them. It also only protects you from any other kind of lawsuit for wrongful behavior if you don't behave wrongfully. Isn't it a good thing for them to not sexually harass employees?
Step 4: Explanations: Blame the economy. If that doesn't work, blame the phases of the moon. Anything you want, but not something that is grounds for a wrongful termination suit.
Is it better to have no reason, or not to explain to the employee that there were external factors in the decision, or to lie that there were no external factors? Or are you saying external factors never dominate and blaming them is always lying?
Of course you shouldn't fire some one for reasons that would be grounds for a wrongful termination suit. Because those would be wrongful terminations!
You seem to be narrowly interpreting his attempts to do the right thing as just attempting to cover his ass. I don't see where you got this, he repeatedly agonizes over doing firing the right way. Could you explain what you think he'd do differently if he were actually a good boss, as opposed to just trying to cover his ass?