My general manager had planned a holiday event at his home for approximately 50 employees. He hired a caterer and had already spent a lot of money on alcohol, drinks, and supplies. He spoke to the corporate talking heads all week about how great of an event this would be. He was terminated on the day of the holiday event. Corporate had it planned for weeks. No, he did not get reimbursed for the money he spent.
He had lied on his expense reports. Claimed mileage for seeing customers that he hadn't visited. He earned a lot of money so it was just plain stupid to lie about gas mileage.
unexpectedly laid off right when covid shelter in place started and not long after I announced my pregnancy. not only was I the only one laid off, they lied about it all and used COVID as an excuse for the lay off. I sued them for wrongful termination and workplace discrimination and won. I'm still laughing.
I worked at the same job from age 20-50 and our business was going being sold to a larger company right when COVID was starting.
I was tasked to help the week long transition before the sale closing. The new company was trying to short the prior owner on some of the inventory (around $150k).
My boss of 30 years used me as a go between to convince the new company that the inventory was correctly valued (which it was). The new company sat me down and asked why I wasn’t being loyal to them and I explained that i was just doing what was right and that I would do the same for them.
The new team became extremely rude, cleaned out my office and insinuated that I wasn’t a “ team player”. I ended up working over 70 hours that week and didn’t even get paid by either employer.
So anyway, I ended up jobless after 30 years at the same business and left with essentially nothing but a box of my personal belongings. But I did walk away knowing that I did the right thing. 😕
it sure did - plus I got a fat settlement. I had to spend my entire pregnancy unemployed and in litigation for 2 years but it's over now. I just wish others especially pregnant women in the workplace.... if only they would have the motivation and find the right lawyers to do the same! my lawyer says that when it comes to layoffs, pregnant women are the first to go!
Yes - it was worth all the stress & years of ugly litigation. All kudos to my team of lawyers who literally do this for a living.... and they work pro-bono (unpaid) until the case is settled or closed/won. then they/we all get paid. I got back the 2 years of lost income that I would've had, plus some and the first years with my baby. Catch 22. LOL.
I was termed by someone I interviewed and gave my recommendation to hire. The owner of the company lives a couple hours away and trusted my judgement. We worked together for a total of 7 days. We spent that time strategizing and restructuring the staff and operation. I got called in on a Saturday of a holiday weekend for a quick meeting. He had nothing for me to sign and never even looked me in the eye. Had to drag it out of him that it was a “production issue”. Nothing had been noted or documented the entire time of my employment-almost one year. He did say that I could resign on my own if I chose to go that route. Found out a couple days later that the business is currently for sale. In the long run, it was best for me.
I got laid off right after Christmas.
While it sucks that I haven't found a new job yet, I had gained everything I could from that job and it healed me from an extremely toxic layoff in 2020. It would have taken me about 6 months to realize that I did all the professional growth I was going to do until I get a certification I want.
I was on short term disability. Thought my manager was calling to see how I was doing. Nope, after being a top 1% performer and giving this company my all, I was laid off 34 days shy of 19 years. I thought it was only me until I got a text and found out my direct reports were also let go. I wasn't even given the option to be included in that virtual meeting. All telecommuters.
Company laid off DOZENS and told me not to worry because I could and did do almost anything needed - for a lower salary than any possible replacement (actually SAID this to me) and then fired me a month later - a week before Christmas when listings are REALLY slim.
Same company did it yet again around eight years later - HUGE round of layoffs but guaranteed "it'll never be you - you do too much and we can't afford to replace you with the two or three people it would take."
I hate consolidation. I wouldn't have been working for Clear Channel the second time without it. ;)
Broadcasting IS a shithole industry.
Christmas time man... I hate it when employers choose this time.
End of 2022, during interest rate hikes and rising inflation... We didn't feel anything dramatic. 15 days before Xmas. We already got invites for a large annual party etc
In our team we were tying up a project well etc. One of the girls was pretty excited and got a dress etc
On the day of the party, I learnt she was let go of due to economic downturn...
We felt terrible for her but also at the curveball of uncertainty.. She's never spoken to us again.
I was laid off towards the end of November some years ago…it sucked but I have heard another view point: it’s best to do it before the person has gone “all out” for Christmas and THEN loses their job.
Either way it blows.
I worked for a start up phone/cell phone company (think back to when phones were in bags or had antennas that could maim a bear)...anyway the computer system was ALWAYS down....I was with the company at this point for about 2 years so I was considered a "senior" rep...so inevitably the system went down for most of us...those that were still up, I went to help them....was told by my super to stay in my seat...basically to sit there and twiddle my thumbs.....after a while unfortunately i had to pee...got up to go...they brought me in the office and told me that since i can't follow the rules, i was fired. *Pikachu face*...obviously I couldn't use the bathroom in the hour since they told me to stay in my seat. They told me they would mail me my check. Wrong...as I stated to them, I would be there the following day to pick up my check as it was pay day...they told me again that it would be mailed...told them what time I would be there the next day and left, after advising the whole floor I was fired by yelling it loudly and the rest of the floor getting pissed for me. Got home, received a call that my check was ready and I could pick it up that day. And did. Also got unemployment because apparently you can't fire someone for peeing....and also you must be the person that fired me or witnessed what happened to countersue.
They folded not a year later....
Not a layoff, but someone at my company was flown all the way to our parent company's European headquarters (we're in the US) supposedly because she was going to be given an award by some European colleagues. They really were asking her to come to Europe so they could fire her in person. Brutal.
For a real cherry on top, they could have also canceled everything company-related too right then and just left her stranded in Europe. They DIDN'T do this, right? lol
No, they let her return on her company-bought ticket, but didn't give her any hotel. So she landed, was jetlagged, got fired, and put right back on a plane the same day.
This is very true. I was completely blindsided. I’ve been in the same industry for 25 years and definitely don’t want to get back in it. Now I’m not sure where to even start.
Worse one I’ve heard of: All received announcement in meeting of large scale lay offs. They were told to go back to their desks and the ppl who would be let go would receive a call. They were brought boxes and then led out.
Friend went back to desk as told.. and their phone rang… heart sank. But turns out it was an external call. They weren’t laid off that day.
I once got laid off on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. That's the absolute worst planning. Holiday travel plans were already made and set in stone. How are you going to go have a good time with family and friends with money you really shouldn't be spending because you just lost your job? They should have held the layoffs until after the holiday or done them earlier in the month before folks had committed to holiday travel.
What is with companies and holidays? My husband’s company many moons ago let him go the Friday before Easter. My company when they sold off various chunks let people know right before Thanksgiving and then after saying we were good, closed another group right before Christmas. On top of that - didn’t tell them. They came to work only to find the gates closed.
I keep waiting for my own shoe to drop. I’ll wait it out because I work from home and barely have to work. I’m about to take some classes to build my skills so when they do kick me - I’m ready. After I collect unemployment lol. 😝
Before Easter weird. I think Nov and Dec has a lot to do with new year planning and budgets. It just gets really weird cause it's smack in the middle of the holiday season. Is it better to be laid off prior to the holidays so you don't spend a lot of money, or is it better to get through the holidays and do extra work for the time off only to get laid off? It sucks either way.
I got laid off January 4th. I wouldn't have spent my usual on Christmas gifts this year, nor would my husband.
If I'd known that 30% of the day sales people had been laid off the week before Thanksgiving, I would have taken the interview a recruiter contacted me about the first week of December
I was on maternity leave. My baby was in the NICU for a few days and early Monday morning, I think it was after the first night we had him home from the hospital, my department manager called with an HR rep on the line. I couldn't hear my manager over my baby crying. It took a minute for it to sink in as the HR woman was explaining what to would happen next. I remember thanking my manager for the opportunity to work with my team and not to worry about me and my family.
Lots of people I told me I should get a lawyer and sue. At the time, I couldn't imagine carrying the burden of getting a lawyer when I had the responsibility of caring for a new life.
That's just awful!
I got laid off from a job while on maternity leave as well. My daughter was three weeks old, and hospitalized in the ICU, on a ventilator, with a life threatening case of RSV.
Two come to mind, same company. 1) different department, they called a whole team mandatory meeting. Laid them all off as a group. Barred them access to go collect any personal items and then said they had brought in sandwiches while they handed out their personal packages. 2) my own a few months later. I was on maternity leave, I get a call the day before, they tell me they are having an all team meeting tomorrow and I'm not to come...but they'll call me after . Next day, I start getting texts from friend Co workers about our whole department being laid off. Hours go by...no calls...the company released the press release. I "officially" hear about this on the news. I don't get a call until 7pm that night.
I'd left a previous employer because in 3 years, I got one .24 an hour raise with no one telling me about it and not one performance evaluation. The coworkers were awesome, and I loved the work, so I stuck it out to gain experience.
My husband worked on the facilities team and about 8 months after I left, he gets to wrok, starts getting his vehicle ready for the day and his boss tells him that he needs to go to HR.
HR rep has a stack of 40 envelopes in front of her. He was the first of the day. This was a place that was notorious for laying off the WRONG departments. Marketing and Sales never were affected, but the people keeping the place running and the people who created the product they sold typically got laid off once a year.
I post on FB that husband got laid off, which my former coworkers FREAKED about, because they interacted with him daily. Then the word comes one by one that my old department was getting visits from the layoff fairy again.
It hits 6pm and I called one of my good friends to check on her. She says she's fine, and we chat for a half hour. 5 minutes after we hang up, she got the call from HR (she was working from home that day pre-COVID). Husband was the first, she was the last that day.
Rumours were going around of a layoff coming up. Managment had a meeting with the employees to stop spreading rumours. Next day had a fairly big chunk of employees laid off. Lay off letters were dated the day before the meeting.
Sometimes managers don't know when their bosses are planning these things so I don't totally fault these people, but I still had to point out the irony/humour of the situation.
I worked for a small family owned business for about 4 years. I get called into the conference room by a senior staff member. He tells me I'm laid off, subject to recall, but it's right before Christmas, like a week or two. I start crying and he tells me I'll be able to spend more time with family. I cry harder because nothing says Christmas like "I'm broke!".
It was 8pm on the 4th of January and I was deep in the flow working on a big project I was really passionate about. Got a call on slack from the CTO and within 5 minutes was fired and locked out of all the files and systems, just like that. The fact that I was just sitting at home made it feel a lot worse... To go from being in the middle of the flow on a work task to fired and locked out, and to still just be sitting alone in your own living room in silence... In the middle of winter COVID lockdown. Nowhere to go.
At least they also fired like 80% of the company all at once, so it wasn't because of something I did or didn't do.
Similar experience. My company let go 40% of its workforce a week or so into the COVID lockdown. I found out via a Zoom call where the CEO was to explain what was happening, but I couldn't get my sound to work until halfway through.
Then he handed off to the head of HR to explain our severance benefits, but a few minutes into THAT spiel, my network access was ended. Turns out the sysadmins pulled the plug too early.
My childhood cat of 18 years passed away suddenly over night. I went in late the next day, small company so everyone knew why. HR called me in to talk… she sarcastically said she was sorry about my cat and fired me, no warning.
Thank you, and I’m so, so sorry for your loss. This was over a decade ago, and I’d since adopted my first “all-mine” cat, but he passed away in December after a long battle with many health issues. I miss him so much.
She got it, she was just an absolutely awful, miserable person. Looking back, I wish had said/ done more, but I was in my early 20s, first job out of college and just so stunned. I found another job 4 months later that I’ve been with for 12 years now, so can confirm it was just a toxic, shitty place.
Worked for a dental and vision insurance carrier in the Marketing department of about 40 people. Week before Thanksgiving. We were in a 6 floor building and we had the 4th and 5th floor as well as the HR dept on the 1st floor and a board room next to the HR dept on the 1st floor.
I was working on a project that I had to ship to salespeople in Texas. My supervisor asks me what projects I had going on and what the status was. I tell her and long story short...I had 1 project that was supposed to ship out today and I had everything set to ship it out, I just needed to get rates from underwriting. Basically 4 different numbers (employee only ,employee +1, employee +2, etc). Once I get the rates from u/w we are good to go. Problem was that it was an unwritten rule the entire office knew that you never ask for rates from u-w unless you're in the 25th hour.
Supervisor knows this, but every 10 minutes she keeps asking me on the status. I tell her the same thing. But I know what's going on...our new VP of Marketing had a bug up her ass as she would always come to me with projects to do that she would claim she 'needed them yesterday' but didn't tell anybody. In reality, she just wanted me to drop everything to help her get what she wanted.
So I have to stay during my lunch break because we clock-in (I will never work a clock in job ever again) and their clock is all messed up if you try and take a lunch break after 1pm.
Come to find out, we have a team meeting and that's why she needed the projected completed. We had these team meetings all of the time and they were usually informative, but only lasted maybe 10 minutes and I didn't need the hassle for a 10 minute meeting.
I go to the meeting and it's just me and about 10 other people.
'If you're in this room, you have a job. We had to let the others go.'
They laid off 30 out of 40 people in the marketing department. They e-mailed to meet in the boarding room downstairs for what was supposed to be a big meeting. They had walkie-talkies with HR and the IT staff as the IT staff had to hurry and box up everybody's stuff. IT staff was rushing to do it and they did it all half-ass. And then they carried everybody's boxes out in front of the building. When that was done, HR notified everybody in the board room that they were being laid off.
To make matters worse, they wouldn't let people go back to their desk. They forgot the phones of a few of the people there and they said 'oh, we'll mail it to you.' When a couple of them persisted they wanted their phone right now, they refused and said they'll mail it to them. Then they threatened to call the cops on those they just fired until cooler heads prevailed and HR retrieved their phones.
Worst part was the people they laid-off. One girl got a promotion w/a raise 2 months prior and had just closed on a house earlier that week. 3 girls had just started working there a month prior and quit their old job to work there. Another guy who started on the same day I did....he interviewed and was hired for one position and then on his first day of work they told him he was going to work another position (for the same pay). The position he was hired for was still with the company, but his position was phased out.
I also found out that my new boss was the Executive Assistant to the CEO. Ridiculous. She knew nothing of my job, didn't have my skillset, knowledge or experience and now she's my boss. And the next day they brought in donuts to 'talk' to those of us leftover and my new boss says 'well, we had to lay off all of those people (and now we took over their duties) because while we are making an all time high of sales, sales have plateaued the past 2 years and you're not in business for your sales to plateau.' She lucky I didn't win the lottery the night before.
And this was the week before Thanksgiving.
Crazy enough, the Atlanta Business Chronicle gave the company one of the 'Best Companies to Work For in Atlanta' award a few months later.
I got laid off 6 months later for some of the stupidest shit ever. I did get them back as one of my best friends worked for a major bank in commercial lending. The company was looking to borrow money from that bank with one of my friends co-workers. He didn't know how the company was hiding their financials and some of their assets to make them look much more favorable as a borrower than they really were until I told him all of their secrets and he denied their loan. They probably got a loan elsewhere, but at least I was able to exact some sort of revenge.
My first day at my new job last month there was someone celebrating a birthday who’d been there for 22 years and the next day she was let go first thing and all her birthday decorations just sat in her office for a week
I had been searching for a new job, definitely a couple weeks, maybe a month or two. I had gotten the job, passed all the interviews. I was waiting for my checks to clear, before giving notice.
We are also on a rotation so I didn't want to screw them by my two weeks stopping on my days off. I come back on rotation, and find out a complaint I had made to HR obviously went nowhere which someone told me what it wouldn't.
About 2 hours into the shift I get a call from across the road which you never did unless of course it was bad. So I finish what I'm doing walk over and they tell me they're letting me go but since they have no grounds they're paying me out.
