In this podcast from the Busted Halo Radio Show, a listener calls in looking for some of Father Dave’s Fatherly Advice. She explains: “So, I have a full-time job and a part-time job, but I’m only doing the part-time job to help out a friend who’s starting her own company. And I decided that I only wanted to focus on my full-time job, so I gave her my resignation, and she was kind of upset and she offered me full-time, but I ended up not taking it. And now she’s telling the other employees that she fired me, that she had to let me go. I’m trying to be humble and [just] turn the other cheek. She also told me not to tell the other employees that I’m leaving, and she just wants me to leave and not say anything. … My last day is Tuesday, but the other employees are already telling me what she’s saying.”
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Father Dave circles back to the first thing the caller said about this part-time job: “So, you said this [job] is with a friend of yours that you’re helping out. … It seems like she’s not friendly to you anymore, [because] you know that she’s talking about you behind your back and giving [people] wrong information. … I would say, at the very least, that you have a legal right to have the record set straight about how you left that job. … In many ways [this situation] is not fair to you, and whether [your boss] is still a friend or not, I still think it’s fair to confront her, because [just] for a minute to give her the benefit of the doubt, maybe through the office gossip [channels], maybe something got mixed around or something like that. It’s certainly fair to go to her and say, ‘Somebody else told me that you said you fired me, and that’s not how this happened, and I think it’s only fair to me, even if we’re not going to be friends anymore, that the record is set straight as to how I left the job, because that’s important to me.”
The caller says that she suspects the reason her boss is behaving this way is because she’s afraid that other employees will start to leave as well if they know someone else has already left. Father Dave tells her to not burden herself with that: “You shouldn’t take that upon yourself. You’re not the one straw that’s going to break the whole camel’s back. If other people start to leave, it’s not because they’re so happy and content in their job, and they just want to follow you out the door — it’s because they’ve also been suffering for a while as well, and now they see a chance to [leave]. So, you shouldn’t feel guilty that they’re going to start leaving if you leave.”
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In terms of the faith component, Father Dave says: “If you’re coming at this [wanting to know] what are you obliged to do because of your Catholic faith — we’re certainly not called to be doormats. Yes, we’re called to be charitable and humble and all that, but if somebody is spreading lies about you, our faith does not compel us to be silent and not correct those lies.” (Original Air 08-24-17)
