abuse-in-the-workplace

On Friday, September 30, 2011, the Wall Street Journal’s interesting “Marketplace” section featured a 1/3 page spread entitled “War of Words” airing the dirty laundry between Oracle (the giant IT company) head Larry Ellison, Hewlett-Pakard, and a company H-P bought, Autonomy. The particulars of the argument over a deal are not relevant to this discussion, although if you’re interested, they can be found online at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020413820457660102067151279....

No one can afford to turn away potential customers, yet thousands of people are doing just that every day. They are also begging to be fired. Just ask Carol Bartz.

You may be familiar with her name. She was hired as CEO of Yahoo.com in 2009, and by September, 2011, she was fired. Why? The obvious reason is that the company was not doing well. But there was more: She was fired by telephone, something never done at an executive level where people are paid millions in salary (hers was $1 million plus stock equity of $18 million).

So what was going on?