People lose their jobs for a variety of reasons, but delegating your work out to other people when it’s expected of you to turn in YOUR handiwork is one of the dumbest reasons to be certain. Alf Clausen, a long-time composer and one of the reasons that The Simpsons has been remembered and loved by so many, was fired a few years back when he decided to delegate his responsibilities to his son Scott. Given that Clausen had developed Parkinson’s disease and was getting on in years he believed that he was being fired for simply being old and being infirm, which would have put his employers in a spot of trouble had this been true. But the unauthorized delegation was the main reason for his termination, and whether Clausen wants to admit it or not you can’t simply ask another person to do the work for you without first clearing it with the boss. This is the case with most jobs that expect their employees to do the work and produce entirely original content, trying to pass off work that’s not your own is a big no-no. It’s true that considering the fact that Alf used his son’s help that it shouldn’t be such an issue since his son was doing what he could to help his father, but without authorization it still becomes a huge liability and therefore a problem. As Mike Jones of Screenrant reveals the reason given for his release to begin with was that the show was looking for a new kind of music, which is a very cagey way to state that they were attempting to get rid of him but not make a scene. Some might think that’s a little cowardly and to fair, it kind of is since it’s a practice in avoidance but also a chance to skip a bit of drama that a lot of people would lock on but some of us really don’t care about.
Downplaying the music of any popular show isn’t likely to be a good idea but thinking that a person is important enough to be forgiven for an action that’s not so much a gaffe as it is an act that proves that someone has trouble asking for help is a bit naive. It could very well be that Alf had a penchant for not asking for help when he needed it since some people are quite proud and would rather go down in flames, metaphorically speaking, than to ask for the help they need. Parkinson’s is also a disease that tends to make life quite a bit harder for those that have it, and losing that sense of independence is even harder for some people since it means relying on folks for just about everything. It’s easy to think that Alf was attempting to get the job done on the down low by using his son to help out, but bosses aren’t entirely forgiving when it comes to subbing out your work to others without their direct approval. The issue of the quality being different or something being awry is usually one reason why this happens, but it’s also a matter of pulling the wool over their eyes that upsets many employers since honest and direct communication is usually prized by many. Some might not want to see the issue of Alf using his son to help out, but in the world of business this is a huge no-no that just can’t happen and as a result it’s not much of a surprise that Alf was released from his duties. Maddy Shaw Roberts of Classic FM had more to say on this. Thinking it was about his age and his ailment though was a definite fallacy that likely came from the resentment he must have felt at the moment since his sense of self-awareness quickly manifested into a victim mentality that allowed him to think he was being unfairly dealt with because of his age. That would be a huge problem, but thankfully that wasn’t the case since his lapse in judgment concerning his job was the issue.
It’s very likely that it was tough to get rid of Alf since he’d been with the show for so long, but something like this indicates that there might have been issues in the past that a lot of people don’t know about since letting someone go this easily for something that might have earned a warning or perhaps a suspension of some sort usually indicates that there was more to it than just this. Breaking someone’s trust, especially an employer’s, is a big deal, but many employers will still allow a person to learn the error of their ways, especially when they rely on that individual for something important that has to do with a project as big as The Simpsons. That’s why it’s very likely that there’s more to the story that we’re not hearing, a catalyst that made it impossible to keep Alf around any longer. Ellie Harrison of the Independent had more to add to the topic.
