Fire him or fire him not….

To be honest I should have fired him long time ago. He is one of the nicest guys I have met personable, speaks well, dresses well can carry on an intelligent conversation. I had a lot of high hopes for him when I interviewed him. In fact he performed well even in the test I gave him. But it seems he has the opposite of the Midas touch. He manages to shit on everything virtually he touches. He started as the divisional head supervising four to five people but now we have reduced the responsibilities to supervise only one still I have enormous complaints from clients… the worse thing is it has come to such a point when he tells me that he has done something I don’t trust him and I want to make sure that it has happened. Just to show you my frustration let me show something which I have noted down in my black marks document which I keep track of the serious mistakes some people make…
… checked if client quote was mailed… said yes he did so… asked if a cc was sent to subordinate… says no because subordinate sent it… of course subordinate has already told me that quote is with him and he needs to fill in some additional information… so we are back to square one and the job has not progressed one inch.
There are many similar situations like this and there have been times that I have really torn my hair apart. But something prevents me from firing him though I should have done so many months ago the way things are happening. I was asking myself why I haven’t fired him so far. Was it my belief that anything can be overcome with the right amount of tact and patience? Sadly it realized that it was not the case but mainly because I liked the guy a lot even though he was an “A” grade bullshitter.