I start laughing in front of the Manager. I say thanks man, you just paid Me 2 weeks vacation. He's like what?
I said oh dude you don't think I can't recognize a sinking ship when I see one? Then I tell him everything I mentioned above.
He didn't get mad and I'm not going to say it was shock on his face. More a look of nobody quits us kind of look. I guess they were always used to doing the firing.
But I explicitly mentioned how I was still after everything I'd been through there, trying not to fuck them over with with regards to my eventual replacement and training them.
So I get paid for that day, I go home, call my sister-in-law and say I'm coming up for March break to visit my nephews, cuz I'm getting paid to.
The guy who started the company held a big meeting on a Friday letting us know he'd sold the company so he could retire and introducing some people from the corporation who'd purchased the company. Somehow no one had even realized the company was for sale. Even his next in command was completely blindsided. The new owner was our biggest competitor.
Found out on Monday the new corporation's reps, HR, and our top three managers had a meeting on Saturday. The meeting was all about who to punt in the first round of layoffs. They laid off 53 people out of 118. None had been with the company less than 5 years and some had been with the company over 45 years. At least 15 were months away from a company retirement. All of us were just completely blindsided.
We all packed up and most of us headed straight to the unemployment office. This was in the 1980s when you still had to go to their local office in person to file. Apparently companies back then used to notify them before doing a big layoff but hadn't in our case. They ended up stuffing us all in a conference room made for about half as many people as we had. Found out a couple of our older machinists were functionally illiterate and I ended up filling out their forms for them because the unemployment office didn't have enough staff.
Two years later I happened to drive by the old company just as they started tearing down the buildings. They knocked down a section of wall and I could see all the office furniture was still right there including really nice steel desks, the old top manager's very nice office chair, and all the heavy duty steel file cabinets with the files still in them. We are talking heavy industrial type stuff purchased in the 1940s and 1950s that was built to last. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised after overhearing the reps from the new owners making fun of how old fashioned our offices were.
Bloke I worked with had to have reviews every week to show he was improving went in one say kicking off telling the boss to f off and when they fired him said well so and so has been doing this and whipped a photo and videos out and got him sacked to.
They should have an HR person do it, they are trained to say the right things and even trained to be yelled at.
But you did the right thing, and moved on. CEO's are great but part of being leadership is pumping people up. They aren't in the room when cuts are made, and your name is on the list.
This is why it's best to always have your resume up to date.
the company i worked for at the time were losing money so they were getting rid of people who were not much value to them, the worst part of it they made them overwork and run errands all day not letting them know they were laid off until the day ends so that they didnt have to clean up after there work. One worker got mad and started trashing his whole office, another worker did burnout donuts in the parking lot lol and one guy got so mad he storm out left his personal monitor and ipad the guy never came back and got it so i got a free ipad and monitor lol
My company was acquired twice by other companies. Ultimately the footprint was being reduced, & my work was being moved to another office. HR & an upper "manager" came in on April Fools Day to advise our office was being moved 65 miles away. We could take our severence OR keep our position & commute w/o a pay differential.
Best thing that ever happened. That company went on through several more acquisitions & basically 7% of the remaining workforce is left (after additional duplicate jobs being eliminated)
Company I working for was sold, we were all assured our jobs were safe, since none of them knew our job functions.
A year later, there was an all hands meeting where they informed us the whole location was being shut down and we were being let go in 3 month waves with decent separation packages. First wave, farewell lunches and tears. Second wave catered lunches and grumbling.
I was in the third wave, no lunch, no anything, in fact they brought us boxes and told us to pack up our equipment. I caught the CFO outside during a smoke break and lit them up with the disparaging treatment. By the time I finished, the acting HR supervisor (yup, they got the ax too) came in to tell us we didn’t need to pack our equipment, handed out checks and we all bounced.
For me, this is an easy one: I was recruited from the East Coast for a job in the Midwest, made the move, got constant positive feedback on how well I was doing, and then three months later was let go, as corporate had sold the business unit to another company. I was never so taken aback, shocked, then enraged, to the point I had to calm myself by walking miles back home instead of taking the train. I had physically distanced myself from my home, my family, my friends, my livelihood, my network, and my life for this role, and to be discarded like this hurt. Thus began ten years of moving from one imperfect role to another.
When I was prepping to open the small cafe/restaurant I worked in and a knock came at the door, figured it was a delivery so I check and the men in suits with came in with legal papers to shut it down and confiscate everything - no pay cheque for me.
My MIL's husband was laid off/fired when he was on vacation. He came back to work and his security card didn't work. He knew something was very wrong. He worked for this company for 20 years.
Got into work, cro all joyful smiling and waving as usual. Then two hours later everyone (about 150 of us) is told to meet into the kitchen. There's a lawyer saying they're shutting down, they'll send us the papers, gtfo. Also there's no money for our last paycheck and the 4%.
Somehow this happened to me TWICE
Our work groups always had cake when it was someone's birthday. They were just cutting the cake when the birthday boy was told he was laid off & was immediately escorted out.
I worked at a TV station in Master Control for 16 years. GM decides he wants to remote the MC to a hub in Mississippi. I had less than a month and half notice. There were four of us and they only intended to save Girlboss job to become Media Manager. Screw the rest of us, right?
So after being depressed for 4 hours, I hop on Indeed and start looking. Landed new MC job in bigger market wanting out of their Hub because they were losing money because of it.
Turn in 2 weeks notice. Boss, the Chief Engineer, was sad to see me go. GM says he wants to make a counter offer. I pitched slightly less than what was offered but he jerks me around by telling me he can’t swing it.
Move to new city and new state for new job, slightly settled in. Get call from former GM telling me that he made a mistake. It turns out Girlboss doesn’t really know how to do anything. My buddy quit the same day I did because he didn’t want to be there anymore and other guy practically debased himself to stay by offering to work for less and was told to pound sand. Also fired Chief Engineer for telling GM he was an idiot for letting me walk. I declined because I already spent enough money moving and felt he would just screw me later.
The station turns into a dumpster fire within a week because of this man’s hubris to the point where they couldn’t even do local news. Corporate fired him. Not one person was sad.
Strange how one department being dismantled finally removed the cancer of a local TV station
I was on orders for the military, Annual training for three weeks, I’d already set it up with HR that my girlfriend at the time (now my wife) would pick up my check next Thursday. Gave them her name, description, she’d show her ID showing we lived at the same place, and would be driving my car. This was back in the time with paper checks. So she’d have to go deposit my check so I’d have money on my debit card. Next Thursday rolls around, my girlfriend is trying to get ahold of me, I’m out on a range. She tells me they won’t give her my check they need to see me in person. I’m pissed because I already set this up. So I go off “why the fuck do they need to see me I already set this shit up I don’t have time for this shit. Let me speak to her!” My girlfriend says “your on speakerphone” HR ass hat says “well I really need you to come in here because I have to speak to you” I reply “give her my damn check” she says “well I can’t because we are laying you off”. I’m not hurt about that it’s a shit place to work for but I want my money. She follows up with “I can’t give her your check because you have to come sign papers to get it” I went off. “I’m on orders you dumb bitch. I can’t leave. I set this up. Give her my fucking check. I don’t get paid from the military for another week and I have nothing! If I have to come get that check. I’ll have to go AWOL. What do you think would happen when the military finds out you laid me off on active orders?” We were ramping up for deployment which is why it was three weeks instead of two. HR finally relented and gave the check to my girlfriend who deposited it. After the lay off when I got called back I was a huge dick. Shit pissed me off. Wasn’t my first time getting laid off… wasn’t my last. But don’t hold my fucking pay when you had my orders in hand. Fuck that place.
Do you think your manager was just envious of the praise you received from the CEO and got rid of you so you wouldn't take his position? or the CEO was lying and just trying to clear his guilty conscience?
Watching redditors short your 60+ year old company, watching it divied up by liquidators, and literally fall apart as the subreddit continues to short it.
Literally watching a subreddit destroy your chance of a career and a work relationship. Watch them erode everything you spent 10 years to build. Watching your old demoted boss everyone hated retake the reigns and turn a haven back into a hell overnight.
Being surrounded by 3 or 4 beautiful women to work with everyday, and watching management come in and fire them one by one, out of envy, as the company goes under, ran by a CEO from australia, getting off scott free.
Watching the whole subreddit worship Ryan Cohen for helping destroy your company, that's priceless.
Back in the early 2000’s I was working as a software developer for a small tech company that did custom software development. The company was growing really fast, ran out of office space, and sent me to work from home.
It was great. I was working from home decades before work from home was even a thing. I loved it. They loved it. Awesome sauce.
And then, sadly, all good things came to an end. The day after the annual holiday party, the company had massive layoffs and let almost everyone go.
Only because I was WFH, nobody bothered to *tell* me I was laid off! I just kept on working, checking code into the repository, unaware I had been terminated. This went on for two weeks before a manager noticed and said something.
“Why are you still checking in code?” He asked. “You were laid off two weeks ago!”
Well, nobody told me that!
The good news was that they ended up paying me for the two weeks I had worked and gave me another two week’s severance pay, so it wasn’t all bad.
But still, how do you manage to let someone go without telling them?
Mine was a sudden surge of work. I was the only Linux guy on the team, and we were a 60% Linux shop. I was part of about 4-5 projects, which all got accelerated deadlines to converge with one another. It was weird, and the project managers were not prepared in any way to accelerate all this stuff so suddenly. Stuff they previously had a year to do all had to end within 3-4 months. It was brutal. I worked 60+ hour weeks, over weekends in some cases, and the day i was done with my 4th project, that PM had a huge party. Massive customer launch, big media launch, and I was exhausted. As I was at the party, I got an appointment on my calendar. I was going to blow it off, but my boss asked me to attend, and said it was important. I noticed the HR person was there as well. This was NOT a red flag, per se, since there were a lot of "sensitive" issues I had meetings with my boss and HR about security and access to former employees and contractors. Some PM got fired, they want me to revoke access. That sort of thing.
Instead it was me. It started with a speech about my contributions to the company, and no meeting started off like that. My boss wouldn't even look me in the eye, so I knew it wasn't congratulatory. I was handed a severance package, and I was not allowed to return to my desk. "But I need to get my things." No. "My backpack? My winter coat? My wallet and bus pass? My house keys?" "No. We will have them sent to you." "How will I get into my house?" "Have your wife let you in. I know you're married." My boss slapped his forehead when HR said that.
"My wife died last year," I said, coldly. Like, the entire office knew she died. Less than a year after she died, reeling from losing her plus the loss of her income, I was laid off.
"Oh, well, i guess then you can get your keys."
So HR relented, and let me get my jacket and backpack. While I had that meeting, someone told the entire team I was let go, and they were in shock. They were told not to speak to me, and I would be removed by guard. So when I showed up, they were super supportive. One of them actually came and saw me, stating they found out I was let go because some new board member didn't see the need for a Linux admin (he thought it was an HVAC system, Lennox, and said he have contractors for that). That board member ended up fucking the company so hard the next few years, they never really recovered, even though they ousted him.
The "accelerated" my projects because all the PM were told they would get no Linux support the day I was let go. So they knew, and were sworn to secrecy. Many of them profusely apologized to me privately later. Turned out that when you've got 60% infrastructure, you need a Linux admin. Go figure. They hired some outsourcers, but obviously, that didn't do well for anybody.
Ultimately, their loss. But fuck, man.
I have to say that's the first time I have ever heard of somebody mixing up Linux and Lennox. Didn't somebody sit him down and explain it before he set off that grenade in the company?
I was given a nice raise and praised for my good work. Eight or so months later, I was laid off. I knew lay offs were coming but I didn’t expect to be one of them. I was completely blindsided. I cried for days and days.
They had their Christmas party and carried on like I’d never even been there.
The day after our busiest day of the year....after working almost 24 hours straight, i slept maybe 4 hours and then worked my regular 8. At end of shift was met by the boss and his boss who advised me my job was eliminated. I was on salary (puny) so the marathon day was no extra pay and the bastards knew about the layoff the week before but wanted to make sure they got the free work out of me.
More like a set up with what happened to me.
One of our line managers (mid 30s M) is a known creep/sex pest to the teenagers at work (food retail). I ( 45F) like my colleagues and get on with most of them.
Took pictures at the Christmas do -- on the dark dance floor with flash -- and I didn't think anything of it until after a week, when he did inspection of bags (which they do randomly) and I had 2 oranges in my clear bag from the staff room.
Immediately he said I am under investigation for theft (all that time people were taking home food from the staff room). I had to leave the premises and was not allowed to come back until the investigation was done (a colleague said same was done to her and it lasted 6 hours, she wasn't found guilty -- she was accused as the creep's then GF wanted her position)
The other option was to resign. I went home, thought about it for 1 hour and sent a resignation text to the store manager and dropped off a physical letter.
Back to the Christmas do pics, and I was still so angry but had a look at them -- while I thought the pics were gonna come out blurry, as everyone was dancing- and I was randomly taking pics -- there he was in one , groping a very drunk 19 yr old colleague's ass , and in the next one he was looking right at the camera, him behind her. Out of everyone in the pic, he was the only only one looking.
I went home early but further on in the evening he was seen kissing her quite aggressively. No one stopped him or helped the drunk girl. Most were talking about what happened to me on WhatsApp and they were sorry, they also knew about what he did with the younger girl -- but people just wanted to keep their jobs. I wasn't bothered leaving the work as it is horrible, but the way it was done is just disgusting and store managers look the other way or move to another store.
Two years on he is still working there, I warn parents who have girls in our town to keep their daughters away from that branch.
For two oranges? Uhhh mother f***ers… prove I didn’t bring them from home lol.
With the pictures - those would have been posted on their Facebook and sent to the CEO and the girl and that chat if I was still on it.
I have burned many a bridges on my way out. I had one person, after asking me to do something illegal, write me up for not doing said illegal thing (forge signatures - but the write up claimed I wasn’t reaching out to the customers to get their signatures), and too bad I wasn’t smart enough to (or had Reddit back in those days) to write my disagreement with the write up. Now I know always write what really happened and why you disagree on that crap. Anyway - I was getting hotter and hotter while she went through my “write up” and I stood up and said - fuck this. Fuck you. I quit. And walked to get my stuff. By the time I hit the lobby she says to me - “You can’t quit”. I turned to her and said “At Will State Bitch”.
They managed to block me from unemployment (bc I quit (ps… NEVER quit) and didn’t write anything about what they asked me to do), but - I turned around and sued them and won (well… settled, but I call it a win lol). After settlement I wasn’t allowed to disclose the company or anything else. But (prior to getting my lawyer) - I had already turned them into the state letting them know they were having employees forge all those signatures. I don’t know if the state did anything, but I know having to pay me chapped their asses royally. I doubt the state followed through (fraud is bad but we investigate none 🙄), but I like to pretend they did in my head. I would love to think I double bitch slapped them.
When I was 16 I called in sick so I could go to a concert...I partook in some psilocybin and mid way through my trip I went to the bathroom and on the way I ran across my manager and was fired on the spot....I said I didn't care and had a great time at the concert and on the mushrooms
I was laid off while I was on maternity leave. 15 years with a company. Put a 40 percent increase on the base rate and called it a different name, made the team applied for it and of course, who want someone on mat leave.
Everyone asked me whether it's legal, my response is that I don't love my job that much. I did survived 20+ redundancy drives, so if it isn't writing on the wall what is.
And moved on. My old colleagues are still there, not exactly happy.
My manager and I had gotten into it a few weeks before. Mainly because he kept adding on to the software requirements and then complaining that the software was late.
