The candidate I had to interview for this week was my high school bully.

I work for a fairly large company in the tech industry. I've worked there for about 5 years now and I've held just about every role it's possible to hold except for CEO. I've heard just about every type of interview there is and ran just about every type.<br><br>Last week, we got word that there would be some reductions in our department, and I had to do the interview process to find out who would be let go. There's 18 people in my department, and I'm their line manager, so this was my first time doing this alone.<br><br>This had to happen quickly, so myretasks included figuring out which employees to let go based solely on their performance, gathering the necessary paperwork, and working with legal to craft the pre termination letters and other documents.<br><br>I was also required to do at least one interview with each employee to get their perspective on who should be let go as well as gather any other relevant information.<br><br>I took care of sending the necessary paperwork and started working through the performance based list. After I was finished, I had 5 employees left who were equally poor and good per my tenure. So I decided to do a coin flip based on the last time their review was, with the longest getting the nod. After FLipping, I found I had made it to the last day to submit the necessary paperwork to let 5 people go without having the chance to get anyone's perspective.<br><br>I had one meeting the following day at 10 am with the last 5 people, including my high school bully who made my life a living hell, and was overall a shit person. I'd like to be able to go into detail with you all about all the shit he did to me, but I don't have the time to go into it and I also prefer not to make this post too personal.<br><br>Just know that from my perspective, it was an open and shut case. The other 4 employees I was choosing from were all awesome and did their jobs phenomenal, while the bully did his job for the 3 years he'd worked there, but did it extremely grudgingly. He was non communicative, always negative, and generally a bad influence on the other employees. The long story short of it was that I needed 5 spots to be filled and he was unfortunately one of the people taking up a spot.<br><br>I came to work that day at 7 am, and my stomach was turnin like a mo'fo. The meeting started at 10 and I knew I had to gather everyone's perspective before I submitted the paperwork. I was so stressed that I didn't even have time to be nervous when the employees started trickling in, despite the fact that I've done in the order of 300 interviews in the last 5 years. The bully showed up a few minutes early and I took some comfort in that, thinking that he probably had nothing to say and was probably already resigned to his soon to be reality.<br><br>We went through each employee and gathered their perspective on the matter. My coworkers were almost universally against the new guy. He was overall viewed as a shit person who was only there for the pay and did his job for the most part without helping out others. The suggestions ranged from letting go the people who had been with the company the longest and who had taken the longest to get promoted, to letting go the most new employees, to literally flipping a coin.<br><br>When it was my bully's turn, he began to circumensively word vase about how he is a good employee who is very dedicated. He genuinely tried to convince me that the other employees were jealous of the amount of money he makes (80k/yr), and that they were in no finite amount of denial. I stood there and mock listened while doing 1000 other things in my head at the same time. After he finished his useless diatribe, he asked if he could ask me something. The only question he had for me was "Did you know I make 80k/yr?"<br><br>Overall, the vote was almost unanimous. I spent the 5 minute car ride to my house on the way home from the meeting convincing myself that I needed to be the bigger person. That I couldn't let personal feelings impact my decision, and I had to do what was best for the company, even if it meant keeping the new guy.<br><br>As soon as I walked in the door, my wife and son asked me how the meeting had gone. I told them all the details, and they were almost as amused as I was by the bully's "question". My son who is 10 asked if I was really supposed to know that he made 80k a year. I said that yes, it was part of my job to know that, as well as many other details about each of my employees. His exact response was "Then you have to let him go, he's oppressing the workers!"<br><br>I about fucking died, but in that moment, it made sense to me. How was it okay for one employee to make almost double what the others were making when they too worked their asses off? Basically half of the people in my department made less than what the new guy made in bonuses last year. He was not the best employee, but compared to the others, he actually exceeded expectations in areas he was required to, if not in other areas.<br><br>I took a deep breath and went to work, shaking off my sons communist rhetoric.<br><br>When I got there, I put in the necessary paperwork, and thebully is no longer with GME.<br><br>Definitely choked that decision up to my son. Thanks Lenni.