‘You’re fired — and so is your mother’
November 13, 2008 by Shane BorerPosted in: "Seemed like a good idea at the time", "Would you want this person in Finance?", Special report
Making sure employee terminations go as smoothly as possible is never easy. That’s no excuse for dropping the ax like these companies.
For weeks, media site Gawker has been collecting layoff horror stories. But nasty-worded memos and poor timing can’t hold a candle to three stand-out stories:
- An employee who worked in HR was asked to collate and staple the exit packages for a major reduction-in-force. A day after he’d completed assembling the packages, he was handed his own personal copy.
- An 18-year veteran at a publishing company was laid off from her job on a day that she was out sick. However, her boss wasn’t the person who broke the news: The employee’s 19-year-old son had also been terminated that day. Instead of making two calls, the boss asked the son to inform his mother she’d been let go.
- A non-tech-savvy boss didn’t know how to save documents in different folders, so important memos and other pieces of correspondence were kept in the same location. An employee named Sylvia was going into the folder to retrieve a memo when she noticed a document titled: “SylviaFired.doc.” After opening the letter, the employee saw that her own dismissal form was full of misspellings and other grammatical errors. She decided to clean up the form — and it was her final project at the company.
Know a story about a termination that wasn’t thought through as well as it should have been? Share it in the comments section below.
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Tags: Employee terminations, Exit packages, Spelling errors, Tech-savvy, You're fired
November 14th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I suffered a dislocated shoulder, which required surgery, while playing baseball a few years ago. I had unused vacation time which I was told I would not have to use due to the nature of the reason for my time off. I was granted a week, the amount of time my surgeon had said I would need for recovery and provided my employer with copies of all of my hospital forms and information. I returned after my week off and got setup at my desk came back with my morning cup of coffee and was told to go home and not come back. Here I was in a sling trying to carry all of my things, that’s right no one even offered to help, out to my car.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
My daughter worked for a bank as Operations Officer. She took a vacation day (Wednesday) and when she returned to work the next morning (Thursday) she was fired because her cash drawer was out of balance by $11.00. She told them she had balanced Tuesday night when she left and had not touched the cash drawer since. She asked to count the drawer herself and they refused.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Employee was supposed to be let go on Friday but HR didn’t get around to telling him. He saw his job being offered in the Sunday paper. On Monday when he came in, he said something about seeing a job like his in the Sunday paper. Response – Oh we forgot to tell you – you’ve been fired.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I worked for an Israeli owned software company. One of the engineers, the only one who wasn’t jewish, was going to be let go. I had told his manager to not let him go on Friday’s as this was the day that his family picked him up from work. The manager lost track of the day/time and ended up firing him in front of his family, who had come to his cublicle to pick him up.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I have two stories even better.
First, a plant was closed and all employees let go during the annual shut down maintenance week. Once employee who had taken the week to go on a white water rafting trip without benefit of any wireless communication devices. When he returned home, he had an amazing number of messages on his phone, starting with calls from the employer to come in for a meeting, more calls from the employer, calls from coworkers (including his mom who also worked in the plant) and ending with a call from HR telling him that included with his severence check would be the information about the out placement services (the final message being the one that delivered the news of his termination).
Second, at an unnamed multinational hi-tech firm which had been discussing in the media for over a year that the 10,000 poorest performing employees would be laid off, the list of terminated employees was created without any direct management input (even three layers of management up) that did not appear to have any correlation with performance. There were managers who had to spend their entire day laying off employees they did not know (for most it was their first experience with lay offs), and at the debriefing meeting at the end of the day those managers were then laid off. Ice cold.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
An employee was the VP/Director of Taxes and the company for whom he worked was an ESOP (employee stock owned). Additionally, this employee was the President of the local chapter of the professional organization know as The ESOP Association. Each year, this company celebrated “ESOP Day” where the management of the company served breakfast to the employees as they arrived for work. The company allowed him to serve breakfast and then fired him around 10:30.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:56 am
I called in sick one day – the first time – and the owner sent a coworker to my apartment with my severance check and the news that I’d been fired. I went in the next day and told him he was wrong, so he rehired me. Six months later, scenario repeated! I didn’t argue the second time. The next job I found is the employer I’m still with, 26 years later. Meanwhile, the owner of the first business was fined for tax fraud due to claiming that all his employees (all office personnel) were contract workers.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I had a week from hell a couple of years ago. I had to take time off work to go to a divorce court on Tuesday, Thursday, my dog died, Friday we had him cremated after which I came in to work. My manager was very sympathetic, took me to his office to talk a proceeded telling how the company is not doing well and they have to let me go.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I worked for a hotel management company as their only HR/Payroll person (1200+ employees in 12 locations throughout US.) The CFO told me that the CEO was reducing my headcount and I would be laid off in one week – two if the CFO wasn’t able to learn my job in that week!
He didn’t try to talk to me about the scope of my responsibilities until that Thursday and was appalled at the totality of work. The next day, he came back in and said that the CEO had decided to give me one more week of employment so that they could learn my job. I nicely told him that since he hadn’t let me know of the need, I had made plans the following week to go out of town (true.) He visibly blanched.
Found out later that HIS job was to be downsized, so he angled to get mine to stay employed. He’s now an AR Rep in a small hotel.