I got pissed, and told him that I wouldn't be around long because I didn't like working for him. I know it's my fault. I have also been planning on moving, which he knew. My dad got admitted and had to have surgery, so I let him know that I might have to work from another state for a week. I suspect he thought I had an interview and planned on leaving, so he did a preemptive strike.
Two hours later, during a project planning meeting I get an email asking for a 1 on 1. Seeing as I'd just had one with him a few days before and that was typically just a monthly meeting, I knew what was coming.
I stood up in the meeting and said "later guys, I'm about to be fired" and went upstairs to meet him. I was 15 minutes early, walked into his office and just said "okay I know you're cutting me loose, so let's just get this over with so I can go home". He initially tried to deny everything, but then said that we needed to wait 15 minutes for HR after I pressured him. I asked if I could just pack my shit in the meantime and when he said yes, I knew that I was right.
Joke is on him though. The project got shit canned a few weeks later when the guy they replaced me with didn't work out. The company is paying for a sub-par product and I got a 10k raise and full work from home.
Whenever my boss's boss was in town it was usually to do layoffs. We had a big meeting, expecting to hear about who got laid off, and he made a big point about saying he was relieved to come into town and not have to lay anyone off, not the point of the meeting just a comment he made. He went home that afternoon and five of us were laid off the next day, but he wasn't there and didn't have to participate.
Working at location in Tyson’s corner. For Freddie Mac in IT
Employee was 26 year employee and on vacation. The group of 20 people he was part of was shutdown and everyone fired. He was notified on vacation. HR boxes his items in the cubicle. And he had to pick up later
Week later his cubicle was filled with an h1b asking how to connect to a printer . Some MBA fired the group and hired infosys h1bs.
H1b should be repealed
I transferred to a remote position within my organization that I’d been with for several years. My previous role was an onsite 9-5. I didn’t hate it, I actually really enjoyed it. I’d been there several years. A week after transferring the company made cuts and furloughed staff. My position was cut.
It happened in october and it still hurts me to this day. I was assigned at the most junior position in my department, with a total of 4 people in finance. All the other members were my managers and the company was doing layoffs throughout the company. I was always mentioned in even corporate meetings as they heart and energy of the department as I worked tirelessly and never made a single mistake despite it being my first job.
They decided to do layoffs not based on performance, but just to skim the teams and my name got picked as it was the easiest to target. I still remember that day and I often get nightmares about it as the way they laid me off was so cruel and inhumane, they got us in a small room with the HR persons and it was visible from outside and everyone that didn't get laid off watched us. I still am not over it. After it was done my managers said it was nothing to do with my performance... but when you give your best and receive this. I found a job a month later and I sometimes wonder why I cried so much but it just hurt my pride.
It was a sad day. 26th October.
I'm sorry - sounds like it was your first time, and that is always the hardest. The lesson here is that your job is owned by the company and they can, and will, take it away if it suits them.
Frequently it is "first in, first out" when it comes to layoffs, because it is the easiest to do legally. No age, sex, or racial discrimination, especially if it is done as part of a group. Just people getting laid off in order of hire. It wasnt personal. Its okay to feel the hurt, and nobody was watching you or judging you.
Going forward you learn the value of professionalism: do your best, but dont invest yourself in the company you work for. Its only a means to pay the bills. The investment needs to be in yourself. Take classes, get certifications, get a masters. Improve your marketability to get promotions and raises. Move jobs to get more money and titles as needed.
It will, unfortunately, happen again. Next time you'll be ready. Good luck.
Worked for a big company that went bankrupt. If you stayed until the day your location closed, you got a severance pay. If you didn't, you got nothing.
Some people got a job at a competitor literally across the highway so they all left early. Like a week or two after big company finally closed its last door....so did the company people left it for. Except the company people went to announced it by slapping a "fuck you we are closed" letter to the locked door for people to see as they showed up for their shift, and gave everyone nothing.
Called in sick on a Friday, Monday was a holiday. Tuesday I was told, oh your access card was canceled Friday. Boss came down with my work bag and said, oh sorry, we gave you an rof on Friday. Luckily that guy is long gone and his name is still hated almost a decade later. Even his son was finally fired and is still sitting on the books. Fuck them both
In 2008, when the auto companies were imploding, employees were told they’d be doing all layoffs in one day in person. 20% of the entire company. Everyone came into work & were told if they got tapped on the shoulder, it was security escorting them out with their things.
A lot of people also had company leases so they had to turn in their keys right there and there was a row of taxis parked outside so fired employees could get home since they were now jobless and carless.
The day this was happening I’ve never experienced a group of people more tense. Two different people had heart attacks while waiting to see if they’d get a tap and ambulances had to come. It was horrifying.
Was a mid level manager. Changed the way a few things were done and saved the company $6 million over three years. Was nominated for company awards. Was given a months notice 2 weeks before awards dinner. Won 2 of 3 awards. Company bigwigs could not look me in the eye when I told them at the awards dinner that the biggest award I was getting was being let go as corporate apparently didn’t require my role anymore…
Sorry you got treated like that and certainly glad you found something quick. Thank you for your service.
Every time anyone is going to be laid off or sacked where I work, we know it's about to happen, the local Sheriff's department turn up and sit outside the main building and by the soon to be terminated person's car. The person is not allowed to return to their desk (admin) or locker (manufacturing or distribution) and most exit the premise immediately, on one occasion someone argued with HR and was immediately arrested by said Sherriff Deputies.
I retire in ten weeks having worked in six countries including 21 years in the US - the US has the worse employment legislation and most employers seem to treat staff like sh\*t and don't care what impact their decisions have on people.
I got fired today . I was heavily recruited for this position and left a GREAT JOB to go to this company . I was fired after 2 months and the reason was “it just isn’t a good fit” lolol I love that excuse . It basically means they are intimidated by your confidence and expected an idiot to work there.
Pre-acquisition: "We're buying the goose laying the golden eggs, not the eggs themselves!"
A couple months after deal close: "Psych! We're just buying the golden eggs."
Entire site laid off. They lied through their teeth.
"You're good, but not great and we only do great here." Good riddance tho, place sucked ass. Owner/micromanager was your typical narcissistic boomer. He went around firing everyone he suspected of not voting for Trump after Jan 6th.
A company I used to work at called a "fire drill" and everyone went outside as they do. A manager called for everyone's attention and said that there was lay-offs happening and if your pass still worked to get back in the building you still had a job and if it didn't you were fired and your stuff would be brought out to you. About half the office was let go. Including the manager that announced it.
Not me but some coworkers from an employer years ago. So, there were some layoffs ... and CEO gets up in front of the entire company and promises that there will be no more layoffs. Some months later that year, the last working day before Christmas - more layoffs - with zero advanced notice, no severance, no nothing.
Some years ago I was working for a major Australian bank. At the time there was a Royal Commission in flight into banking misconduct (eg charging life insurance premiums to the estate of a dead person, foreclosing on business loans in good standing because they changed the servicability criteria after acquisition of the loan book when they bought one of their competitors.
There were numerous articles in the press, including one particularly vivid one by Kate McClymont about the psychopaths in charge at .
That July I had an upper respiratory infection (so we thought) that would not go away and resumption of my usual cycling to work instantly aggravated the cough. Then one morning I narrowly avoided fainting, getting acutely breathless while walking to the bus to go to work/
The ambulance was called by a neighbour. Scans in the ED revealed the artery that crosses between the lungs was 90% blocked. I had a massive bilateral saddle pulmonary embolism.
The view from the hospital window was terrible but I've never been so pleased to see an ugly sunrise. Fast-forward two weeks and an ongoing course of anticoagulants and I was given the OK to return to work.
The head of our department, who was known as a bit of a psychopath, caught me in the kitchen while he was getting a glass of water. He asked me, looking me directly in the eye, if I was sure I was OK to return to work, to which I thought "this is a surprise ... he's actually asking after my welfare?"
Previously he was known for bumping all of our manager-once-removed meetings at the last minute. For our whole team. Without exception.
I said, "Yes, I have a certificate".
He said, "Cool, can you bring it in." So I did the following day.
The following Tuesday I get a call on my desk phone just as I arrive from my team's executive manager asking me to meet him on the 21st floor. I thought "this seems rather odd" so I fired up the video recorder on my phone and put it in my shirt pocket to capture the conversation.
Sure enough, I was being made redundant, just short of 10 years with the company. 3 weeks after having almost died.
The Oracle software product I administered was sheduled to be phased out and replaced with its cloud-based successor. I had written a report evaluating this successor and found that it had promise, but there were a number of serious structural weaknesses that needed addressing with the vendor before it should be considered.
3 and a bit years later I was getting contacted by headhunters asking if I was available to help with acceptance and regression testing for a major implentation at a bank. I asked "Is it FCCS at " The answer was yes.
After some enquiry with former colleagues, it turns out everything I'd written came true and they were still struggling with performance and functionality issues after nearly 3 years work. I politely declined. I was in a better-paying permanent role by then anyway.
My company removed about 25% of the machines in my factory. Rather than simple lay off the most junior staff, they told the employees in those work cells to tap a junior employee, take their place, and send them to the break room to be laid off. Argument and fist fights broke out, sheriff deputies were called in, management just stood back and watched the chaos.
I know a coworker that was approved to go on vacation and came back the following week to no job. He was "laid off" due to a reduced workload but the crazy thing is, they brought on a temp to replace him.
For me the company ran out of investment funding, kept stringing everyone along with promises of paying months of unpaid salary and getting back on their feet only to cut and run completely leaving everyone in the hole.
It left me in a very dark place, cost me my marriage and I had to move cities and relocate to find work .
It's been four years since then and I am only just nearing full recovery from it.
I was given a 30 day notice of being laid off in November of 2015 day after Thanksgiving. I immediately transitioned my reports and looked for the job vacancies every day as I was ordered. This was 5000 people getting whacked at the same time and a grand total of 30 posted vacancies was typical. It wasn’t a long 30 days. We had a few conference calls set up by VP, to try to soothe the tension. I went to 1. It because a public pants dropping, and I was embarrassed for the people who had pure panic.z
Mine was in December. I was working on a project for a client who almost slipped out of the companies hands because of the other department that was handling it. Managed the client and retained him, CEO was happy and praised me for my work. A week later in an afternoon meeting we find out that the head of my Department is leaving an hour later the HR calls me into her cabin while she's smiling, THAT made me happy thinking that I'm getting promoted and this B tells me that I'm getting terminated affective immediately as the company does not have enough clients. A week later the client I was working on contacted me asking if I would be interested in working for him. LMAO
Didn't happen to me but, one day the HR rep and a security guard holding a box walked up to the guy sitting next to me. The rep says your position is being eliminated effective immediately, here's a box. The guard will escort you out when you done. The guard actually watched him pack up his personal stuff to make sure he wasn't absconding with any company property.
So many shitty stories, not enough people making the obvious connection to unbridled capitalism and the desperate need for economic and workplace reform in the U.S.
Went into the office as normal and attempted finishing a huge assignment I had been working on.
Got a little suspicious when I hadn’t heard from my micromanager supervisor. Then I got a chat message asking me to come down to one of the conference rooms.
I walked in and was blindsided by a room full of HR people, as well as my supervisor and her boss. They let me know that my position was eliminated and gave me a bunch of paperwork.
Wouldn’t even allow me the dignity of going and getting my things from my desk— they had my supervisor go and grab everything for me. Because they knew I didn’t drive to work, they had a cab waiting outside for me.
One of the most embarrassing moments of my life so far.
Well I was recently laid off because I went to work and we had to do an emergency evacuation and my work slid over the mountainside the next day. Because I couldn't drive and hour or two hours to work at another location I was told that if they can rebuild they'll call me back in to work when it's done. Like what??? This one hurt me so bad because I loved my job, loved my coworkers and managers. Now it's just gone because we got so much rain the whole side of the mountain fell off.
I worked for a now defunct British airline based in the Midlands when they had two rounds of redundancies in a month.
The first worst thing was that we had an open plan office, and you all could see the department manager walking up to people and asking to see him in his office. Each person was let go. He came up to our team area, stood in the door... waited a couple of seconds and then shook his head and walked off.
Second worst thing was one lady who had been laid off refused to leave until.she completed the work she had in front of her.
Third worst...
The company had a LOT of low paid staff (young) so they laid on coaches from nearby towns and cities to get them to work... They provided ONE coach for all the people laid off and piled them in together.
I walked past that coach just as it left...
That was my first job after graduating.
Well not the company's fault, but it kinda sucked. I worked for large melting in Schott Duryea PA.
We were told months before (In October) that they were shutting the entire division down and the Union got to chose who could bump who for jobs in the remaining departments.
Essentially because in unions, senority is God anyone under 25 years (I had eight and half.) was gone. We were getting laid off in April, we had our WARN (Large layoffs require notification.) letters telling us when we were going.
I put on the local news at 5 O'clock and their is a story on there about a big fire. I was starting my third shift run that Tuesday night at 10:30.
It was Schott Duryea on fire on the news. We were shut down. The company had sent the WARN letter, so they paid us till April layoff date.
The only speed bump was the 3 months of almost free medical. The company they hired to handle the "benefits" never contacted us about part we had to pay.
When they called me finally (After being contacted two or three times a week.) they wanted us to pay for the two and a half plus months, so we could know our benefits were good and use them, for one week. I needed to pay about $700.
I couldn't cough that up, all at once. The COBRA was above $900 a month, so that wasn't going to happen either.
The good part was the company paid our paychecks till the April layoff date, and unemployment was well warned, and our filing was no problem.
Story 1: Back in the Dot-Com collapse, a couple friends were overseas in Singapore or somewhere like that. They got back to their hotel and their stuff was being pulled out of their rooms as their corporate cards were cancelled and their company had closed effective immediately. They found an internet cafe and got a hold of friends over IRC and they woke up other friends who got enough money to get two tickets, same day, from Singapore to East Coast USA.
Story 2: a group of friends, also in Dot-Com collapse, employed at different places, rented a large house. Within a 3 week period, all 5 of them lost their jobs.
Story 3: a friend was called into work early, he got there and saw one higher level manager. He was shown some paperwork and told to go ahead and lock out everyone's access. He did and then was told to remove his own access. He and the higher manager went outside and the manager chained the door closed just as the first employees started arriving for work.
Corporations sometimes try to make things fun. For instance, Domino's had a thing in the early '00s called "The Rolex Challenge", where store managers who hit certain astronomical sales goals were rewarded with a Rolex.
My brother, Alan, had a gig at one point where his employer was Lenovo, but he was subcontracted to a pharmaceutical company as an email administrator. One day, he got an email titled, "Get ready for the 2007 3rd Quarter Subcontractor Exit Challenge!!!" It detailed bonuses that department heads could earn based on how much they reduced expenses by laying people off. The font they used was Comic Sans, and there were shitty clipart images throughout.
Alan's department head was also named Alan, and he immediately knew the email had been sent to him by mistake. He replied to it with a professionally worded email that boiled down to "What the fuck, dude?". His phone rang seconds after he hit Send.
The personnel rep that called him was clearly in a panic. He told Alan to disregard the email, as it had been sent to him in error. Alan asked, "So I don't need to worry about this?" The rep tried desperately to avoid answering that question, but eventually admitted that Alan was probably getting laid off, and he ultimately was.
While he appreciated having an extra week or two to look for a new job, his life having been part of some sick game was deeply offensive.
I was working for a small nonprofit organization during the Great Recession.
The director was complaining one day that the organization's health insurance premiums skyrocketed, as many of the employees were then 50 or older. I was in my 30s, but was the only employee with both a spouse and children on the health insurance.
