I heard of pink slips, but I never heard of a termination meeting, unless it was the boss and the terminated employee the only two there. This must have felt like a lynching to this man. Then again, there ain't no good way to get terminated. Btw, what was the new intern doing sitting in on a termination meeting on his first day at work? Was that part of his training?. How would you feel getting fired in front of someone young enough to be your son, on his first day. That's even more degrading. And you worked there since he was only 4.
Although the brother took the wrong way out, he had 15 years in, and was probably thinking about a pension. Starting over again at 45 with 15 years down the drain, in a country where pensions are disappearing (if they had one), is a pretty tough pill to swallow. I was 44 when my job started coming down on me, after putting in 19 years. However the media acts like this is normal. Getting fired as a part of a group layoff is enough to send a man over the edge under those circumstances, but when you're the only one, it can really mess with your mind. The stress alone can cause aneurysms and strokes, which has killed many Black people in that situation, especially in his age group. It felt like I was about to become one of them, and nobody cared. He probably felt scared for years thinking this would happen. In other words, he probably took a lot of crap just to stay there. So far it doesn't look like the brother did anything wrong, and they just gave him some downsizing excuse, and he saw the bs.
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