There's also "Steve, you need to spend some time and diagnose how this happened. How did you not notice? Why wasn't it Tim's number one priority? How do we fix this situation, check that it isn't happening in the rest of the organization, and make sure it doesn't happen again?"
It is really weird. For six months the CEO didn't notice anything bad in the work place, no bad things happening that would make him think that is something is going very wrong.
Than, by chance, he notices that one of his employes isn't doing something he asked, for six months. Then he thinks "wow, this guy is ruining my work" and threatens to fire two workers if they don't fix it in 24 hours.
From any perspective, the OP came off looking really bad, and I doubt that people will feel better in such a work place... especially when word spreads that if you make mistakes you can be fired in 24 hours.
> For six months the CEO didn't notice anything bad in the work place...
Both he didn't put in place any controls and the required task was mostly useless. In such a situation I'd fire the CEO, because he mandates employees to waste company time. Each one hour 1:1 useless meeting wastes two hours!
