IS IT WORSE TO BE FIRED OR TO FIRE?

Before reading this post, please take the poll to the right on whether it is worse to be fired to to fire.

A lot of people I know have lost their jobs recently, from pregnant fiances, to single mothers and it clearly hurts to lose your job.  But is it worse to lose your job or is it worse to be the person who has to pull the trigger?

I have been fortunate enough (knock on wood) never to have been fired or had to fire anybody.  From the stories of these recently unemployed people, the anger, frustration and pain they are experiencing is tough to see.  They all had friends at their jobs who over the years become their family, with whom they shared their happy moments and relied on during tough times.  A job is more than just a paycheck, it is where most people spend the majority of their lives and build some of their strongest relationships.

But what about the evil employers who have to make the tough, or sometimes not so tough, decision to lay off a worker.  Is it hard for them?  If so, how hard?  First, we need to remember that employers are ordinary people just like the employees they may have had to layoff.  They have families, mortgages and car payments to make.  They are also responsible for the financial stability of entities which support large numbers of families.  They may justify their decision to layoff a worker on the greater good, that without this layoff, the company could not make rent or pay suppliers.  But what I wonder is, how much these employer-terminators think about the effect that laying off a worker has on the employee.

Personally, I would rather be the fired than the firer.  On a lesser scale, I have experienced that doing the breaking up is always more difficult than being broken up with.  After a break up, the guilt is nearly unbearable, along with the double guessing and self-doubting.  Knowing that I am going to make a decision that will without a doubt hurt somebody and make me hated is much more difficult than being broken up with.  The broken up with, or the brokenee, can say F.U. to the other person and move on.  The breaker upper, or the brokenor, must live with the fact that somebody out there very likely hates them and that they may have ended a relationship that was in fact, in some cases, meant to be.

Is it the same with employers? Do they feel this guilt when they cut off a mother's ability to feed her child? I would like to believe so, but never having been in such a position, I cannot say.  To those who recently lost their jobs, I would say to relish in the strength of your F.U. approach.  To those who just did the laying off, I would say, I hope it was worth it.