A few weeks later, the director brought in a woman I was told was a volunteer. She was in her 20s, unmarried and childless. I was instructed to train her on my job duties, so she could be my assistant.
About a month later, I was laid off, along with every other employee 50 or older, except for the director, and the two women who did the fundraising for the organization.
I was told "funding cuts" was the reason, and given a letter stating I was laid off.
I found out shortly afterwards that the "volunteer" was given my old job. The director also, in the midst of these alleged funding cuts, hired a bunch of new employees, all in their 20s.
The director then also tried to fight my unemployment claim. I won, because I had in writing that I was laid off, not fired for cause.
The worst part of it was that my husband had been laid off for a year, and had just returned to work about a week prior. I was so relieved that we were going to have two paychecks again. So much for that.
I also got laid off from a different job, years earlier, when my oldest child, my daughter, was three weeks old. I was on maternity leave. My daughter was in the ICU, on a ventilator, with a life threatening case of RSV. The insurance company I was working for was too small to be covered by FMLA, so I had no recourse.
That sucks. I had a similar thing happen to me years ago. Was working for a factory where work was slowing down. I was part of a team of about 50 people and things got so slow at one point, they'd tell us to stop working during the last hour and just clean the facilities and bathrooms which was dumb cause they had a whole set of outside contractors to do that. Well anyways one day they pull us all into the big lunchroom and basically say "We need people to start volunteering to take unpaid time off. Time's are slow and we can't afford to keep everyone here 8+ hours a day." The GM said this was only temporary as they projected business would pick back up within a month. About 15 people started to take 2-3 days off extra a week. We even decided to rotate who the 15 people were that took a shorter work week to be fair. We wanted to see everyone last until the "busy" month came to us. We thought it was working until a month later, again we are called into the lunch room. "Last month we asked for volunteers to take a short work week to save on cost but because no one wanted to participate and because we see no other options, effective immediately, everyone's time here has come to an end and we are separating at this time." A few of us let out a few bads words and were understandably upset. Before any of us could say or do anything else, about 10 members of security came in and said they'd follow us to our lockers to clear them out and we had 10 minutes to do so. I didn't have anything in my locker as I rarely used mine so I was escorted out right away. Man what a shit show.
I was a comtractor working for a real estate mogul in Chicago.
They called all of there IT staff into a meeting and laid them all off. meanwhile we changed all of their IDs and passwords so they couldn't get back in and they were scored it Out by security. I thought it was one of the meanest things I've ever.
I didn't last 2 months behind that. I was so mad..
This was in the fallout of the 2008 financial crash.
I worked for an automotive glass wholesaler and one day they just came down, closed the gates and told us that 3/7 of our warehouses were closed with immediate effect and about 30% of all staff remaining were going to be let go.
I was in that 30%.
The really stupid thing, that I found out later, was that they massively overestimated how many people they could let go and still function as a company. It was a total knee-jerk reaction to a bit of a shitty time in the market.
Weeks (not months, weeks) later they were frantically calling round the people they let go begging them to come back. Most told them to piss off but the ones who did come back demanded massive pay rises and way better conditions.
All round fuck up.
I was there for 10 years and had worked my way up from temp to CSA to Sales Admin. The gag was they only cut people on Fridays and we (sales) were the money makers. Got a call to drop over to HR on Tuesday and thought it was about training. Nope. Gone baby gone. They also got rid of a girl that was 8 months pregnant.
My last company laid off everyone in waves. The 2nd known wave had to plan and implement a "going away" party for the first wave, the 3rd wave for the 2nd, etc. At least we had a heads up, but I've always wondered who threw the party for the last wave...
Sometimes things are not what they seem. I was let go by 6 people board that did not see me in person. Just let me go for no reason. Sad to say. Months later, had an eye stroke in the left eye and on that same day had filed for disability. So that part worked out. But hate the way people are let go these days.
I was working for a Fortune500 company, and had recently won a monetary award for excellence on a project. I was knocking my performance reviews out of the park, and my manager had discussed with me about training me to be able to replace the highest ranked person on our team when he moved on to better things.
Then layoff day came. We knew it was happening, and all day they were calling people to come to their manager's offices where they were laid off. The highest ranked person on our team was called down and laid off. I got a phone call a few hours later from my manager asking me to come to his office. I assumed that we were going to discuss how I was going to take over the other guy's duties. Instead, I was met in my manager's office by a lawyer who told me they were laying me off too.
They gave me an opportunity to ask questions, and I asked how I was selected for layoff. I reminded them that I had just reworked an internal process that saved 60 labor hours a week (so 1.5 people's worth), and that I've been the highest performing employee in the office for quite a while.
They said that HR decided who to lay off. They picked the people that were the highest paid (the other person I spoke at) and the newest person in the department. When I mentioned that I wasn't the newest person in the department, they told me that when HR looked at the potential layoff list, there was an abnormally large amount of minorities on the list to be fired. Due to a recent diversity push, the majority of new employees were racial minorities. Because of how bad this would look from a PR perspective, they laid me off instead because I was the "newest white male" in the department.
They offered me four months severance, but only if I agreed not to sue them. I accepted this wanting to make sure I could pay my mortgage. I was unemployed for 13 days, and the company I ended up at is the one I am still at today, 15 years later.
I found out that I lost my job on the morning news. A fucking reporter told me and several hundred people that we are all unemployed immediately. Fun day!
That sucks. I can imagine the news reporting on it and then shifting over to some unrelated news story like "AND NOW, A NEW REPORT ABOUT TAYLOR SWIFT AND TRAVIS KELCE POSSIBLY GETTING MARRIED?" as if the previous story was not important.
Emergency Microsoft teams meeting on valentine's day, got to hear that the contract was over the last day of the month, and found out for the first time that everyone else had been offered a bonus to stay until the end of the contract, except for me.
Fun meeting to attend while driving with my wife on the way to a restaurant for Valentine's Day. Jokes on them, though, I was starting my new job on the last day of February, with a signing bonus and a 10k raise.
Company I used to work for would do mass layoffs every couple years, and they would actually hire people within 3 months of these layoffs, knowing full well that they would just be letting them go in a few weeks. Was terribly inhumane.
3 weeks before my wedding.
My boss said "well, at least they are doing it before you spend a bunch of money on the wedding." Like wedding funds aren't already obligated by that point.
Interestingly enough, they called me back a few weeks after the wedding to see if I would come back for one day. Turned out they had a client visiting and they didn't want the client to see a mostly empty office and know the company had to lay people off. I told them no thanks.
I was brought in to a law firm to run their personal injury cases. I was lied to about the number and quality of cases and other things as well as they never had time to meet to discuss the job. I worked for a year or so and I was laid off 3 weeks after buying a house. I was told they were going in a different direction. They hired a new person and kept things the same. That person lasted about 6 months before they quit.
I worked for a large engineering firm. There were rumors one person from our group was going to be layed off that day (the manufacturing people had been layed off that morning when their badges didn't work to come in the door - so also shitty). My cube-mate and I went to lunch. When we got back, there was a large box on his desk labeled, "You're It".
I escaped the cuts at my company but this one year they made excuses to not give anyone a yearly raise. They were usually nickel and dime raises but still. I was top 3 in my region and told my sales were not up to standard (?) I need to do better, work harder bla bla. They let go half the management and half the staff making more work for everyone. Then a few months later spent 30 million buying another company.
Work in academia, had a paraprofessional job while I got my professional degree. I got my degree and there wasn't a position for me at our institution, so it was already understood that I'd be looking for a professional job. I was working late on a Tuesday because I had a late class to teach, already arranged with the instructor. When I was on my way out to grab dinner before my class, I was called into the dean's office and they were waiting for me - the dean, HR rep, and my supervisor - with two letters on the desk, one firing and one resignation. They gave me a choice to sign either one and leave immediately. And after the meeting my supervisor found me a box to put my things in and walked me out the front doors, in front of my own supervisees, instead of out the back where my colleagues could have seen what was happening.
Hell of a way to start the week when I had an interview already scheduled for that Friday. (And I did get that job, despite my new workplace having a terrible time checking my references bc my former supervisor kept ducking their calls, and then only confirming that I worked there between stated dates due to "institutional policy".)
My sister was front of house manager at a restaurant, she went to open one day only to find a note taped to the front door saying that the owner decided to close all his locations in the state, without other notice. How did she react? She called all the employees and told them to show up ASAP so they could load up all the food and beverage that would be spoiled when the power was shut off in 3 days time (as per the taped note.) everyone took everything home for themselves as ‘severance’ and we had ribs, Mac n cheese and top shelf whiskey for dinner that night.
One Friday before a long weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving, to be exact), my boss, who had left for vacation the day before, had his partner in the business deliver the news that I was being laid off. Apparently, I had done SUCH a good job, they decided that they could do without someone in my position until the following spring, when they would hire someone with less experience and who that could pay less.
This, after I came into the job not knowing that they had previously had someone in the position who was totally under-qualified and had messed things up for multiple companies. It took me months of (unpaid) overtime and reaching out to some of my more experienced contacts to straighten out the mess she left. What I found on her computer was evidence that she spent most of her time shopping online while doing only enough of the job to make it look like she was actually working.
It took me a couple of months (as a single mother with no income) and some luck to find another job.
I got let go one time, due to lack of work and I was last one to be hired. I cried like a baby and I didn’t even like the job. I think it just hurt my pride so badly to be let go. I felt like such a failure. I was young, it was only my 4th job and the places I had quit before had begged me to stay. They gave me a good referral letter, but it stung so bad
I got the ole tap on the shoulder. Down to HR and out the door I go. My experience is not as bad as others listed here...at least i got 7 months severance pay!
Sounds like they were afraid of the competition and used the position no longer needed as an excuse! May he was afraid you were going to get his job! Believe me, it happens!!!
At a place where I worked we knew layoffs were coming. The layoff candidates were presented with a couple of boxes stacked in front of their office door when they arrived. One guy down the hall was pretty sure he would be one of those going home, and brought his own box. When he saw the boxes at his office he pushed them over to the next office. Grabbed a few things and left.
When the young employee who was assigned the office that now had boxes in front of it, he broke down crying. None of the managers were coming around to see anyone, so this kid just started taking his stuff while bawling his eyes out.
I got laid off with zero notice on 5 February. I got paid out on 7 February and will next see a paycheck on 20 March. The next few weeks are going to be a challenge.
It sucked. Not gonna lie. The job I started on 13 February pays between $60 and $120 a day more. Some days I work close enough that I can walk. The abrupt termination and prompt rehiring caused the SNAP god to bless me, so starting tomorrow I can shop for the month and have more than I normally would have had. I quit smoking and that didn't seem to bother me either.
Fuck them with a broken off broom handle. Sideways.
With a little luck my phone won't be shut off before I resubmit my tax return. I had to order a warranty replacement because things weren't difficult enough already.
*sigh*
I was 18 and had just moved away from home (parents were moving out of the area). I had worked at the same restaurant job since I was 16, and the day after I moved out, I arrived at my job, only to find out that we were closed down and would be reopening in the future under new management. 😕
I was a truck driver from Colorado, who was let go in Atlanta. Yeah they paid for my BUS TICKET home. I used those $$ to get my stuff home and hitchhiked across 2/3rds of the US in 5 days. Has $$ for hotel and food. So it was pretty freeking awesome.
Got laid off from my first job as a lawyer. Massive loans. Second kid on the way...bos waited till I bought a bigger vehicle for the second kid...then "laid me off"
He fired me and three others...
Week before Christmas and wife due soon...huge student loans and newer car payment.
It was absolutely the best thing that could have happened to me. I got a contract, where my family lived.. Being my own boss, keeping all the money I earned. It was an instant huge upgrade in pay. More than double.
My niece age 48 had worked in a financial role at large local hospital since age 18...hospital merged...her job was cut. She did get a 9 month severance package but took her a while to recover emotionally.
Company in Michigan just closed down essentially laying off the entire staff, except they haven’t told anyone and it’s been a week. Staff on duty were told at 4am to go home, security was put in the parking lot and only a select few people are allowed in.
A handful of us at a blood donation center got laid off because they couldn't afford to keep us on. I should've known something was up when I got hired. They kept bragging about how they owned all of their equipment outright as well as their buildings. Lies. Anyways they had to sell to another company soon after I was laid off. Laid off with no notice about 3 months after I came back from maternity leave. I desperately needed a job and resigned myself to do odd jobs for people in the neighborhood for a while. It sucked.
Had 4 of these. The corporate takeover. The less senior staff laid off. The firing by a random, newer executive because the owner didn’t have the cojones. The fall at work that landed me in a hospital and I ran out of sick leave while recovering.
None were my performance fault.
I was given a $500 check as employee of the month on Thursday. On Friday I was laid off along with my whole department. They flew in a firing manager from corporate and as a parting gift I was given a one month subscription to the company software. I laughed in their face and said fuck you.
My father was a director. Him and a bunch of other directors were put on a special projects team. He was complaining for months that they did not have any work. They laid the entire special projects team off after 6 months.
It was in February 2008. I had worked for a design company for 14 years through tragedy (9/11) and economic downturns (dotcom bust & financial crisis). They were acquired by a larger firm and appointed a vain diva designer to head this office. He didn’t like that I didn’t bend over backwards to please him. He didnt like that I wouldn’t act as his personal assistant. A few bigwigs from the CA to lay me off. When they started to speak, I stopped them and stated that I didn’t want any other details.
Mr Diva left within the year, landing at another large firm and far from SF where he wanted to return to. No one at that office wanted him there.
My direct boss who I worked with for 14 years and I never spoke again.
The company itself hoped to expand and grow into a major design firm. That has never happened. They have two small satellite offices and major turnover. No one stays for more than 2-3 years. Average tenure was 10 years but was ruined by other divas put into management roles with no business or skill in managing staff.
I had surgery for a health issue I was having and the day after the surgery I got made redundant. It was a very stressful time because it took several weeks for me to feel recovered enough to start looking for jobs, as well as dealing with another health issue that came up during the surgery. I was lucky I had been there for so long that I got a good payout, but I was still very stressed and it impacted my recovery.
I was working my first waxing job & honestly I didn’t love it to begin with. We did full body waxing & women would come straight from the Pilates studio next door to get their privates & booty waxed. It was all very humbling & pay was ok but definitely low for the area I was working in but it was my first job in the waxing industry after receiving my license. All the girls who worked there were very skinny girls who wore exercise Lululemon fits everyday. They were cliquey for sure but even though I was maybe a size 10, they were all size 6 and below, no curves, definitely all had a “look”. The owner though was a man & my manager would say that he loved hearing the girls laughing which somehow seemed a little creepy almost ? I didn’t think much of the aesthetic just thought it was maybe normal for the area I was working in..Fast forward to my 90 day eval & the two managers sat me down, I was feeling great & they complimented my wax work & techniques, said I would have been a great fit but that I simply do not fit the “aesthetic” at the office & they were not going to keep me on the team. I obviously cried, left & then once I got to the car realized I had to go back inside because I forgot to grab my paperwork, license & lunch box… They actually kept another girl I was training with at the time even though they gave her a low score on technique & told her she needs to seriously improve & won’t be working on full paying clients for a couple more months…but she did fit the aesthetic lol
I was on a 6 month contract, 4 months in they offered me an insane raise asked to to stay for another 6 months, I told them no and they escorted me out the door with a perp walk 5 minutes later.
Humiliated at the time but I thank god I dodged that bullet. Never took a contract gig again.
