[freewilly1040]

People don’t get friendlier up the food chain. It’s highly likely the line manager is reacting to pressure coming from above themselves.

[mistyislands]

Agree. It is unlikely the manager did this out of pettiness. He probably got pressured by his L7/L8 to fire someone for his org to meet the URA goal. He made the obvious choice and picked the guy applying for internal transfer. Why lose two people when you could just lose one?