Polite.

'If one of us doesn't say something now we might lose ten years being polite about it.'
- Renée Zellweger - Jerry Maguire

There are many euphemisms for terminating someone's employment.

'Making you available to the labour force' is one.

'Allowing you to find your happiness elsewhere' is my favourite.

There is a school of thought that says a boss's decision to terminate someone's employment should be hers alone. Right, wrong, fair, unfair, stupid, wise. Irrelevant. The boss wants the ditch dug. If she doesn't want to pay me to do it any more because I'm wearing a blue tee shirt - then fine. It's her ditch and her cash.

If I'm as good a ditch digger as I think that I am, why protest? Best I shoulder-arms my shovel and someone will have offered me a job even before it's come to rest on my shrugging shoulder.

If I'm not a good ditch digger, best to find out now because I've got a mortgage. And a life of marrow-sucking days ahead.

Either way - good ditch-digger or woeful - my decisions in response to those made by others are probably teaching each of us both more than if we'd been polite. The boss gets better ditches or regrets being blue-ist. I get a better boss or my bobcat ticket.

The reality is that the industrial laws don't make sacking someone that easy. The legislators and the judges have designed a series of forcing functions into the employment decision-making processes. They compel bosses to follow steps that deter blue tee shirt discriminators making rash sacking decisions that may be damaging to their business and the worker's well-being. Wait. Step Back.

The result is that it's easy to hire and hard to fire.

Perhaps it should be the other way around.

Recruit hard. Mange easy.