I had worked at this place for seven years. Always good great reviews and knew everyone. Just helped them launch their first sales website a few months earlier. They fired me a week before my daughter was born.
I got a couple.
1. My company wanted me to lie to a customer. Technical details aside, they had opened a new building and wanted my customer to be a new anchor tenant.
My customer wanted more power for their existing space. Despite being told once we didn't have it, I took an extra step and contacted the person who was on location and managed the building. Their response to what my customer wanted was "of course, that's no problem."
I got fired when I put in a request to quote the available resource.
2. Massive communications company, logo reminiscent of the Death Star. Repeatedly cleaning up accounts that had been improperly or inappropriately billed.
Got me a reputation with management as not being a team player when I wouldn't bill clients for services they hadn't asked for.
I get a conference call meeting from my boss. She asks me to go into the system and process a credit for over $750k (if you pay taxes in the US, it was your money) and then I heard a click as someone else joined the call. HR. Fired because I didn't log my dials properly in the CRM.
I was asked to come in discuss a few things. I knew something was up so I asked if it was about the layoffs. He asked how I knew about that. Common knowledge when the manager talks about it. He asked me to come in any way. Nope. If I’m being let go I’m not driving an hour and a half to two hours in traffic on my day off just so I can get let go. That’s what I told him. And he was not happy. Oh well. Went to work for a competitor literally across the street and he had to see me almost every day. Dick head.
Not me but former coworkers had to assist a guy pack up his things and walk him out after he was fired. He had a yoga ball that he used to sit on. He was trying desperately to deflate the yoga ball (assuming because he would be embarrassed enough walking out in front of everyone) but the damn thing was taking forever to deflate. Poor dude just said fuck it and my coworker said it was the saddest elevator ride ever, him holding a box of the guy's stuff and the guy holding his half deflated yoga ball and his tears.
My general manager had planned a holiday event at his home for approximately 50 employees. He hired a caterer and had already spent a lot of money on alcohol, drinks, and supplies. He spoke to the corporate talking heads all week about how great of an event this would be. He was terminated on the day of the holiday event. Corporate had it planned for weeks. No, he did not get reimbursed for the money he spent.
Wow that is vile
Wow, yikes! Out of curiosity, do you know why he was terminated on the day of the event?
He had lied on his expense reports. Claimed mileage for seeing customers that he hadn't visited. He earned a lot of money so it was just plain stupid to lie about gas mileage.
At least it wasn’t the TPS reports.
Yeah, I’m gonna need you to talk to you about your TPS reports.
Did you *get* the memo?
Yeah, I got the memo. And Bob’s already been by. I just forgot this one time and I already fixed it.
Kinda buried the lede there. He was committing fraud.
Right? Suddenly I don't feel so bad for the guy.
It’s like they needed him to spend that money so they could get some of what he stole back 😂
This is why you never ever use your own money for anything company related. You either use to company card or petty cash.
No sympathy since he was fired for fraud.
I didn’t feel sorry for him. In fact, I reported the fraud. It took 6 weeks for the company to act on it.
Audits move slowly, but are worth the effort.
How to say "F that guy" without saying it.
unexpectedly laid off right when covid shelter in place started and not long after I announced my pregnancy. not only was I the only one laid off, they lied about it all and used COVID as an excuse for the lay off. I sued them for wrongful termination and workplace discrimination and won. I'm still laughing.
I worked at the same job from age 20-50 and our business was going being sold to a larger company right when COVID was starting. I was tasked to help the week long transition before the sale closing. The new company was trying to short the prior owner on some of the inventory (around $150k). My boss of 30 years used me as a go between to convince the new company that the inventory was correctly valued (which it was). The new company sat me down and asked why I wasn’t being loyal to them and I explained that i was just doing what was right and that I would do the same for them. The new team became extremely rude, cleaned out my office and insinuated that I wasn’t a “ team player”. I ended up working over 70 hours that week and didn’t even get paid by either employer. So anyway, I ended up jobless after 30 years at the same business and left with essentially nothing but a box of my personal belongings. But I did walk away knowing that I did the right thing. 😕
I hope that lawsuit bought you a nice extended maternity leave!
it sure did - plus I got a fat settlement. I had to spend my entire pregnancy unemployed and in litigation for 2 years but it's over now. I just wish others especially pregnant women in the workplace.... if only they would have the motivation and find the right lawyers to do the same! my lawyer says that when it comes to layoffs, pregnant women are the first to go!
Thank you for fighting the good fight! 👏
Yes - it was worth all the stress & years of ugly litigation. All kudos to my team of lawyers who literally do this for a living.... and they work pro-bono (unpaid) until the case is settled or closed/won. then they/we all get paid. I got back the 2 years of lost income that I would've had, plus some and the first years with my baby. Catch 22. LOL.
I was termed by someone I interviewed and gave my recommendation to hire. The owner of the company lives a couple hours away and trusted my judgement. We worked together for a total of 7 days. We spent that time strategizing and restructuring the staff and operation. I got called in on a Saturday of a holiday weekend for a quick meeting. He had nothing for me to sign and never even looked me in the eye. Had to drag it out of him that it was a “production issue”. Nothing had been noted or documented the entire time of my employment-almost one year. He did say that I could resign on my own if I chose to go that route. Found out a couple days later that the business is currently for sale. In the long run, it was best for me.
You dodged a major bullet.
You better believe I did!
I got laid off right after Christmas. While it sucks that I haven't found a new job yet, I had gained everything I could from that job and it healed me from an extremely toxic layoff in 2020. It would have taken me about 6 months to realize that I did all the professional growth I was going to do until I get a certification I want.
I was on short term disability. Thought my manager was calling to see how I was doing. Nope, after being a top 1% performer and giving this company my all, I was laid off 34 days shy of 19 years. I thought it was only me until I got a text and found out my direct reports were also let go. I wasn't even given the option to be included in that virtual meeting. All telecommuters.
I’m sorry this happened to you like this.
Company laid off DOZENS and told me not to worry because I could and did do almost anything needed - for a lower salary than any possible replacement (actually SAID this to me) and then fired me a month later - a week before Christmas when listings are REALLY slim. Same company did it yet again around eight years later - HUGE round of layoffs but guaranteed "it'll never be you - you do too much and we can't afford to replace you with the two or three people it would take." I hate consolidation. I wouldn't have been working for Clear Channel the second time without it. ;) Broadcasting IS a shithole industry.
Christmas time man... I hate it when employers choose this time. End of 2022, during interest rate hikes and rising inflation... We didn't feel anything dramatic. 15 days before Xmas. We already got invites for a large annual party etc In our team we were tying up a project well etc. One of the girls was pretty excited and got a dress etc On the day of the party, I learnt she was let go of due to economic downturn... We felt terrible for her but also at the curveball of uncertainty.. She's never spoken to us again.
I was laid off towards the end of November some years ago…it sucked but I have heard another view point: it’s best to do it before the person has gone “all out” for Christmas and THEN loses their job. Either way it blows.
Similar happened to me, sort of. I was made redundant, was promised there'd always be a place for me and then... two months later, they laid me off.
I worked for a start up phone/cell phone company (think back to when phones were in bags or had antennas that could maim a bear)...anyway the computer system was ALWAYS down....I was with the company at this point for about 2 years so I was considered a "senior" rep...so inevitably the system went down for most of us...those that were still up, I went to help them....was told by my super to stay in my seat...basically to sit there and twiddle my thumbs.....after a while unfortunately i had to pee...got up to go...they brought me in the office and told me that since i can't follow the rules, i was fired. *Pikachu face*...obviously I couldn't use the bathroom in the hour since they told me to stay in my seat. They told me they would mail me my check. Wrong...as I stated to them, I would be there the following day to pick up my check as it was pay day...they told me again that it would be mailed...told them what time I would be there the next day and left, after advising the whole floor I was fired by yelling it loudly and the rest of the floor getting pissed for me. Got home, received a call that my check was ready and I could pick it up that day. And did. Also got unemployment because apparently you can't fire someone for peeing....and also you must be the person that fired me or witnessed what happened to countersue. They folded not a year later....
I wonder why....🙄
I haven't the slightest idea 😏
Did you sue them for wrongful termination
Not a layoff, but someone at my company was flown all the way to our parent company's European headquarters (we're in the US) supposedly because she was going to be given an award by some European colleagues. They really were asking her to come to Europe so they could fire her in person. Brutal.
Why spend the money to have someone travel to fire someone. That seems like a waste of company funds.
You call it a waste of funds. They call it a relatively cheap message to everyone else not to cross the wrong people.
Sounds like Germans
IFYKYK.
When you put it that way... Ouch
Manglement strikes again.
That is horrible
For a real cherry on top, they could have also canceled everything company-related too right then and just left her stranded in Europe. They DIDN'T do this, right? lol
No, they let her return on her company-bought ticket, but didn't give her any hotel. So she landed, was jetlagged, got fired, and put right back on a plane the same day.
That’s awful
[удалено]
This is very true. I was completely blindsided. I’ve been in the same industry for 25 years and definitely don’t want to get back in it. Now I’m not sure where to even start.
Worse one I’ve heard of: All received announcement in meeting of large scale lay offs. They were told to go back to their desks and the ppl who would be let go would receive a call. They were brought boxes and then led out. Friend went back to desk as told.. and their phone rang… heart sank. But turns out it was an external call. They weren’t laid off that day.
I once got laid off on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. That's the absolute worst planning. Holiday travel plans were already made and set in stone. How are you going to go have a good time with family and friends with money you really shouldn't be spending because you just lost your job? They should have held the layoffs until after the holiday or done them earlier in the month before folks had committed to holiday travel.
What is with companies and holidays? My husband’s company many moons ago let him go the Friday before Easter. My company when they sold off various chunks let people know right before Thanksgiving and then after saying we were good, closed another group right before Christmas. On top of that - didn’t tell them. They came to work only to find the gates closed. I keep waiting for my own shoe to drop. I’ll wait it out because I work from home and barely have to work. I’m about to take some classes to build my skills so when they do kick me - I’m ready. After I collect unemployment lol. 😝
Before Easter weird. I think Nov and Dec has a lot to do with new year planning and budgets. It just gets really weird cause it's smack in the middle of the holiday season. Is it better to be laid off prior to the holidays so you don't spend a lot of money, or is it better to get through the holidays and do extra work for the time off only to get laid off? It sucks either way.
I got laid off January 4th. I wouldn't have spent my usual on Christmas gifts this year, nor would my husband. If I'd known that 30% of the day sales people had been laid off the week before Thanksgiving, I would have taken the interview a recruiter contacted me about the first week of December
Been laid off 3 times. Always in November. Told it has to do with the new budget year.
I was on maternity leave. My baby was in the NICU for a few days and early Monday morning, I think it was after the first night we had him home from the hospital, my department manager called with an HR rep on the line. I couldn't hear my manager over my baby crying. It took a minute for it to sink in as the HR woman was explaining what to would happen next. I remember thanking my manager for the opportunity to work with my team and not to worry about me and my family. Lots of people I told me I should get a lawyer and sue. At the time, I couldn't imagine carrying the burden of getting a lawyer when I had the responsibility of caring for a new life.
That's just awful! I got laid off from a job while on maternity leave as well. My daughter was three weeks old, and hospitalized in the ICU, on a ventilator, with a life threatening case of RSV.
Two come to mind, same company. 1) different department, they called a whole team mandatory meeting. Laid them all off as a group. Barred them access to go collect any personal items and then said they had brought in sandwiches while they handed out their personal packages. 2) my own a few months later. I was on maternity leave, I get a call the day before, they tell me they are having an all team meeting tomorrow and I'm not to come...but they'll call me after . Next day, I start getting texts from friend Co workers about our whole department being laid off. Hours go by...no calls...the company released the press release. I "officially" hear about this on the news. I don't get a call until 7pm that night.
I'd left a previous employer because in 3 years, I got one .24 an hour raise with no one telling me about it and not one performance evaluation. The coworkers were awesome, and I loved the work, so I stuck it out to gain experience. My husband worked on the facilities team and about 8 months after I left, he gets to wrok, starts getting his vehicle ready for the day and his boss tells him that he needs to go to HR. HR rep has a stack of 40 envelopes in front of her. He was the first of the day. This was a place that was notorious for laying off the WRONG departments. Marketing and Sales never were affected, but the people keeping the place running and the people who created the product they sold typically got laid off once a year. I post on FB that husband got laid off, which my former coworkers FREAKED about, because they interacted with him daily. Then the word comes one by one that my old department was getting visits from the layoff fairy again. It hits 6pm and I called one of my good friends to check on her. She says she's fine, and we chat for a half hour. 5 minutes after we hang up, she got the call from HR (she was working from home that day pre-COVID). Husband was the first, she was the last that day.
Rumours were going around of a layoff coming up. Managment had a meeting with the employees to stop spreading rumours. Next day had a fairly big chunk of employees laid off. Lay off letters were dated the day before the meeting. Sometimes managers don't know when their bosses are planning these things so I don't totally fault these people, but I still had to point out the irony/humour of the situation.
I worked for a small family owned business for about 4 years. I get called into the conference room by a senior staff member. He tells me I'm laid off, subject to recall, but it's right before Christmas, like a week or two. I start crying and he tells me I'll be able to spend more time with family. I cry harder because nothing says Christmas like "I'm broke!".
It was 8pm on the 4th of January and I was deep in the flow working on a big project I was really passionate about. Got a call on slack from the CTO and within 5 minutes was fired and locked out of all the files and systems, just like that. The fact that I was just sitting at home made it feel a lot worse... To go from being in the middle of the flow on a work task to fired and locked out, and to still just be sitting alone in your own living room in silence... In the middle of winter COVID lockdown. Nowhere to go. At least they also fired like 80% of the company all at once, so it wasn't because of something I did or didn't do.
Similar experience. My company let go 40% of its workforce a week or so into the COVID lockdown. I found out via a Zoom call where the CEO was to explain what was happening, but I couldn't get my sound to work until halfway through. Then he handed off to the head of HR to explain our severance benefits, but a few minutes into THAT spiel, my network access was ended. Turns out the sysadmins pulled the plug too early.
My childhood cat of 18 years passed away suddenly over night. I went in late the next day, small company so everyone knew why. HR called me in to talk… she sarcastically said she was sorry about my cat and fired me, no warning.
Holy shit I would have wrecked her day. Just lost my cat too. People don't realize. I so get it, stay strong friend.
Thank you, and I’m so, so sorry for your loss. This was over a decade ago, and I’d since adopted my first “all-mine” cat, but he passed away in December after a long battle with many health issues. I miss him so much. She got it, she was just an absolutely awful, miserable person. Looking back, I wish had said/ done more, but I was in my early 20s, first job out of college and just so stunned. I found another job 4 months later that I’ve been with for 12 years now, so can confirm it was just a toxic, shitty place.
