Today, the atmosphere at work was reset. The co-worker who checked out and  was too young to know things was fired. There was a collective sigh of relief. It turns out, he used the same attitude with his supervisor what he used with me and she also did not take it well.

Everyone in the office has had comments about his work performance recently. He put up a fuss about things, didn’t give things to people on time, was generally just sour to people. My boss, the CEO, said she was ready to fire him if his supervisor didn’t. It sounds like I’m laying down all the reasons a little too thick, but he was a 23-year-old throwing a drawn out tantrum for not getting his way.

The last time we had an exit from the company, the person quit. She was talked to about some issues, and blamed me for many of them. That’s a more fun story for another time. Basically, though, she left on her own. The one fired today, was fired and we tried to fight fires before they started. Since he was prone to tantrums, we didn’t know what to expect. My boss asked me to cut off his access to our files and logins immediately. I did, but so far there wasn’t a reason to (though he could have been blocked and that stopped it). He calmly put on his coat, then stormed out yelling, “I JUST GOT FIRED!”

But the tensions have eased all around the office. It goes back to the Michael Scott idea that people in an office need to hate the lunch lady, and in doing so band together. Well, that’s what we’ve done, we will see how long it lasts. Hopefully a long time.