You appear to live in quite the bubble if you really believe this with absolute certainty.
> Western society makes it quite difficult to fire employees.
Have you worked in a US "right-to-work" state? It's incredibly easy to fire people. Large companies are typically the only businesses that bother with "thoroughly documented evidence of the employee's malfeasance". And even that is rare.
> You'd be hard-pressed to find any employer willing to fire an employee without thoroughly documented evidence of the employee's malfeasance. The only time anybody gets fired is when they really really deserved it.
I'm just a single data point. I'm a bit of a workaholic. I'm also a perfectionist. And I'm someone who always busts his ass at every job. In the last 20 years in TN, I have encountered the following occasions:
- During college, I worked part-time at Books-a-Million in their little cafe. I had the laziest, most unreliable cafe "manager" I've ever met—she would regularly be 30+ minutes late to shifts, causing me to be late to classes and events; she would constantly offload managerial tasks to me when we shared a shift; she would spend vast majorities of her shifts talking on the phone with family and friends; she wouldn't respond to customers at the counter if I was busy (because she was on the phone), and would ignore them waiting for me to get to them; when I would follow her shifts, she never spent any time at all cleaning up after herself, and left the entire area a fucking mess; the list goes on. When Spring Break hit, I'd had a pre-approved vacation on the books for nearly 3 months—a road trip to Chicago with friends. My ride showed up 15 minutes before my shift ended and came in for a coffee to wait for me to be relieved by the manager. One hour later, I finally called the manager. She was at home watching TV (yes, she told me that directly). I asked if she was aware she was supposed to be relieving me so I could leave for vacation, and she said yes. I told her my ride had been waiting for over an hour by this point, and needed to leave because it was a long drive. She complained about having to work on a Saturday. Said she guessed she'd go get in the shower and start getting ready for work. I decided I'd had enough of this behavior after nearly 1 year—I told her that I would be leaving in 30 minutes whether she was there or not. And since she's the manager, an 18-yr-old kid shouldn't be displaying more responsibility, reliability, and dedication to his part-time job than she, as a 30-something, gave to her full-time job. Then I thanked her and hung up. I then wrote all this up in the cafe log book—a book we were supposed to write important notes for store management in that they would review daily. She showed up right at 30 minutes later, and I left. Upon returning from the vacation, she called and asked if I'd come in and cover a shift for her. I agreed. Upon arriving at the store, she was there, and she and the store manager told me I was fired for insubordination. I had expected it, of course, but that's beside the point. I'm sure I really really deserved to be the one fired in that situation, right?
- Nearly 20 years ago, I was fired from Best Buy. I'd worked there for somewhere close to 9 months, I think. Never missed a day. Even walked to work after my clutch went out on the interstate. The day before departing for an approved vacation, I declined the female store manager's advances and being asked out. The day I returned, I was asked to sign a document declaring that the reason for my firing was poor job performance and missing work. My direct manager on the pre-Geek Squad declined to sign the form—telling me privately afterward there was no way he could sign such a statement because he absolutely depended on me and was now fucked without a replacement—but wouldn't you know it ... lucky for Best Buy there was a store manager who was happy to do it. I declined to sign the form, informing them I'd happily sign a form that declared I was being fired after declining to go out with a superior. They declined to provide such a form, so I wrote it myself on their form, after striking through their bullshit reason, and signed that statement. But again, surely I really really deserved being fired there.
- 17 years ago, I worked as a temp worker with Randstad for Maytag in one of their customer service centers. It was a pretty easy job—just take calls all day and help people figure out appliance problems. One day, Maytag announced they were moving a US factory to Renosa, Mexico. There were quite a few jobs being lost. That night, at home, on my personal computer, I was doing some research into US companies moving factories to Mexico. There was a particular organization in Texas that helped facilitate such moves who mentioned working with Maytag on their website. They had a form on their site you could fill out for more information, or to ask questions. So, I filled out the form—asked some specific questions about working conditions, average pay rates of Mexican workers compared to US workers, time to spin up factories, worker treatment, and a few other things. I put my name, email, and phone number in the form. There was an input that asked where I worked that was required—so I just typed in Maytag without thinking and moved on. The next morning, I arrived at my desk to a couple managers waiting for me. Followed them into the office, where they showed me a printout of the form I had filled out the night before on my personal computer at home. All the questions I'd asked. They asked what I thought I was doing. I simply explained—in absolute honesty—I was very curious about how factory moves work, how workers are treated and paid in Mexico, especially compared to union workers at Maytag's existing US factories, and had found that site saying they could provide such information. They told me I was a customer service rep and had no business looking into such matters, and then informed me I was being fired for impersonating Maytag company personnel and misrepresenting their interests. But, of course, I really really deserved it.
> Hell, it's even illegal to fire striking employees.
- Oh, this is a funny one. About 15 years ago, I was fired after getting involved with union organizing, and sharing some literature and discussing unions with my coworkers. This was in a factory, where part of the employees were already unionized, but the company was subcontracting jobs out to cheaper, non-union workers like me. I mean, it's supposed to be illegal to fire someone for union organizing. Ah, the beauty of a right-to-work state—where every employee is an at-will employee, and you can pretty much make up any excuse to fire them. But alas, I'm sure I really really deserved it.
I moved into sales for a few years after that, and did really well. Then I finally decided to put my computer skills to use as a software developer 12 years ago—and subsequently turned that into running my own business for the last 7 or 8 years. The tech world has been quite different—though there are still plenty of issues that could be improved. However, the lessons of my years of "normal" employment were quite clear—in right-to-work states, it's absolutely okay for employers to terminate any employee, any time, for any reason. Real reasons. Utter bullshit reasons. It doesn't matter. The employer has all the power, and the employee has to just take it or lose their job and income.