Just for a moment, I want to go back in time, back to the early 80's. Back then we had 2 ways of "GAMING". The first way was to go to your local arcade. I will never forget going there with 4 quarters to spend which equaled exactly 4 games of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong or Frogger. You can probably see the problem already. How can you possibly get the high score or be a gamer or even be respectable with only 4 games to use as practice time? The answer is you can't. So, for each gaming session you desperately want to maximize the time. So do you play the same game 4 times in hopes that you can play longer or do you play each game once which provides variety but will probably end very shortly? Either way, one thing is for sure, when that message comes up that says Game Over it is definitely not a good feeling and probably why I really never became a gamer. As I got older, my parents finally splurged and got me an Atari 2600. Don't laugh, well I guess you can if you want, but do so with the understanding that at that time it was state of the art and everyone wanted it. It was a game changer because now I could play as many times as I wanted so that I could become at least sort of a gamer. I got really good at Pac-Man and Frogger and really didn't have to worry anymore about seeing Game Over.
Fast forward several years into the 21st Century. I am working a job in an office and have been promoted to manager, great, right? Well, sometimes but definitely not all the time because what I didn't think about was that managers sometimes have to have difficult conversations. It is not easy to tell someone they are not doing a good job and they need to improve or even that they have to be let go. Preparing for such a conversation is not an easy thing. Generally, you can't sleep the night before and you try to prepare for every contingency and how you will respond to it, but generally speaking, because you are dealing with others, it is very difficult to know how they will respond. I have seen everything from frustration to anger to sadness to apathy to relief. Planning for all that is simply not possible and is not fun in the least. I think the most important thing I've learned is to try to make clear that you care. In most cases it is better for all parties involved including the employee to part ways, even so, saying "Game Over" never seems to get any easier and probably never will.
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