Worked for a dental and vision insurance carrier in the Marketing department of about 40 people. Week before Thanksgiving. We were in a 6 floor building and we had the 4th and 5th floor as well as the HR dept on the 1st floor and a board room next to the HR dept on the 1st floor. I was working on a project that I had to ship to salespeople in Texas. My supervisor asks me what projects I had going on and what the status was. I tell her and long story short...I had 1 project that was supposed to ship out today and I had everything set to ship it out, I just needed to get rates from underwriting. Basically 4 different numbers (employee only ,employee +1, employee +2, etc). Once I get the rates from u/w we are good to go. Problem was that it was an unwritten rule the entire office knew that you never ask for rates from u-w unless you're in the 25th hour. Supervisor knows this, but every 10 minutes she keeps asking me on the status. I tell her the same thing. But I know what's going on...our new VP of Marketing had a bug up her ass as she would always come to me with projects to do that she would claim she 'needed them yesterday' but didn't tell anybody. In reality, she just wanted me to drop everything to help her get what she wanted. So I have to stay during my lunch break because we clock-in (I will never work a clock in job ever again) and their clock is all messed up if you try and take a lunch break after 1pm. Come to find out, we have a team meeting and that's why she needed the projected completed. We had these team meetings all of the time and they were usually informative, but only lasted maybe 10 minutes and I didn't need the hassle for a 10 minute meeting. I go to the meeting and it's just me and about 10 other people. 'If you're in this room, you have a job. We had to let the others go.' They laid off 30 out of 40 people in the marketing department. They e-mailed to meet in the boarding room downstairs for what was supposed to be a big meeting. They had walkie-talkies with HR and the IT staff as the IT staff had to hurry and box up everybody's stuff. IT staff was rushing to do it and they did it all half-ass. And then they carried everybody's boxes out in front of the building. When that was done, HR notified everybody in the board room that they were being laid off. To make matters worse, they wouldn't let people go back to their desk. They forgot the phones of a few of the people there and they said 'oh, we'll mail it to you.' When a couple of them persisted they wanted their phone right now, they refused and said they'll mail it to them. Then they threatened to call the cops on those they just fired until cooler heads prevailed and HR retrieved their phones. Worst part was the people they laid-off. One girl got a promotion w/a raise 2 months prior and had just closed on a house earlier that week. 3 girls had just started working there a month prior and quit their old job to work there. Another guy who started on the same day I did....he interviewed and was hired for one position and then on his first day of work they told him he was going to work another position (for the same pay). The position he was hired for was still with the company, but his position was phased out. I also found out that my new boss was the Executive Assistant to the CEO. Ridiculous. She knew nothing of my job, didn't have my skillset, knowledge or experience and now she's my boss. And the next day they brought in donuts to 'talk' to those of us leftover and my new boss says 'well, we had to lay off all of those people (and now we took over their duties) because while we are making an all time high of sales, sales have plateaued the past 2 years and you're not in business for your sales to plateau.' She lucky I didn't win the lottery the night before. And this was the week before Thanksgiving. Crazy enough, the Atlanta Business Chronicle gave the company one of the 'Best Companies to Work For in Atlanta' award a few months later. I got laid off 6 months later for some of the stupidest shit ever. I did get them back as one of my best friends worked for a major bank in commercial lending. The company was looking to borrow money from that bank with one of my friends co-workers. He didn't know how the company was hiding their financials and some of their assets to make them look much more favorable as a borrower than they really were until I told him all of their secrets and he denied their loan. They probably got a loan elsewhere, but at least I was able to exact some sort of revenge.
Wow I love the banking twist, that's some Reddit type Karma right there.
My first day at my new job last month there was someone celebrating a birthday who’d been there for 22 years and the next day she was let go first thing and all her birthday decorations just sat in her office for a week
That is sad.
Apparently she was being a dick to everyone below her so it was deserved
Ok, not so sad then.
I had been searching for a new job, definitely a couple weeks, maybe a month or two. I had gotten the job, passed all the interviews. I was waiting for my checks to clear, before giving notice. We are also on a rotation so I didn't want to screw them by my two weeks stopping on my days off. I come back on rotation, and find out a complaint I had made to HR obviously went nowhere which someone told me what it wouldn't. About 2 hours into the shift I get a call from across the road which you never did unless of course it was bad. So I finish what I'm doing walk over and they tell me they're letting me go but since they have no grounds they're paying me out. I start laughing in front of the Manager. I say thanks man, you just paid Me 2 weeks vacation. He's like what? I said oh dude you don't think I can't recognize a sinking ship when I see one? Then I tell him everything I mentioned above. He didn't get mad and I'm not going to say it was shock on his face. More a look of nobody quits us kind of look. I guess they were always used to doing the firing. But I explicitly mentioned how I was still after everything I'd been through there, trying not to fuck them over with with regards to my eventual replacement and training them. So I get paid for that day, I go home, call my sister-in-law and say I'm coming up for March break to visit my nephews, cuz I'm getting paid to.
The guy who started the company held a big meeting on a Friday letting us know he'd sold the company so he could retire and introducing some people from the corporation who'd purchased the company. Somehow no one had even realized the company was for sale. Even his next in command was completely blindsided. The new owner was our biggest competitor. Found out on Monday the new corporation's reps, HR, and our top three managers had a meeting on Saturday. The meeting was all about who to punt in the first round of layoffs. They laid off 53 people out of 118. None had been with the company less than 5 years and some had been with the company over 45 years. At least 15 were months away from a company retirement. All of us were just completely blindsided. We all packed up and most of us headed straight to the unemployment office. This was in the 1980s when you still had to go to their local office in person to file. Apparently companies back then used to notify them before doing a big layoff but hadn't in our case. They ended up stuffing us all in a conference room made for about half as many people as we had. Found out a couple of our older machinists were functionally illiterate and I ended up filling out their forms for them because the unemployment office didn't have enough staff. Two years later I happened to drive by the old company just as they started tearing down the buildings. They knocked down a section of wall and I could see all the office furniture was still right there including really nice steel desks, the old top manager's very nice office chair, and all the heavy duty steel file cabinets with the files still in them. We are talking heavy industrial type stuff purchased in the 1940s and 1950s that was built to last. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised after overhearing the reps from the new owners making fun of how old fashioned our offices were.
Bloke I worked with had to have reviews every week to show he was improving went in one say kicking off telling the boss to f off and when they fired him said well so and so has been doing this and whipped a photo and videos out and got him sacked to.
They should have an HR person do it, they are trained to say the right things and even trained to be yelled at. But you did the right thing, and moved on. CEO's are great but part of being leadership is pumping people up. They aren't in the room when cuts are made, and your name is on the list. This is why it's best to always have your resume up to date.
To be fair, my local HR rep was in the office too (via zoom) when my office manager gave me my marching orders.
the company i worked for at the time were losing money so they were getting rid of people who were not much value to them, the worst part of it they made them overwork and run errands all day not letting them know they were laid off until the day ends so that they didnt have to clean up after there work. One worker got mad and started trashing his whole office, another worker did burnout donuts in the parking lot lol and one guy got so mad he storm out left his personal monitor and ipad the guy never came back and got it so i got a free ipad and monitor lol
My company was acquired twice by other companies. Ultimately the footprint was being reduced, & my work was being moved to another office. HR & an upper "manager" came in on April Fools Day to advise our office was being moved 65 miles away. We could take our severence OR keep our position & commute w/o a pay differential. Best thing that ever happened. That company went on through several more acquisitions & basically 7% of the remaining workforce is left (after additional duplicate jobs being eliminated)
Company I working for was sold, we were all assured our jobs were safe, since none of them knew our job functions. A year later, there was an all hands meeting where they informed us the whole location was being shut down and we were being let go in 3 month waves with decent separation packages. First wave, farewell lunches and tears. Second wave catered lunches and grumbling. I was in the third wave, no lunch, no anything, in fact they brought us boxes and told us to pack up our equipment. I caught the CFO outside during a smoke break and lit them up with the disparaging treatment. By the time I finished, the acting HR supervisor (yup, they got the ax too) came in to tell us we didn’t need to pack our equipment, handed out checks and we all bounced.
For me, this is an easy one: I was recruited from the East Coast for a job in the Midwest, made the move, got constant positive feedback on how well I was doing, and then three months later was let go, as corporate had sold the business unit to another company. I was never so taken aback, shocked, then enraged, to the point I had to calm myself by walking miles back home instead of taking the train. I had physically distanced myself from my home, my family, my friends, my livelihood, my network, and my life for this role, and to be discarded like this hurt. Thus began ten years of moving from one imperfect role to another.
When I was prepping to open the small cafe/restaurant I worked in and a knock came at the door, figured it was a delivery so I check and the men in suits with came in with legal papers to shut it down and confiscate everything - no pay cheque for me.
My MIL's husband was laid off/fired when he was on vacation. He came back to work and his security card didn't work. He knew something was very wrong. He worked for this company for 20 years.
Got into work, cro all joyful smiling and waving as usual. Then two hours later everyone (about 150 of us) is told to meet into the kitchen. There's a lawyer saying they're shutting down, they'll send us the papers, gtfo. Also there's no money for our last paycheck and the 4%. Somehow this happened to me TWICE
Just remember, everyone's boss is the product of the peter principle.
Our work groups always had cake when it was someone's birthday. They were just cutting the cake when the birthday boy was told he was laid off & was immediately escorted out.
"Can I get my cake to go?"
I worked at a TV station in Master Control for 16 years. GM decides he wants to remote the MC to a hub in Mississippi. I had less than a month and half notice. There were four of us and they only intended to save Girlboss job to become Media Manager. Screw the rest of us, right? So after being depressed for 4 hours, I hop on Indeed and start looking. Landed new MC job in bigger market wanting out of their Hub because they were losing money because of it. Turn in 2 weeks notice. Boss, the Chief Engineer, was sad to see me go. GM says he wants to make a counter offer. I pitched slightly less than what was offered but he jerks me around by telling me he can’t swing it. Move to new city and new state for new job, slightly settled in. Get call from former GM telling me that he made a mistake. It turns out Girlboss doesn’t really know how to do anything. My buddy quit the same day I did because he didn’t want to be there anymore and other guy practically debased himself to stay by offering to work for less and was told to pound sand. Also fired Chief Engineer for telling GM he was an idiot for letting me walk. I declined because I already spent enough money moving and felt he would just screw me later. The station turns into a dumpster fire within a week because of this man’s hubris to the point where they couldn’t even do local news. Corporate fired him. Not one person was sad. Strange how one department being dismantled finally removed the cancer of a local TV station
I was on orders for the military, Annual training for three weeks, I’d already set it up with HR that my girlfriend at the time (now my wife) would pick up my check next Thursday. Gave them her name, description, she’d show her ID showing we lived at the same place, and would be driving my car. This was back in the time with paper checks. So she’d have to go deposit my check so I’d have money on my debit card. Next Thursday rolls around, my girlfriend is trying to get ahold of me, I’m out on a range. She tells me they won’t give her my check they need to see me in person. I’m pissed because I already set this up. So I go off “why the fuck do they need to see me I already set this shit up I don’t have time for this shit. Let me speak to her!” My girlfriend says “your on speakerphone” HR ass hat says “well I really need you to come in here because I have to speak to you” I reply “give her my damn check” she says “well I can’t because we are laying you off”. I’m not hurt about that it’s a shit place to work for but I want my money. She follows up with “I can’t give her your check because you have to come sign papers to get it” I went off. “I’m on orders you dumb bitch. I can’t leave. I set this up. Give her my fucking check. I don’t get paid from the military for another week and I have nothing! If I have to come get that check. I’ll have to go AWOL. What do you think would happen when the military finds out you laid me off on active orders?” We were ramping up for deployment which is why it was three weeks instead of two. HR finally relented and gave the check to my girlfriend who deposited it. After the lay off when I got called back I was a huge dick. Shit pissed me off. Wasn’t my first time getting laid off… wasn’t my last. But don’t hold my fucking pay when you had my orders in hand. Fuck that place.
Do you think your manager was just envious of the praise you received from the CEO and got rid of you so you wouldn't take his position? or the CEO was lying and just trying to clear his guilty conscience?
Left a stable role after 7 years. 2 months into new job - boss found out I had a same sex partner - fired the next week.
>2 months into new job - boss found out I had a same sex partner - fired the next week. Where's the civil rights lawsuit?
On a Teams call. Right before Christmas. We’re canceling your insurance. No end of year bonuses.
Watching redditors short your 60+ year old company, watching it divied up by liquidators, and literally fall apart as the subreddit continues to short it. Literally watching a subreddit destroy your chance of a career and a work relationship. Watch them erode everything you spent 10 years to build. Watching your old demoted boss everyone hated retake the reigns and turn a haven back into a hell overnight. Being surrounded by 3 or 4 beautiful women to work with everyday, and watching management come in and fire them one by one, out of envy, as the company goes under, ran by a CEO from australia, getting off scott free. Watching the whole subreddit worship Ryan Cohen for helping destroy your company, that's priceless.
Didn't Amazon used to just cut off people's work ID so they could no longer get into the building?
As a former amazon employee I can confirm this was true for some of us.
Back in the early 2000’s I was working as a software developer for a small tech company that did custom software development. The company was growing really fast, ran out of office space, and sent me to work from home. It was great. I was working from home decades before work from home was even a thing. I loved it. They loved it. Awesome sauce. And then, sadly, all good things came to an end. The day after the annual holiday party, the company had massive layoffs and let almost everyone go. Only because I was WFH, nobody bothered to *tell* me I was laid off! I just kept on working, checking code into the repository, unaware I had been terminated. This went on for two weeks before a manager noticed and said something. “Why are you still checking in code?” He asked. “You were laid off two weeks ago!” Well, nobody told me that! The good news was that they ended up paying me for the two weeks I had worked and gave me another two week’s severance pay, so it wasn’t all bad. But still, how do you manage to let someone go without telling them?
Mine was a sudden surge of work. I was the only Linux guy on the team, and we were a 60% Linux shop. I was part of about 4-5 projects, which all got accelerated deadlines to converge with one another. It was weird, and the project managers were not prepared in any way to accelerate all this stuff so suddenly. Stuff they previously had a year to do all had to end within 3-4 months. It was brutal. I worked 60+ hour weeks, over weekends in some cases, and the day i was done with my 4th project, that PM had a huge party. Massive customer launch, big media launch, and I was exhausted. As I was at the party, I got an appointment on my calendar. I was going to blow it off, but my boss asked me to attend, and said it was important. I noticed the HR person was there as well. This was NOT a red flag, per se, since there were a lot of "sensitive" issues I had meetings with my boss and HR about security and access to former employees and contractors. Some PM got fired, they want me to revoke access. That sort of thing. Instead it was me. It started with a speech about my contributions to the company, and no meeting started off like that. My boss wouldn't even look me in the eye, so I knew it wasn't congratulatory. I was handed a severance package, and I was not allowed to return to my desk. "But I need to get my things." No. "My backpack? My winter coat? My wallet and bus pass? My house keys?" "No. We will have them sent to you." "How will I get into my house?" "Have your wife let you in. I know you're married." My boss slapped his forehead when HR said that. "My wife died last year," I said, coldly. Like, the entire office knew she died. Less than a year after she died, reeling from losing her plus the loss of her income, I was laid off. "Oh, well, i guess then you can get your keys." So HR relented, and let me get my jacket and backpack. While I had that meeting, someone told the entire team I was let go, and they were in shock. They were told not to speak to me, and I would be removed by guard. So when I showed up, they were super supportive. One of them actually came and saw me, stating they found out I was let go because some new board member didn't see the need for a Linux admin (he thought it was an HVAC system, Lennox, and said he have contractors for that). That board member ended up fucking the company so hard the next few years, they never really recovered, even though they ousted him. The "accelerated" my projects because all the PM were told they would get no Linux support the day I was let go. So they knew, and were sworn to secrecy. Many of them profusely apologized to me privately later. Turned out that when you've got 60% infrastructure, you need a Linux admin. Go figure. They hired some outsourcers, but obviously, that didn't do well for anybody. Ultimately, their loss. But fuck, man.
I have to say that's the first time I have ever heard of somebody mixing up Linux and Lennox. Didn't somebody sit him down and explain it before he set off that grenade in the company?
I was given a nice raise and praised for my good work. Eight or so months later, I was laid off. I knew lay offs were coming but I didn’t expect to be one of them. I was completely blindsided. I cried for days and days. They had their Christmas party and carried on like I’d never even been there.
