[beachy]

I've often thought about how easy some issues must be to deal with with the US's "fire at will" regime.

In my country you really can't fire anyone without a major HR process that saps everyone's energy and morale.

In your case it sounds like everyone would have better off if this person had been fired early on in proceedings.

Once I made someone redundant, which can be a back door mechanism for firing in some circumstances. He just wasn't cutting it. I felt ghastly afterwards.

I ran into him months later and he told me he had no hard feelings, and the shock of it had made him reappraise his career path and he had made his way into a job which was much better suited to his skills. He was far happier.