I once got fired twice on two consecutive days but was still working at my same desk on the third day.
When I was working at Rotary I was the final arbiter of special housing requests for our World Congress. Since we usually required every hotel in the city and beyond, it was a special honor to have a room in the official party hotel, that is the hotel designated by us to house the board of directors and other high-ranking officials and guests. A clear policy was designed to ensure that he didn’t become a matter of who you know or how well you could negotiate. So I drafted a list each year of who we could accommodate in that hotel and the board of directors approved it.
Not my actual boss at the time
Each year Rotary elected from its membership a president who performed many important symbolic functions. In the year in question the president had sent a list of names to my housing department of people he wanted to have in the official hotel were not on the qualifying list. The request came to me and I denied it, asking my subordinate to cite me in a carefully worded response to the president. Next thing I knew a red-faced president was standing in my doorway shouting that I was insubordinate and unless I immediately approved his request, he would fire me. I didn’t approve and he told me to get out.
Not an hour later his secretary in an ever so sweet voice asked if I had time to come down and have a moment with the president in his office. When I arrived he closed the door and apologized profusely. I assured him that I would forget it ever happened.
But the next day a smaller list of people who still did not qualify came from the president and the entire process including his standing in my doorway and loudly firing me the card again. The same apology procedure also followed.
Needless to say the whole business was unpleasant for me, although I knew there were no grounds for my dismissal. But it also was very disruptive for my staff, most of whom overheard his unfortunate behavior. His temperament was unfortunate but what surprised me most was the hypocrisy of expecting everyone else to follow the housing policy but seeing himself as exempt. Whether an elected or appointed official in government or private industry, if we want people to follow the organization’s rules we must set a good example. We must not just talk about the rules. If we want the trust and respect of our employees, we must always walk the talk.