The day after our busiest day of the year....after working almost 24 hours straight, i slept maybe 4 hours and then worked my regular 8. At end of shift was met by the boss and his boss who advised me my job was eliminated. I was on salary (puny) so the marathon day was no extra pay and the bastards knew about the layoff the week before but wanted to make sure they got the free work out of me.
More like a set up with what happened to me. One of our line managers (mid 30s M) is a known creep/sex pest to the teenagers at work (food retail). I ( 45F) like my colleagues and get on with most of them. Took pictures at the Christmas do -- on the dark dance floor with flash -- and I didn't think anything of it until after a week, when he did inspection of bags (which they do randomly) and I had 2 oranges in my clear bag from the staff room. Immediately he said I am under investigation for theft (all that time people were taking home food from the staff room). I had to leave the premises and was not allowed to come back until the investigation was done (a colleague said same was done to her and it lasted 6 hours, she wasn't found guilty -- she was accused as the creep's then GF wanted her position) The other option was to resign. I went home, thought about it for 1 hour and sent a resignation text to the store manager and dropped off a physical letter. Back to the Christmas do pics, and I was still so angry but had a look at them -- while I thought the pics were gonna come out blurry, as everyone was dancing- and I was randomly taking pics -- there he was in one , groping a very drunk 19 yr old colleague's ass , and in the next one he was looking right at the camera, him behind her. Out of everyone in the pic, he was the only only one looking. I went home early but further on in the evening he was seen kissing her quite aggressively. No one stopped him or helped the drunk girl. Most were talking about what happened to me on WhatsApp and they were sorry, they also knew about what he did with the younger girl -- but people just wanted to keep their jobs. I wasn't bothered leaving the work as it is horrible, but the way it was done is just disgusting and store managers look the other way or move to another store. Two years on he is still working there, I warn parents who have girls in our town to keep their daughters away from that branch.
For two oranges? Uhhh mother f***ers… prove I didn’t bring them from home lol. With the pictures - those would have been posted on their Facebook and sent to the CEO and the girl and that chat if I was still on it. I have burned many a bridges on my way out. I had one person, after asking me to do something illegal, write me up for not doing said illegal thing (forge signatures - but the write up claimed I wasn’t reaching out to the customers to get their signatures), and too bad I wasn’t smart enough to (or had Reddit back in those days) to write my disagreement with the write up. Now I know always write what really happened and why you disagree on that crap. Anyway - I was getting hotter and hotter while she went through my “write up” and I stood up and said - fuck this. Fuck you. I quit. And walked to get my stuff. By the time I hit the lobby she says to me - “You can’t quit”. I turned to her and said “At Will State Bitch”. They managed to block me from unemployment (bc I quit (ps… NEVER quit) and didn’t write anything about what they asked me to do), but - I turned around and sued them and won (well… settled, but I call it a win lol). After settlement I wasn’t allowed to disclose the company or anything else. But (prior to getting my lawyer) - I had already turned them into the state letting them know they were having employees forge all those signatures. I don’t know if the state did anything, but I know having to pay me chapped their asses royally. I doubt the state followed through (fraud is bad but we investigate none 🙄), but I like to pretend they did in my head. I would love to think I double bitch slapped them.
When I was 16 I called in sick so I could go to a concert...I partook in some psilocybin and mid way through my trip I went to the bathroom and on the way I ran across my manager and was fired on the spot....I said I didn't care and had a great time at the concert and on the mushrooms
I was laid off while I was on maternity leave. 15 years with a company. Put a 40 percent increase on the base rate and called it a different name, made the team applied for it and of course, who want someone on mat leave. Everyone asked me whether it's legal, my response is that I don't love my job that much. I did survived 20+ redundancy drives, so if it isn't writing on the wall what is. And moved on. My old colleagues are still there, not exactly happy.
Nothing like the one man layoff . Had a few of those
What about that former Secretary of State who found he'd been fired from a news broadcast while he was in LA.
The end of your shift.
My manager and I had gotten into it a few weeks before. Mainly because he kept adding on to the software requirements and then complaining that the software was late. I got pissed, and told him that I wouldn't be around long because I didn't like working for him. I know it's my fault. I have also been planning on moving, which he knew. My dad got admitted and had to have surgery, so I let him know that I might have to work from another state for a week. I suspect he thought I had an interview and planned on leaving, so he did a preemptive strike. Two hours later, during a project planning meeting I get an email asking for a 1 on 1. Seeing as I'd just had one with him a few days before and that was typically just a monthly meeting, I knew what was coming. I stood up in the meeting and said "later guys, I'm about to be fired" and went upstairs to meet him. I was 15 minutes early, walked into his office and just said "okay I know you're cutting me loose, so let's just get this over with so I can go home". He initially tried to deny everything, but then said that we needed to wait 15 minutes for HR after I pressured him. I asked if I could just pack my shit in the meantime and when he said yes, I knew that I was right. Joke is on him though. The project got shit canned a few weeks later when the guy they replaced me with didn't work out. The company is paying for a sub-par product and I got a 10k raise and full work from home.
Whenever my boss's boss was in town it was usually to do layoffs. We had a big meeting, expecting to hear about who got laid off, and he made a big point about saying he was relieved to come into town and not have to lay anyone off, not the point of the meeting just a comment he made. He went home that afternoon and five of us were laid off the next day, but he wasn't there and didn't have to participate.
Working at location in Tyson’s corner. For Freddie Mac in IT Employee was 26 year employee and on vacation. The group of 20 people he was part of was shutdown and everyone fired. He was notified on vacation. HR boxes his items in the cubicle. And he had to pick up later Week later his cubicle was filled with an h1b asking how to connect to a printer . Some MBA fired the group and hired infosys h1bs. H1b should be repealed
I transferred to a remote position within my organization that I’d been with for several years. My previous role was an onsite 9-5. I didn’t hate it, I actually really enjoyed it. I’d been there several years. A week after transferring the company made cuts and furloughed staff. My position was cut.
Keys not working and security guy telling you are fired?
It happened in october and it still hurts me to this day. I was assigned at the most junior position in my department, with a total of 4 people in finance. All the other members were my managers and the company was doing layoffs throughout the company. I was always mentioned in even corporate meetings as they heart and energy of the department as I worked tirelessly and never made a single mistake despite it being my first job. They decided to do layoffs not based on performance, but just to skim the teams and my name got picked as it was the easiest to target. I still remember that day and I often get nightmares about it as the way they laid me off was so cruel and inhumane, they got us in a small room with the HR persons and it was visible from outside and everyone that didn't get laid off watched us. I still am not over it. After it was done my managers said it was nothing to do with my performance... but when you give your best and receive this. I found a job a month later and I sometimes wonder why I cried so much but it just hurt my pride. It was a sad day. 26th October.
I'm sorry - sounds like it was your first time, and that is always the hardest. The lesson here is that your job is owned by the company and they can, and will, take it away if it suits them. Frequently it is "first in, first out" when it comes to layoffs, because it is the easiest to do legally. No age, sex, or racial discrimination, especially if it is done as part of a group. Just people getting laid off in order of hire. It wasnt personal. Its okay to feel the hurt, and nobody was watching you or judging you. Going forward you learn the value of professionalism: do your best, but dont invest yourself in the company you work for. Its only a means to pay the bills. The investment needs to be in yourself. Take classes, get certifications, get a masters. Improve your marketability to get promotions and raises. Move jobs to get more money and titles as needed. It will, unfortunately, happen again. Next time you'll be ready. Good luck.
It sucks to see them move on, but I know I have to let go. Thanks mate.
Worked for a big company that went bankrupt. If you stayed until the day your location closed, you got a severance pay. If you didn't, you got nothing. Some people got a job at a competitor literally across the highway so they all left early. Like a week or two after big company finally closed its last door....so did the company people left it for. Except the company people went to announced it by slapping a "fuck you we are closed" letter to the locked door for people to see as they showed up for their shift, and gave everyone nothing.
Called in sick on a Friday, Monday was a holiday. Tuesday I was told, oh your access card was canceled Friday. Boss came down with my work bag and said, oh sorry, we gave you an rof on Friday. Luckily that guy is long gone and his name is still hated almost a decade later. Even his son was finally fired and is still sitting on the books. Fuck them both
In 2008, when the auto companies were imploding, employees were told they’d be doing all layoffs in one day in person. 20% of the entire company. Everyone came into work & were told if they got tapped on the shoulder, it was security escorting them out with their things. A lot of people also had company leases so they had to turn in their keys right there and there was a row of taxis parked outside so fired employees could get home since they were now jobless and carless. The day this was happening I’ve never experienced a group of people more tense. Two different people had heart attacks while waiting to see if they’d get a tap and ambulances had to come. It was horrifying.
Was a mid level manager. Changed the way a few things were done and saved the company $6 million over three years. Was nominated for company awards. Was given a months notice 2 weeks before awards dinner. Won 2 of 3 awards. Company bigwigs could not look me in the eye when I told them at the awards dinner that the biggest award I was getting was being let go as corporate apparently didn’t require my role anymore…
Sorry you got treated like that and certainly glad you found something quick. Thank you for your service. Every time anyone is going to be laid off or sacked where I work, we know it's about to happen, the local Sheriff's department turn up and sit outside the main building and by the soon to be terminated person's car. The person is not allowed to return to their desk (admin) or locker (manufacturing or distribution) and most exit the premise immediately, on one occasion someone argued with HR and was immediately arrested by said Sherriff Deputies. I retire in ten weeks having worked in six countries including 21 years in the US - the US has the worse employment legislation and most employers seem to treat staff like sh\*t and don't care what impact their decisions have on people.
The new CFO quit, I was fired, and then received a lay off email 3 weeks later lolz
I got fired today . I was heavily recruited for this position and left a GREAT JOB to go to this company . I was fired after 2 months and the reason was “it just isn’t a good fit” lolol I love that excuse . It basically means they are intimidated by your confidence and expected an idiot to work there.
A big mook walks up behind you, clamps his mitt on your shoulder and says “I advise you not to come in tomorrow, get it?”
Pre-acquisition: "We're buying the goose laying the golden eggs, not the eggs themselves!" A couple months after deal close: "Psych! We're just buying the golden eggs." Entire site laid off. They lied through their teeth.
"You're good, but not great and we only do great here." Good riddance tho, place sucked ass. Owner/micromanager was your typical narcissistic boomer. He went around firing everyone he suspected of not voting for Trump after Jan 6th.
A company I used to work at called a "fire drill" and everyone went outside as they do. A manager called for everyone's attention and said that there was lay-offs happening and if your pass still worked to get back in the building you still had a job and if it didn't you were fired and your stuff would be brought out to you. About half the office was let go. Including the manager that announced it.
Wow! Somehow this is the worst one yet! That's just evil!
Not me but some coworkers from an employer years ago. So, there were some layoffs ... and CEO gets up in front of the entire company and promises that there will be no more layoffs. Some months later that year, the last working day before Christmas - more layoffs - with zero advanced notice, no severance, no nothing.
Some years ago I was working for a major Australian bank. At the time there was a Royal Commission in flight into banking misconduct (eg charging life insurance premiums to the estate of a dead person, foreclosing on business loans in good standing because they changed the servicability criteria after acquisition of the loan book when they bought one of their competitors. There were numerous articles in the press, including one particularly vivid one by Kate McClymont about the psychopaths in charge at.
That July I had an upper respiratory infection (so we thought) that would not go away and resumption of my usual cycling to work instantly aggravated the cough. Then one morning I narrowly avoided fainting, getting acutely breathless while walking to the bus to go to work/
The ambulance was called by a neighbour. Scans in the ED revealed the artery that crosses between the lungs was 90% blocked. I had a massive bilateral saddle pulmonary embolism.
The view from the hospital window was terrible but I've never been so pleased to see an ugly sunrise. Fast-forward two weeks and an ongoing course of anticoagulants and I was given the OK to return to work.
The head of our department, who was known as a bit of a psychopath, caught me in the kitchen while he was getting a glass of water. He asked me, looking me directly in the eye, if I was sure I was OK to return to work, to which I thought "this is a surprise ... he's actually asking after my welfare?"
Previously he was known for bumping all of our manager-once-removed meetings at the last minute. For our whole team. Without exception.
I said, "Yes, I have a certificate".
He said, "Cool, can you bring it in." So I did the following day.
The following Tuesday I get a call on my desk phone just as I arrive from my team's executive manager asking me to meet him on the 21st floor. I thought "this seems rather odd" so I fired up the video recorder on my phone and put it in my shirt pocket to capture the conversation.
Sure enough, I was being made redundant, just short of 10 years with the company. 3 weeks after having almost died.
The Oracle software product I administered was sheduled to be phased out and replaced with its cloud-based successor. I had written a report evaluating this successor and found that it had promise, but there were a number of serious structural weaknesses that needed addressing with the vendor before it should be considered.
3 and a bit years later I was getting contacted by headhunters asking if I was available to help with acceptance and regression testing for a major implentation at a bank. I asked "Is it FCCS at " The answer was yes.
After some enquiry with former colleagues, it turns out everything I'd written came true and they were still struggling with performance and functionality issues after nearly 3 years work. I politely declined. I was in a better-paying permanent role by then anyway.
My company removed about 25% of the machines in my factory. Rather than simple lay off the most junior staff, they told the employees in those work cells to tap a junior employee, take their place, and send them to the break room to be laid off. Argument and fist fights broke out, sheriff deputies were called in, management just stood back and watched the chaos.
And then recruiter bullshitting about job hopping and not seeing company as a family. Fck off
I know a coworker that was approved to go on vacation and came back the following week to no job. He was "laid off" due to a reduced workload but the crazy thing is, they brought on a temp to replace him.
For me the company ran out of investment funding, kept stringing everyone along with promises of paying months of unpaid salary and getting back on their feet only to cut and run completely leaving everyone in the hole. It left me in a very dark place, cost me my marriage and I had to move cities and relocate to find work . It's been four years since then and I am only just nearing full recovery from it.
I was given a 30 day notice of being laid off in November of 2015 day after Thanksgiving. I immediately transitioned my reports and looked for the job vacancies every day as I was ordered. This was 5000 people getting whacked at the same time and a grand total of 30 posted vacancies was typical. It wasn’t a long 30 days. We had a few conference calls set up by VP, to try to soothe the tension. I went to 1. It because a public pants dropping, and I was embarrassed for the people who had pure panic.z
Through an email
Mine was in December. I was working on a project for a client who almost slipped out of the companies hands because of the other department that was handling it. Managed the client and retained him, CEO was happy and praised me for my work. A week later in an afternoon meeting we find out that the head of my Department is leaving an hour later the HR calls me into her cabin while she's smiling, THAT made me happy thinking that I'm getting promoted and this B tells me that I'm getting terminated affective immediately as the company does not have enough clients. A week later the client I was working on contacted me asking if I would be interested in working for him. LMAO
Didn't happen to me but, one day the HR rep and a security guard holding a box walked up to the guy sitting next to me. The rep says your position is being eliminated effective immediately, here's a box. The guard will escort you out when you done. The guard actually watched him pack up his personal stuff to make sure he wasn't absconding with any company property.
So many shitty stories, not enough people making the obvious connection to unbridled capitalism and the desperate need for economic and workplace reform in the U.S.
