Hey, Sitcom Advice, I need help persuading an employee to quit. I run a creative agency (we make advertisements), and we have an employee named Will who destroys every meeting he’s in. When a project is complete and we’re presenting a finished ad, he’ll start throwing out wild ideas. The client often likes the ideas, but then we have to make a bunch of expensive changes. I can’t get him to stop. I would fire him, but he’s the son of one of our biggest clients. So I need him to quit without it seeming like we were trying to get him to quit.
—Grace Without Will
Jay: I’m not one for office jobs, but office politics seem pretty awful. Can you get him involved in that? Make him run for office president or at least treasurer? Start his office politics career and then fabricate a smear campaign against him that is so terrible that he no longer wants to work for you guys. The problem is, what if he wins office politics? Do you have to hold fair elections? I don’t really understand how offices work.
Eliza: Can you get this guy promoted? You could give him a job where he no longer has the ability to come to the office, talk to clients or meet with you. You could make him the chief of your newly opened Winnipeg Bureau. I doubt he can do much damage up in Winnipeg. Make the problem disappear, but don’t tell anyone you promoted him.
Gene: I’m guessing this guy isn’t very organized. You need to plant some confidential information in his office area. It doesn’t have to be confidential, but you need to convince him it is. Call a big meeting and tell everyone that you won’t just fire them if they’re hiding the file. You’re going to have the police arrest them. Then, make everyone search their desks. He’ll find it. He’s going to try to destroy the file, so you need to have security patrolling the office, guarding the bathrooms and searching people at every exit. Then, announce that until the file is found, the only way you’ll let anyone leave is if they quit. He will probably quit, but you must watch this guy because he might be sneaky.
Kenny: Listen, if this guy has an important father who got him the job, use that to your advantage. Call him into your office and tell him his work is pathetic and he has to turn things around, or he will get fired. Then, try appealing to that connection. Suggest that his father will be ashamed of him if he loses the job his father worked so hard to get him. Finally, give him an out. Tell him that he could quit to pursue his passion. He can leave on his principles, and his father will respect him. I got Gene to quit this way once when he worked for me. I don’t mind printing it here because I know Gene doesn’t read anyone else’s advice.
About Sitcom Advice: This column takes the idea that four classic troupe characters in comedy play out repeatedly. These four tropes are the patriarch, the matriarch, the clown and the professor. Using shows like Seinfeld, Arrested Development and How I Met Your Mother, we explore Sitcom Advice from these four lenses.