Gather Your Things

It bothered me about Matt Lauer. Not that I liked him especially, I don’t even watch TV in the morning. But he was a fixture. I knew if I turned on the TV in the morning, he’d be there, next to Al Roker, and whoever the current sidekick is.

It bothered me because of my due process reflex. Doesn’t he deserve an investigation, an opportunity to defend himself? Shouldn’t there be a discussion, a review? I believe so profoundly in the concept of innocent until proven guilty. But then I realized, he’s an employee. Whether he has a contract or not, essentially he is an ‘at will’ employee and his employer can fire him for practically any reason. In this case, he had a contract that included a morality clause, doing things that would bring shame or unhappiness to his big corporate daddy.

It happens every day. A clerk at McDonald’s is caught looking at her phone once too often.  A window installer shows up late for work because his daughter is sick. A teacher reads aloud from Lolita, considering it a great work of literature. A doctor screams at a noncompliant patient. People get fired.

I got fired once for joking about money at a billboard company I worked for as a secretary although part of me always thought it was because someone had seen me in the company of a notorious state legislator. It was the 60’s, after all. Whatever the reason, the decision wasn’t debatable. I “gathered my things” as they say and left within minutes. When I got home, my parents asked what happened. “I was fired,” I had to say. Since I always tell the truth.

I imagine Mr. Lauer is being sent ‘his things’ since having him in the building would engender so much attention and angst. He is home, I suppose, watching TV? We don’t know. Maybe he is sitting with his wife and they are talking about what comes next. Their children are getting side-eyed by their friends. It’s one thing to have a famous husband or dad who cats around; it’s another to have one whose behavior results in a “detailed complaint.” Someday, I bet, they will be able to read said complaint.  Won’t that be interesting?

So Mr. Lauer has to sit there – like thousands of people every day – and have a reckoning with himself and his family. He has to say “I was fired” like any plain Jane or John Doe who just got let go from the corner gas station. It has to sting to be cut down to size like that, that quickly. It’s a leveling of the playing field in a whole new and pretty valuable way if you ask me. And it’s been a long time coming.