Vault: Fire The Struggling Single Mom Or The College Grad?

Summary

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The Bert Show

Episode: "Vault: Fire The Struggling Single Mom Or The College Grad?"

Date: March 19, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this emotionally charged episode, The Bert Show team—Bert, Kristin, Abby, Cassie, Tommy, and more—dives into the ethical and practical dilemmas faced by managers during layoffs. The focus centers on Molly, a team leader forced to choose between letting go a single mother struggling both at work and at home or a promising young college graduate who is financially secure. With contributions from both the hosting cast and multiple listeners, the discussion interrogates the interplay between business decisions and personal compassion amidst a tough economic climate.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Company Layoffs & Economic Toughness

• News Context: The show begins with news about mass layoffs (e.g., Macy’s cutting 7,000 jobs, including 850 in Atlanta) and personal anecdotes of people affected, highlighting the widespread impact of economic downturn ([00:49]-[01:24]).
• Host’s Tone: The cast maintains empathy and relatability, acknowledging that almost everyone knows someone who’s affected.

2. Molly's Dilemma: The Decision Nobody Wants

• Molly’s Role: Molly, a team leader, is required by upper management to eliminate one role from her five-person team, focusing only on two employees who share similar tenure.
  • Employee #1: A single mom with three children, who is described as the weakest link, underperforming for both personal and professional reasons ([02:28]-[03:23]).
  • Employee #2: A 23-year-old college grad living with her own mother, working two jobs, and demonstrating exemplary performance ([04:02]-[04:40]).
• Molly’s Internal Conflict:
  • “If you took the personal out of it and you were just making a strict business decision, you would let go the mom.”—Host ([04:50])
  • "It almost seems cruel to let go of the mom... it's going to put this woman in incredible hardship." —Molly ([05:06])
  • “I don’t see [her performance] improving. It could go back to where she was. Still a weak link, but without some of the issues.” —Molly ([05:50])

3. Ethical Questions: Business vs. Compassion

• Host & Listener Opinions:
  • The cast debates whether layoffs should be strictly business or if circumstances (like being a single mom) should be taken into account.
  • Kimber (Caller, single mom): "Absolutely. If she's not up to performance... My job as a manager, I can't take that into consideration when I'm laying people off. I have to do what's best for the company." ([07:21])
  • The hosts discuss the reality that businesses are ultimately not obligated to protect employees from personal hardship, but the human aspect is difficult to ignore.

4. The Role of Personal Circumstance in Employment

• Negotiating Salary & Benefits:
  • The team addresses whether personal circumstances are fair to bring into negotiations, with divergent opinions.
  • "I've always heard that when you're negotiating, you leave your personal life out of it. It's about what you can bring to the table..." —Host ([08:37])
  • Hosts note that, in reality, men sometimes leverage family obligations to negotiate higher pay ([09:01]).
  • Story: An employee tries to negotiate a raise using his expenses rather than performance; his boss responds unsympathetically: "Well, move to a cheaper place." ([09:12])

5. Emotional Impact & Listener Stories

• Melody (Caller, single mom):
  • Shares her own experience re-entering the workforce and the toll it takes on women with gaps in their résumés and heavy childcare expenses.
  • "This would really significantly, negatively affect this woman's livelihood right now. Childcare expenses alone will take you under." ([10:03]-[10:51])
• Angela (Caller):
  • Voices frustration about employers giving special treatment to employees with children.
  • "If you have a kid you get stuck special treatment no matter what. ... When you come to work, your personal life is separate." ([14:06]-[14:46])

6. Nuances in Management: Humanity vs. Policy

• Host Reflection:
  • While some advocate for a mechanical approach (“last in, first out”), others stress that workplaces are not just about numbers.
  • "It is impossible as a human being to spend years at a job 12 hours a day and think you can be mechanical sitting in here and it not be emotional. ... Your employees just can't be a number. They need to be a person, you know." —Host ([14:46]-[15:37])

