Would I hurt other people in some strange hypothetical to literally save my family’s life from certain death? Maybe, and I’d be guilt ridden about it for the rest of my life.
Would I hurt people to make more money? Of course not, and that’s not a defensible reason to hurt others… at all, and it makes you deeply broken at your core, especially as habit.
Really the only thing I can think of as a more horrifying reason to be cruel to others than “for money herp derp” would be “because its fun!”
Hurting others for profit in the name of business shouldn’t be a defense, it should be considered an admission of guilt and come with consequences.
“can’t afford” as in your business will cease to exist in the short term if you don’t lay this person off who helped facilitate the busesses’s survival to this point, or because net profits will be too flat or underperforming for your liking?
Because the latter is sociopathic cruelty.
More this.
“Liking” is a loaded term, but there’s a middle between these two states, as well. If the business is generating less revenue from this worker’s labor than it costs to pay the worker, then the business is losing money. This is absolutely fine in the short term if business is cyclical and expected to turn around. However, doing this too long with no end in sight, drains resources from the company. What this eventually can translate into is that the other workers that are earning profit for the company are essentially subsidizing this under performing worker in perpetuity. This means profit that should go to raises or other benefits for the other workers are instead going to keep this under performing worker employed. Again, short term with expected turnaround, very acceptable. Long term with no end in sight is where the problem is.
How many of us have received little to no raises when a business struggles? This may be because money that would have gone to your raise may have gone to keep someone else employed that isn’t producing.
If you don’t give raises to high and middle performing workers, they rightfully leave to businesses that will. The business suffers, and its another wound to a slow death of the business. If this goes on, the business ends and everyone loses their jobs regardless of how high a performing worker they were or how much they contributed.
These are a few of the ugly choices that have to be made in business that sometimes get labeled as “its just business”.