The Employee Elimination Game

Recently (January 25, 2008; “Have You Ever Seen Someone Hounded…”), I wrote about a former client of mine who, years ago, was forced out of her job. Now that I am thinking about this topic, I also recall two other former psychotherapy clients. One was forced out of her job after she complained about being sexually harassed (and her claim was undeniably true); another client lost not just a job, but her license to practice her profession. All of these women insisted that they had done nothing that would come close to justifying the treatment they received. Overall, I tend to be pretty skeptical about such claims of innocence; but, in these cases, I ended convinced that these women were, essentially, scapegoats. If you know much about employment law, you will have learned that it is certainly not unheard of for supervisors to perceive an employee as a nuisance, or some kind of threat, and to find a way to get rid of him or her.

If you’ve never seen it happen, and if it’s never happened to you, you may find it hard to understand how a supervisor can get rid of an employee who has done nothing wrong. Unfortunately, however, it’s quite easy. The supervisor can simply make the employee’s work life so miserable, that s/he eventually resigns, or self-destructs, or both. Here’s how it works:

1. The supervisor will not allow any of the employee’s errors or faults to go unnoticed or unremarked upon. The supervisor will mention each and every one of them (sorrowfully) to the employee, and will write a little memo about it (these memos are an important part of the “employee elimination game,” and they can be shaped, or even fabricated, so as to make the employee look as bad as possible).
2. Wherever possible, the projects that the employee most enjoys working on will be crippled, eliminated, or shifted to other personnel, always with some superficially plausible excuse, such as "for the good of the company." If there is an area in which the employee is particularly competent, it will suddenly become impossible for the employee to work in that area.
3. If others (co-workers, customers, etc.) should make any kind of complaint about or criticism of the employee, the employer will take it very seriously, even if it is obviously without genuine merit. It can, then, become the topic of a memo, and the subject of a meeting with the employee. Also, if the employee responds with irritation or anger when attacked or criticized by a co-worker, the employee can be labeled “aggressive,” and the co-worker’s complaint or attack can be labeled as “just an attempt to be helpful"
4. The supervisor will maintain a sorrowful tone in these meetings with the employee, and when mentioning the employee to others. The supervisor will take care to convey how much s/he hopes that the employee will be willing and able to bring his or her performance up to the very achievable standards that have been set, and how sad s/he is when the employee is unable (or refuses) to do so.
5. If the employee makes any requests of the supervisor, they will be turned down, and a plausible, defensible reason will be given for the refusal (usually it is enough just to cite the needs of the workplace).

Employees subjected to this kind of emotionally devastating scrutiny and treatment will generally be unable to withstand it for more than a few weeks, possibly months. Most people will simply resign. Many will respond to the treatment by becoming highly distressed and agitated, or very depressed. This, in turn, will affect their job performance, which will provide more fuel for the supervisor in the “employee elimination game.” Of course, some employees are so stubborn, or so clueless, that they will continue to work on, and on, despite this kind of treatment. Even so, the supervisor will ultimately win; having effectively written up the employee’s many faults in a series of memos (in which it is documented that the employee was warned numerous times, and given numerous chances…), it will be, by then, an easy matter to find justification to legally terminate the employee’s job. Either way: Game over, supervisor wins.