7. Molly’s Reaction & Next Steps

• Decision Still Undecided:
  • Molly is moved by both the callers and co-hosts’ arguments, stating: "I heard the first person and I was like, okay, okay, now I know what I have to do. I heard the second person. I go, oh my God. Now everyone's made very, very compelling arguments. It's really a tough decision." ([15:47])
• Closing Note:
  • The show promises to follow up with Molly about her ultimate decision ([15:37]-[16:21]).
  • Lighthearted advice from a host: “I decide to do it like on Friday, then call in sick and make my boss do it. I think that's the only right decision at this point.” ([16:07])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It almost seems cruel to let go of the mom. It's like it's going to put this woman in incredible hardship."
  — Molly, Team Lead ([05:06])
• “Your personal life has nothing to do with how well you're performing. And if you're not up to par and this other lady is… you have to do what's best for the company.”
  — Kimber, single mom caller ([07:21])
• "It is hard, I think, to keep all that separate. But if she was a better employee… you just said she's subpar regardless of her going through all this."
  — Host ([10:51])
• “You can't, your employees just can't be a number. They need to be a person, you know.”
  — Host ([15:37])

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• Company Layoffs & Economic Context: [00:46]-[01:24]
• Molly Introduces Her Dilemma: [01:56]-[03:40]
• Defining the Two Employees: [03:04]-[04:49]
• Hosts Debate Strict Business vs. Compassion: [04:50]-[05:50], [08:02]-[09:56]
• Single Moms Call In & Provide Perspective: Kimber ([06:49]-[07:55]), Melody ([09:56]-[13:20])
• Caller Challenges “Parent Privilege” at Work: Angela ([14:06]-[14:46])
• Host Philosophizes on Humanity at Work: [14:46]-[15:37]
• Molly’s Final Thoughts & Show Wraps Decision for Follow-Up: [15:45]-[16:21]

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Summary Flow & Relevance

This episode stands out for its real-world relevance—balancing business pragmatism with empathy for employees’ life circumstances. Through Molly’s predicament and a cascade of listener stories, The Bert Show brings the human side of workplace management into sharp relief. No one leaves with an easy answer, but the episode thoughtfully surfaces the complexity of management in hard times, questioning the extent to which empathy belongs in business decisions.

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Transcript

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[C]

More job cuts yesterday.

[D]

Like 7,000 people, 7,000 total from Macy's made the big announcement yesterday and said 850 of those job cuts will be here in Atlanta, but it's going to be at the regional office. So it's not. They're not going to close any stores. But it is bad news if, you know, 7,000. Actually, the West coast regional office is going to have more job cuts than the Atlanta office, but still 7,000, which is about 4% of their workforce.

[C]

Times are tough and everybody knows someone who is affected. Melissa said earlier this morning that her sister got snagged off some downsizing.

[E]

Our intern, Benjamin.

[C]

Oh, yeah, he just lost his gig.

[E]

He lost his gig, too.

[C]

Talking to some police officers the other day, and they were explaining about the furlough. Jen and I were having a conversation with somebody who works in media or they're forcing everybody in the company to take one week unpaid leave over the next year or like next three months. Right. Everybody just gets a week off, but unfortunately, you don't get paid for it. So it's affecting everyone. And we are going to talk to Molly on the voice disguiser, who actually has a tough decision to make because she gets to choose who gets laid off.

[D]

That's unfair.

[C]

Hey, Molly for her.

[F]

Hi.

[D]

Hey.

[C]

How are you?

[F]

I am okay. I have a tough decision to make.

[E]

Well, it sounds like there's probably a lot of bosses in your same position having to choose who to let go and who not to.

[F]

Yeah. Yeah. Basically, my situation is that I'm a team leader and I have five people that work under me.

[C]

Five? Did you say five people?

[F]

Yes.

[C]

Okay.

[F]

And last week I was told that I had to let go of one of my team.

[E]

Okay.

