The Severance

The Situation

Three restaurants, and the original one is done — the landlord wants double at renewal and the neighborhood that filled it moved away years ago. The numbers are not close. Marco has run that room for twelve years; he opened it with you, worked the line through two bad winters, trained half the managers now running your other two stores. Both of those stores have GMs who are staying. There is no seat for him. Your attorney is efficient about it: two weeks per year of service is generous in this industry, offer eight and get a signed release, keep it clean. You can afford more than eight. You could also buy a new walk-in for what more would cost. He has a mortgage, a daughter starting college, and no idea yet that the place he thinks of as his is closing in September.

The Question

The law is satisfied with almost nothing. What does twelve years actually oblige you to?

COUNSEL

Doctrine will not hand you the number — this is prudence's ground — but it sets the direction of the arithmetic, and the direction is the whole case. Your attorney is answering what closes the file. Colossians asks a different question: masters, do to your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that you also have a master in heaven — and equal is the word that will not stay quiet, because it reaches past the legal minimum to what the man's fidelity actually earned. The Catechism names what you are pricing: unemployment wounds a man's dignity and threatens the equilibrium of his life, and the enterprise is obliged to weigh persons, not only profits. So set the severance from his runway, not from the release's market rate: what carries Marco to his next kitchen without the wound you could have prevented? Weeks of pay are one instrument. So is the phone — you know every operator in town who needs a GM, and two calls from you are worth more than two weeks from you. So is the reference letter written before he has to ask, and health coverage across the gap. The release can ride along with all of it. Just do not let it be the point.

The Warrant

Before Sundown

Before the attorney drafts anything, make two calls to operators who need a GM and write the reference letter. Then set the number from Marco's runway to his next post — and tell him yourself, first, face to face.