Recapus Interruptus

My recaps from the weekend of debauchery are interrupted by the fucking real world.

I knew the whole trip that my first day back to work would be extremely tough. I knew that I was going to have to fire one of my employees. This is the first time I've had to do that, and it sucked about as bad as I thought it would. The poor guy really didn't have much idea what was coming, and I felt terrible. But as my boss put it, it was one of those Kirk v. Spock things, where the good of the many outweighed the good of the few, or the one. I had to let go one of my team for the overall good of the team. And I hate it. I hate that it had to happen right before the holidays, I hate that it happened right after he proposed to his girlfriend, I hate that he didn't see it coming, I hate that I made the mistake in hiring him, I hate that I wasn't enough of a manager to bring out in him the traits I needed to see to keep him on.

But I took the promotion, and I made the call, so I get to feel like an asshole. Feeling like an asshole is not by any stretch a new experience. I am a bit of an asshole, so I'm used to it. But I try very hard to go through life with no regrets, and I'll regret for quite a while that I made the mistake in hiring that led to this unfortunate turn of events. My only saving grace was that I wasn't asshole enough to fire him before I went to Vegas, which would have meant that I fired him on his birthday, the day before he left to go on a cruise where he planned to propose to his girlfriend. I had to live with another week and a half of dreading what was coming, but as another guy in the office put it "I'd feel pretty worried if you were able to do that to him."

I wish him all the luck in the world, and wish that it could have worked out differently. But it didn't, and that's on me. After all, I took the promotion.