[F]

And specifically, basically Someone who was hired in the last year. So out of my five, that left me with two options. One of them is a single mom. Her husband actually just left her.

[E]

How many?

[F]

Three.

[E]

Molly, can you speak up a little bit more? Like maybe right into the phone receiver?

[D]

It's hard to hear you a little bit. Okay.

[F]

Okay. Sorry about that.

[D]

That's okay.

[F]

So once again, she's a single mom, three kids, you know, doing this on her own. The bad news is she's really the weakest link in the team. She is by far the, you know, least qualified employee.

[G]

And how long has she been there?

[F]

She's been here about eight months.

[C]

Okay, so she is a employee number one mom. We'll just call her mom.

[F]

In fact, they both been in the company for about eight months.

[D]

I was about to say which. Whichever. Yeah, whichever ones are the least amount of time, but you said about the same. Okay.

[F]

Yeah, that's kind of the problem. They're really on that level. They're really both the two options. The other folks in my team have been there significantly longer, so it's kind of like they're safe, of course.

[D]

And then the other one, what is her situation?

[F]

The other one is she's a 23 year old. The great news is she is really the model employee and she will really be going far in the company. But here's the scoop. She lives with her mom. She actually has a second job as a model. She doesn't really need the money, per se. As opposed to a single mom who is struggling right now. I mean.

[G]

Well, is she living with.

[E]

Oh, I'm sorry, Go ahead.

[G]

I was just wondering if she was living with her mom because her mom's having financial trouble. Just maybe to help her mom out or to help herself out.

[F]

I don't know. I don't know. I think she's just doing it to like, save money. Like, you know, because she can. And she wants to buy a house and, you know, she. She can, she can save by living with her mom.

[H]

Wow.

[E]

So if you took the personal out of it and you were just making a strict business decision, you would let go the mom.

[F]

Oh, yeah.

[D]

Just because she's not as good of an employee.

[F]

Yeah, no question.

[E]

Which way are you leaning?

[F]

Well, I'm sort of torn right down the middle because, you know, in this, you know, environment, it just. It just seems. It almost seems cruel to let go of the mom. It just seems cool. It's like it's going to put this woman in incredible hardship.

[D]

Is there any potential for her performance to improve? I'm just saying, from a devil's advocate, like, she's had a hard year. Probably had the hardest eight months of her life working for you guys. So do you think there's any room for improvement on her part?

[C]

Like, how much of the issues over the past year might directly be related to her personal problems?

[F]

That's a good question. I would say they are pretty related to the personal problems, but even without them, she was, you know, she wasn't the top employee. She was, you know, I was going to say solid employee, but literally subpar. I don't see it improving. It could go back to where she was. Still a weak link, but without some of the issues. Like, you know, she's often leaving early, you know, dealing with personal business on the phone, which I understand, because she's sort of dealing with these kids. Kids and daycare. I get it. That's what's definitely come up recently. But it wasn't on an exemplary employee before that. You know what I mean? Before that. So I could see that it would shift a little bit, but not significantly.

[C]

Hey, Kimber. Welcome to the Bird show.

[H]

Good morning. This. This absolutely infuriates me, Okay. I am a single mom, and I depend on my job, but because I'm a single mom, you're thinking of whether or not you're gonna fire me. I don't even think so. It has nothing to do with the job. I wish this lady was my employee so I could fire her.

[D]

Well, she's. I think she's trying to be sympathetic because she's a single mom. I think if she wasn't a single mom, she would have fired her already.

[E]

So would you fire the single mom?

[H]

Absolutely. If she's not up to performance, I mean, it's unfortunate, and I would certainly feel bad about it as my job as a manager. I can't take that into consideration when I'm laying people off. I have to do what's best for the company. You know, I would certainly give her a reference if it. You know, if it was appropriate. But I'm sorry, it's. You know, your personal life has nothing to do with how well you're performing. And if you're not up to parch and this other lady is.

[E]

Yeah, that's interesting to hear coming from a single mom.

