Question #214 Layoffism
Recent current events have me reminiscing on "great" employer moves of times past.
My question: What is the lamest firing or layoff you have witnessed? If you haven't experienced any first-hand you can share one you have heard of.
10 comments:
Well... I got fired once due to a birth-defect of mine, which seems kind of unfair. As my soon-to-be ex-boss explained at the time: "Some people are born with the ability to make donuts, and some people aren't." I, he went on to explain, fell into the category of Born Without the Ability to Make Donuts.
I have lived through a half-dozen or so large scale layoffs. Each time it seems like they try a different method of telling folks they are jobless.
The worst method came, I think, just before christmas. We had an all-hands meeting in a large conference room where the VP explained that we would be reducing our staff by about 20%.
The plan, he continued, was for everyone to try and leave the conference room. If we made it out it meant our jobs were safe. If we got tapped on the shoulder by our managers it meant we were to stay in the room and we would get layed off.
What resulted was a weird slow walk out of the room where each person looked nervously at his or her manager waiting for the "death touch". I got through, the girl behind me wasn't so lucky. Also one guy got out that wasn't supposed to and had to be called back in.
Other mechanisms included:
An org chart where if you didn't find your name listed you were layed off.
A meeting where names were called out and "everyone else could go". The names were, of course, the people who had gotten layed off.
A manager who had to go and individually lay off half of his team. Once he had completed this horrible task he too was told he was layed off.
A VP who stood in front of two conference rooms during an "All hands meeting" like the angel of death telling some to go into one and others going into the other. Those who went into the first were never seen from again.
I was, technically, fired once because I did not get along with the girl I worked with. Course she smoked menthols, was on Prozac, never wore pants because she didn't like her legs, once sprained her back performing a pilates video on her bed, used lambskin condoms and told me about it, and later cheated on her fiance with a lesbian that had a crush on her. Yet I was the problem and needed to be terminated. I was also laid off about a year ago but it wasn't that lame, it was actually awesome.
witnessing jake get fired was probably the worst i've seen to this point. i was at the fryer making donuts.
I was fired once for not making sandwiches the "right way"- which included a maniacal flourish to cut up avocados. It was a juice bar in Berkeley and the job sucked anyhow.
I was also fired from Google for (among other things) not traveling to Banff(sp?) with the lesbian who was my overlord...err supervisor. When you get fired from there, they lead you out like you might run through and steal all the free food on your way out.
They do that here but only if you are leaving to work for the goog.
Had a crappy employer who didn't like that I switched two shifts with another employee to accommodate for a vacation... She effectively handed me a pink-slip by posing, "It's either England or the Yosemite Street Cafe."
I got fired from a certain biker bar in Hopland. Actually, I didn't get fired as much as written off the schedule without notice. I found out that the drunk owner of the bar was telling the applicants she interviewed for my position that I "wasn't user friendly." I can only imagine this means I was fired for not putting out with crazy old bikers since the regulars loved me. Not too long later the owner started having alcohol induced seizures and the place flooded. It is permanently closed.
I got laid off from my part-time job at a record label right after Sep. 11th. Lay-offs were imminent, but since I was only part-time I assumed I was safe. Then I got the phone call from my infinitely hate-able boss and I just started bawling. I was young and sensitive and thought the entire universe was falling apart.
I was told to have a meeting with my boss on layoff day, when he sadly told me that I too was being axed. It was a total bummer and unexpected.
The company immediately had to hire me back for 150/hr as a contractor, so that was ok. My boss was kind of wink-wink/nudge-nudge and I made a shitload of money and hardly worked. Unfortunately I am still paying taxes from those heady days.
Aside from my own laying off, I have had to serve as the IT "hatchet man" several times...ie: disabling accounts, locking down workstations, accounting for laptops, etc. The best was when I accompanied a VP to a remote office where everyone was getting canned. I turned off the server/network infrastructure 5 minutes too early and gave away the big surprise. They canned everyone over a conference call but they all knew what was coming since I had shut down everything beforehand. Not entirely unrelated, I uh..."received" my first 22" CRT monitor that day, after everyone had left the office.
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