After 5 Notices to Explain and 5 corresponding Notices of Disciplinary Action, she's finally out. This morning at around5:30AM, I issued the termination notice to BigFatLiar (BFL) for excessive tardiness. Long before her batch was turned over to me by Kathy, she already had serious attendance issues. I've decided to give her a number of chances, convincing me that she's juggling school with work. I did for the obvious reason that I was once a working student too, juggling school with a job at a call center, having only a maximum of four hours of sleep, and experiencing the pains of travelling from UPD to our office in Makati. My life became sort of a mess, but I managed to pull through. She didn't.

Actually, that's another thing. I'm not even sure if she really does go to school. Once I asked her to present a registration form from the university. It took her three weeks to produce a filthy, old-looking blue card which say she has classes only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, whenever I ask them to stay for a meeting, she would always excuse herself because she needs to get to her class.

The other members of the crew started to notice when she once claimed that she had classes on the dates which the President declared as holidays. Remember SONA and the SK registration?

But of course, I stopped myself from worrying to much about this Ho. So I tried my best to ignore everything she does and be civilized. After all, I am the boss and I should set a good example. So when she talks about her 'fabulous' life, I just shake the annoyed feeling off and still ask her if she already had lunch. When she lies about her PC crashing just to procrastinate, I help her troubleshoot while she flirts with the guy from the other bay. When she goes on an unscheduled, 15-minute break because her stomach is aching [but in truth she just wanted to smoke downstairs], I ask her how she's feeling and ask the nurse to send some pain killers or antacid.

Yes, through all this, some people have admired me for having such amount of patience on a person they couldn't stand. Apparently, my aunt was right. Hypocrisy sometimes gets us by.

***

Work starts at 4AM but since we've scheduled a session with HR to hand out the verdict, I had to get to the office two hours earlier. I was afraid that she would suddenly go berserk and start throwing things. Worse, she might steal other people's belongings too. [She's the primary suspect for the loss of several important items at the office but that's another story.] I woke up at 1AM, thanks to the annoying tone of my old Moto phone. I got up, went to the bathroom and paused in front of the mirror. I told myself that there is no way in hell that this person would interrupt my valuable sleeping hours. So I went back to bed and slept for another hour.

Here's how a typical session happens when someone is going to get terminated: the employee sits in front of a witness, the immediate superior and one or two HR coordinators. The evidences are presented such as the Notice to Explain and disciplinary action documents, the written explanation of the accused, and some other documents that are deemed necessary for arriving at a verdict. The employee will be given a chance to explain verbally and say his/her last words. Then, she would be asked to leave the room while the group decides on his/her fate.

WIth BFL's case, it was pretty much the same. When we entered the room, she looked like she was about to cry. I suddenly felt like giving sympathy to her and giving her another chance when the inevitable happened. When she was asked to explain why she had those instances of tardiness, she gave a stupid, pathetic answer: TAEKWONDO. She said her professor did not allow him to take a certain PE class and her only option was to take Taekwondo instead. And this class supposedly stole two precious hours of her sleeping time that's why she's always been late.

The thing that infuriates me is that she's ALWAYS late for at least an hour. And a once-a-week taekwondo class is not a good reason for this.

Anyway, she was terminated today. Tomorrow, I need not worry about dealing with someone I abhor at work. I need not worry about an employee who always lies to her teeth and makes up stories so his colleagues would think she has a perfect life. I need not worry about someone who will never arrive on time. I am free from all that headache and frustration.

For the first time, emulating Donald Trump became a big sigh of relief, and I don't have a single ounce of guilt that would make me lose sleep over everything that happened this morning.