[G]

From a woman, too, because being a mo. Like, women are more emotional and can connect with the family life other than personal life. So.

[D]

Yeah. And I guess she's trying to be sympathetic one, because, I mean, you're not guaranteed to get another job. For a long time. Once she fires either one, you know, they're not going to automatically turn around, get another job. And then I wonder though, you ever, you know, because I totally get. I'm just bringing up an argument about bringing the emotional or the actually the personal into the work. But like, when you negotiate for your salary, don't you bring the personal in? Doesn't a company feel, or at least sometimes will negotiate a higher salary if somebody comes in and says, hey, I got two kids, I got to take care of them, I got to do this. And then they end up getting paid more because they have more people to take care of?

[E]

I've always heard that when you're negotiating, you leave your personal life out of it. Like, that's what I've always heard in negotiating raises, negotiating salaries, that sort of thing. You just leave it out of it. It's about what you can bring to the table and what skill set you have and what leadership qualities you have and everything you can bring to the job. But if you go in there sort of whining about like, well, my rent's really high or, well, I got a mortgage payment to pay or whatever, I'm

[C]

not saying it's whining about it, but

[D]

I bet men have come in and I say men because usually they're better negotiators. And I think that if a guy comes in and says he's got a family to support as opposed to a single guy, I bet he uses that in his negotiation.

[C]

Well, I know of a situation actually where a man approached another man, his male boss, and said, hey, I want to show you something because I need a raise. And the guy says, okay, well tell me why. Expecting him to say, well, I'm a 40 hour a week employee, but I regularly work 55 hours a week and I do this and I do this and this. Instead, he pulled out a spreadsheet of his monthly expenses to show like rent, you know, $650 a month, groceries, food, childcare, going out, blah, blah. And then he goes, seeing at the end of the month, according to this, I only have an extra $40. And the guy's like, well, move to a cheaper place. You know, like the boss is like, I didn't care about that. Melody, welcome to the bird show.

[H]

Hey.

[I]

I just wanted to say that basically the woman you guys talking about is pretty much someone in the same situation that I'm in right now.

[C]

Okay.

[I]

You know, my husband left me. I've been working for six months, just entered the workforce after being out of work for five years to take care of my two kids. And this woman basically has no other options if you guys fire her right now. I mean, I had to take bottom of the barrel, barely making anything just so I could get back into the workforce because I had this huge gap in my resume history. I mean, I understand keeping the personal out of it, but you've got to understand the situation in the economy too. I mean, I would stop paying child care. I am barely making ends meet. I pay $12,000 a year in child care expenses and that's like the cheapest child care that I could find. So, I mean, you're basically putting somebody back in a situation where they're just not going to get anywhere. And I understand, you know, making it just business and not personal, but this is really going to affect this woman and take her just totally under the water.

[D]

I think that's why she's calling us. I mean, I think that, you know, a business, you know, a business is not obligated to the employee. The employee is there to serve the business. So, you know, but it is hard when you're. You identify what you do for a living. That's how you identify yourself is based on your job in this country. So it is hard, I think, to keep all that, you know, separate. But if she was a better employee, like even. Because I'm sure this manager, and correct me if I'm wrong, what's our manager's name?

[C]

Molly.

[D]

Molly.

[C]

Molly.

[D]

Yeah. So even if this employee, the single mom, let's say she's having a rough year, we all have rough times and we're not as good employees as we could be. But she still, I mean, you just said she's subpar regardless of her going through all this. Right.

[C]

But here's the thing. Not Molly, I'm sorry, Melody, you have to reverse it. Let's say that you're not the single mom. Let's say that you are, because one of them is gonna get fired with no warning. So now you're not the single mom. Now you're a 23 year old in your first job. You're putting money in the bank, you're living with mom, everything's going good. Things are. You work two jobs, you clearly bust your ass, at least this one. Plus you still have a second job doing the modeling stuff. So you're working your tail off, and then the boss comes in and goes, yeah, we gotta let you go.

[F]

Yeah.

[I]

But you have a fallback, you know, you don't have really much more overhead than that. You don't have to pay rent. You don't have to worry about anything else. And I see what you guys are saying, and I know that the overall consensus is, you know, you need to take the business and the personal and separate them. But I mean, at the end of the day, this would really significantly need negatively affects this woman's livelihood right now. And being able to keep up with taking care of her children and everything else, I mean, just childcare expenses alone will take you under. And aside from that, everything else is. It's just a hard economy to go out and be.

[C]

Let me ask you a question. How many kids do you have?

[I]

I have two.

[C]

Okay, you have two. So if you were at work today and the boss came to you and said to you and one other person, I got to let one of you go, and you're a single mom with two kids, and the other person's a single mom with three kids, do you say to her, okay, it'll be me. I'll go, because I'm not one less kid.

[I]

I'd like to hope that I wouldn't be involved in that decision in terms of them saying, okay, well, you two look at each other.

[C]

Well, there's a lot of people who work at Home Depot who didn't want to be in that decision and Macy's and all these companies that are laying off. So if it was, I wasn't involved

[I]

in the decision of making another employee. You know, I mean, I understand when you're in a managerial position, that's just

[D]

kind of a job Molly has to.

[I]

Being an underling. I would hope that wouldn't be my position.

[D]

Well, the thing is, Molly doesn't have the luxury of telling the single mom, you've got to step it up or you're going to be fired. She has to let somebody, two people on her staff go, well, and if

[E]

she's being a good manager, she even said to us that the. The younger single woman is great future for their company. So she may be held responsible. Say she keeps the single mom, lets the younger one go because it tugs on her heartstrings. Okay, well, if the single mom doesn't perform and the company doesn't do as well, that's her responsibility. You know what I'm saying? So people above her are going to come down on her and say, why did you let go the more talented or more productive employee?

[C]

Hey, Angela, welcome to the show.

[I]

Hi.

[J]

This is exactly what's wrong with the way people are treated at work environments now is if you have a kid you get stuck special treatment no matter what. So basically, single people or people without kids are treated differently and not given as many benefits because, you know, the people with the kids are the ones that get off early for the holidays, get extra days at the holiday, or are excused because the kid's sick more. This is exactly the example.

[I]

It's about a work.

[J]

When you come to work, your personal life is separate. It's a job. You should not be treated differently because you have kids. So this girl should be treated differently because she chose not to have children. Yet it doesn't make any sense.

[D]

You know, I appreciate leaving personal. I just think that's not realistic. Like, I'm not saying this really doesn't have anything to do with Molly's decision because I would actually, if I would actually look at the job hire date and even if it's five days different, I would be the one that was, that was there the shortest amount of time. But that way it's plain because if you want to do business, then that is, you know what the new, the newest in is the first to leave. But I do think, I think that when you spend 10, 12 hours at work every day, it is impossible as a human being to spend years at a job 12 hours a day and think you can be mechanical sitting in here and it not be emotional. So we're not machines and we're not coming. I mean, I do think that there has to be, I don't know, I think there has to be a merging of both very staunch business mechanical. But then you can't, your employees just can't be a number. They need to be a person, you know.

[C]

Hey, Molly, we're going to follow up with you this week and find out what decision you made and how it went.

[D]

Okay, good luck.

[G]

I don't envy that.

[F]

I have to say, I heard the first person and I was like, okay, okay, now I know what I have to do. I heard the second person. I go, oh my God. Now everyone's made very, very compelling arguments. It's really a tough decision.

[E]

I'm sorry it lands in your lap.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

You know?

[C]

Yeah. If I'm in your situation, I decide to do it like on Friday, then call in sick and make my boss do it. I think that's the only right decision at this point. Good luck to you, Molly. We'll follow up with you shortly. Okay.

[F]

Okay.

[B]

Hey, the Bird Show.

[K]

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