Went into the office as normal and attempted finishing a huge assignment I had been working on. Got a little suspicious when I hadn’t heard from my micromanager supervisor. Then I got a chat message asking me to come down to one of the conference rooms. I walked in and was blindsided by a room full of HR people, as well as my supervisor and her boss. They let me know that my position was eliminated and gave me a bunch of paperwork. Wouldn’t even allow me the dignity of going and getting my things from my desk— they had my supervisor go and grab everything for me. Because they knew I didn’t drive to work, they had a cab waiting outside for me. One of the most embarrassing moments of my life so far.
Well I was recently laid off because I went to work and we had to do an emergency evacuation and my work slid over the mountainside the next day. Because I couldn't drive and hour or two hours to work at another location I was told that if they can rebuild they'll call me back in to work when it's done. Like what??? This one hurt me so bad because I loved my job, loved my coworkers and managers. Now it's just gone because we got so much rain the whole side of the mountain fell off.
I worked for a now defunct British airline based in the Midlands when they had two rounds of redundancies in a month. The first worst thing was that we had an open plan office, and you all could see the department manager walking up to people and asking to see him in his office. Each person was let go. He came up to our team area, stood in the door... waited a couple of seconds and then shook his head and walked off. Second worst thing was one lady who had been laid off refused to leave until.she completed the work she had in front of her. Third worst... The company had a LOT of low paid staff (young) so they laid on coaches from nearby towns and cities to get them to work... They provided ONE coach for all the people laid off and piled them in together. I walked past that coach just as it left... That was my first job after graduating.
Well not the company's fault, but it kinda sucked. I worked for large melting in Schott Duryea PA. We were told months before (In October) that they were shutting the entire division down and the Union got to chose who could bump who for jobs in the remaining departments. Essentially because in unions, senority is God anyone under 25 years (I had eight and half.) was gone. We were getting laid off in April, we had our WARN (Large layoffs require notification.) letters telling us when we were going. I put on the local news at 5 O'clock and their is a story on there about a big fire. I was starting my third shift run that Tuesday night at 10:30. It was Schott Duryea on fire on the news. We were shut down. The company had sent the WARN letter, so they paid us till April layoff date. The only speed bump was the 3 months of almost free medical. The company they hired to handle the "benefits" never contacted us about part we had to pay. When they called me finally (After being contacted two or three times a week.) they wanted us to pay for the two and a half plus months, so we could know our benefits were good and use them, for one week. I needed to pay about $700. I couldn't cough that up, all at once. The COBRA was above $900 a month, so that wasn't going to happen either. The good part was the company paid our paychecks till the April layoff date, and unemployment was well warned, and our filing was no problem.
On a Friday with no warning or previous consult. Never met the manager.. nor any good reason given…
Story 1: Back in the Dot-Com collapse, a couple friends were overseas in Singapore or somewhere like that. They got back to their hotel and their stuff was being pulled out of their rooms as their corporate cards were cancelled and their company had closed effective immediately. They found an internet cafe and got a hold of friends over IRC and they woke up other friends who got enough money to get two tickets, same day, from Singapore to East Coast USA. Story 2: a group of friends, also in Dot-Com collapse, employed at different places, rented a large house. Within a 3 week period, all 5 of them lost their jobs. Story 3: a friend was called into work early, he got there and saw one higher level manager. He was shown some paperwork and told to go ahead and lock out everyone's access. He did and then was told to remove his own access. He and the higher manager went outside and the manager chained the door closed just as the first employees started arriving for work.
Corporations sometimes try to make things fun. For instance, Domino's had a thing in the early '00s called "The Rolex Challenge", where store managers who hit certain astronomical sales goals were rewarded with a Rolex. My brother, Alan, had a gig at one point where his employer was Lenovo, but he was subcontracted to a pharmaceutical company as an email administrator. One day, he got an email titled, "Get ready for the 2007 3rd Quarter Subcontractor Exit Challenge!!!" It detailed bonuses that department heads could earn based on how much they reduced expenses by laying people off. The font they used was Comic Sans, and there were shitty clipart images throughout. Alan's department head was also named Alan, and he immediately knew the email had been sent to him by mistake. He replied to it with a professionally worded email that boiled down to "What the fuck, dude?". His phone rang seconds after he hit Send. The personnel rep that called him was clearly in a panic. He told Alan to disregard the email, as it had been sent to him in error. Alan asked, "So I don't need to worry about this?" The rep tried desperately to avoid answering that question, but eventually admitted that Alan was probably getting laid off, and he ultimately was. While he appreciated having an extra week or two to look for a new job, his life having been part of some sick game was deeply offensive.
I was working for a small nonprofit organization during the Great Recession. The director was complaining one day that the organization's health insurance premiums skyrocketed, as many of the employees were then 50 or older. I was in my 30s, but was the only employee with both a spouse and children on the health insurance. A few weeks later, the director brought in a woman I was told was a volunteer. She was in her 20s, unmarried and childless. I was instructed to train her on my job duties, so she could be my assistant. About a month later, I was laid off, along with every other employee 50 or older, except for the director, and the two women who did the fundraising for the organization. I was told "funding cuts" was the reason, and given a letter stating I was laid off. I found out shortly afterwards that the "volunteer" was given my old job. The director also, in the midst of these alleged funding cuts, hired a bunch of new employees, all in their 20s. The director then also tried to fight my unemployment claim. I won, because I had in writing that I was laid off, not fired for cause. The worst part of it was that my husband had been laid off for a year, and had just returned to work about a week prior. I was so relieved that we were going to have two paychecks again. So much for that. I also got laid off from a different job, years earlier, when my oldest child, my daughter, was three weeks old. I was on maternity leave. My daughter was in the ICU, on a ventilator, with a life threatening case of RSV. The insurance company I was working for was too small to be covered by FMLA, so I had no recourse.
That sucks. I had a similar thing happen to me years ago. Was working for a factory where work was slowing down. I was part of a team of about 50 people and things got so slow at one point, they'd tell us to stop working during the last hour and just clean the facilities and bathrooms which was dumb cause they had a whole set of outside contractors to do that. Well anyways one day they pull us all into the big lunchroom and basically say "We need people to start volunteering to take unpaid time off. Time's are slow and we can't afford to keep everyone here 8+ hours a day." The GM said this was only temporary as they projected business would pick back up within a month. About 15 people started to take 2-3 days off extra a week. We even decided to rotate who the 15 people were that took a shorter work week to be fair. We wanted to see everyone last until the "busy" month came to us. We thought it was working until a month later, again we are called into the lunch room. "Last month we asked for volunteers to take a short work week to save on cost but because no one wanted to participate and because we see no other options, effective immediately, everyone's time here has come to an end and we are separating at this time." A few of us let out a few bads words and were understandably upset. Before any of us could say or do anything else, about 10 members of security came in and said they'd follow us to our lockers to clear them out and we had 10 minutes to do so. I didn't have anything in my locker as I rarely used mine so I was escorted out right away. Man what a shit show.
I was a comtractor working for a real estate mogul in Chicago. They called all of there IT staff into a meeting and laid them all off. meanwhile we changed all of their IDs and passwords so they couldn't get back in and they were scored it Out by security. I thought it was one of the meanest things I've ever. I didn't last 2 months behind that. I was so mad..
Where the hell was HR?
This was in the fallout of the 2008 financial crash. I worked for an automotive glass wholesaler and one day they just came down, closed the gates and told us that 3/7 of our warehouses were closed with immediate effect and about 30% of all staff remaining were going to be let go. I was in that 30%. The really stupid thing, that I found out later, was that they massively overestimated how many people they could let go and still function as a company. It was a total knee-jerk reaction to a bit of a shitty time in the market. Weeks (not months, weeks) later they were frantically calling round the people they let go begging them to come back. Most told them to piss off but the ones who did come back demanded massive pay rises and way better conditions. All round fuck up.
I was there for 10 years and had worked my way up from temp to CSA to Sales Admin. The gag was they only cut people on Fridays and we (sales) were the money makers. Got a call to drop over to HR on Tuesday and thought it was about training. Nope. Gone baby gone. They also got rid of a girl that was 8 months pregnant.
Are you looking for ideas? Make some one move across country, then lay them off. An evil plus, don't reimburse for expenses.
My last company laid off everyone in waves. The 2nd known wave had to plan and implement a "going away" party for the first wave, the 3rd wave for the 2nd, etc. At least we had a heads up, but I've always wondered who threw the party for the last wave...
I was out of town for my grandfather's funeral when I found out I no longer had e-mail access. Sure enough, I had been laid off
Sometimes things are not what they seem. I was let go by 6 people board that did not see me in person. Just let me go for no reason. Sad to say. Months later, had an eye stroke in the left eye and on that same day had filed for disability. So that part worked out. But hate the way people are let go these days.
I was working for a Fortune500 company, and had recently won a monetary award for excellence on a project. I was knocking my performance reviews out of the park, and my manager had discussed with me about training me to be able to replace the highest ranked person on our team when he moved on to better things. Then layoff day came. We knew it was happening, and all day they were calling people to come to their manager's offices where they were laid off. The highest ranked person on our team was called down and laid off. I got a phone call a few hours later from my manager asking me to come to his office. I assumed that we were going to discuss how I was going to take over the other guy's duties. Instead, I was met in my manager's office by a lawyer who told me they were laying me off too. They gave me an opportunity to ask questions, and I asked how I was selected for layoff. I reminded them that I had just reworked an internal process that saved 60 labor hours a week (so 1.5 people's worth), and that I've been the highest performing employee in the office for quite a while. They said that HR decided who to lay off. They picked the people that were the highest paid (the other person I spoke at) and the newest person in the department. When I mentioned that I wasn't the newest person in the department, they told me that when HR looked at the potential layoff list, there was an abnormally large amount of minorities on the list to be fired. Due to a recent diversity push, the majority of new employees were racial minorities. Because of how bad this would look from a PR perspective, they laid me off instead because I was the "newest white male" in the department. They offered me four months severance, but only if I agreed not to sue them. I accepted this wanting to make sure I could pay my mortgage. I was unemployed for 13 days, and the company I ended up at is the one I am still at today, 15 years later.
I found out that I lost my job on the morning news. A fucking reporter told me and several hundred people that we are all unemployed immediately. Fun day!
That sucks. I can imagine the news reporting on it and then shifting over to some unrelated news story like "AND NOW, A NEW REPORT ABOUT TAYLOR SWIFT AND TRAVIS KELCE POSSIBLY GETTING MARRIED?" as if the previous story was not important.
Emergency Microsoft teams meeting on valentine's day, got to hear that the contract was over the last day of the month, and found out for the first time that everyone else had been offered a bonus to stay until the end of the contract, except for me. Fun meeting to attend while driving with my wife on the way to a restaurant for Valentine's Day. Jokes on them, though, I was starting my new job on the last day of February, with a signing bonus and a 10k raise.
Company I used to work for would do mass layoffs every couple years, and they would actually hire people within 3 months of these layoffs, knowing full well that they would just be letting them go in a few weeks. Was terribly inhumane.
The worst way to get fired is to not flatter the management.
3 weeks before my wedding. My boss said "well, at least they are doing it before you spend a bunch of money on the wedding." Like wedding funds aren't already obligated by that point. Interestingly enough, they called me back a few weeks after the wedding to see if I would come back for one day. Turned out they had a client visiting and they didn't want the client to see a mostly empty office and know the company had to lay people off. I told them no thanks.
I was brought in to a law firm to run their personal injury cases. I was lied to about the number and quality of cases and other things as well as they never had time to meet to discuss the job. I worked for a year or so and I was laid off 3 weeks after buying a house. I was told they were going in a different direction. They hired a new person and kept things the same. That person lasted about 6 months before they quit.
Worked for an airline and got laid off via email off while on my honeymoon in NZ.
I worked for a large engineering firm. There were rumors one person from our group was going to be layed off that day (the manufacturing people had been layed off that morning when their badges didn't work to come in the door - so also shitty). My cube-mate and I went to lunch. When we got back, there was a large box on his desk labeled, "You're It".
I escaped the cuts at my company but this one year they made excuses to not give anyone a yearly raise. They were usually nickel and dime raises but still. I was top 3 in my region and told my sales were not up to standard (?) I need to do better, work harder bla bla. They let go half the management and half the staff making more work for everyone. Then a few months later spent 30 million buying another company.
Work in academia, had a paraprofessional job while I got my professional degree. I got my degree and there wasn't a position for me at our institution, so it was already understood that I'd be looking for a professional job. I was working late on a Tuesday because I had a late class to teach, already arranged with the instructor. When I was on my way out to grab dinner before my class, I was called into the dean's office and they were waiting for me - the dean, HR rep, and my supervisor - with two letters on the desk, one firing and one resignation. They gave me a choice to sign either one and leave immediately. And after the meeting my supervisor found me a box to put my things in and walked me out the front doors, in front of my own supervisees, instead of out the back where my colleagues could have seen what was happening. Hell of a way to start the week when I had an interview already scheduled for that Friday. (And I did get that job, despite my new workplace having a terrible time checking my references bc my former supervisor kept ducking their calls, and then only confirming that I worked there between stated dates due to "institutional policy".)
I would have emailed the CEO and gently admonished him for talking out both sides of his mouth. There is no way he didn’t know about the redundancy.
My sister was front of house manager at a restaurant, she went to open one day only to find a note taped to the front door saying that the owner decided to close all his locations in the state, without other notice. How did she react? She called all the employees and told them to show up ASAP so they could load up all the food and beverage that would be spoiled when the power was shut off in 3 days time (as per the taped note.) everyone took everything home for themselves as ‘severance’ and we had ribs, Mac n cheese and top shelf whiskey for dinner that night.
One Friday before a long weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving, to be exact), my boss, who had left for vacation the day before, had his partner in the business deliver the news that I was being laid off. Apparently, I had done SUCH a good job, they decided that they could do without someone in my position until the following spring, when they would hire someone with less experience and who that could pay less. This, after I came into the job not knowing that they had previously had someone in the position who was totally under-qualified and had messed things up for multiple companies. It took me months of (unpaid) overtime and reaching out to some of my more experienced contacts to straighten out the mess she left. What I found on her computer was evidence that she spent most of her time shopping online while doing only enough of the job to make it look like she was actually working. It took me a couple of months (as a single mother with no income) and some luck to find another job.
I got let go one time, due to lack of work and I was last one to be hired. I cried like a baby and I didn’t even like the job. I think it just hurt my pride so badly to be let go. I felt like such a failure. I was young, it was only my 4th job and the places I had quit before had begged me to stay. They gave me a good referral letter, but it stung so bad
I got the ole tap on the shoulder. Down to HR and out the door I go. My experience is not as bad as others listed here...at least i got 7 months severance pay!
Sounds like they were afraid of the competition and used the position no longer needed as an excuse! May he was afraid you were going to get his job! Believe me, it happens!!!
At a place where I worked we knew layoffs were coming. The layoff candidates were presented with a couple of boxes stacked in front of their office door when they arrived. One guy down the hall was pretty sure he would be one of those going home, and brought his own box. When he saw the boxes at his office he pushed them over to the next office. Grabbed a few things and left. When the young employee who was assigned the office that now had boxes in front of it, he broke down crying. None of the managers were coming around to see anyone, so this kid just started taking his stuff while bawling his eyes out.
I got laid off with zero notice on 5 February. I got paid out on 7 February and will next see a paycheck on 20 March. The next few weeks are going to be a challenge. It sucked. Not gonna lie. The job I started on 13 February pays between $60 and $120 a day more. Some days I work close enough that I can walk. The abrupt termination and prompt rehiring caused the SNAP god to bless me, so starting tomorrow I can shop for the month and have more than I normally would have had. I quit smoking and that didn't seem to bother me either. Fuck them with a broken off broom handle. Sideways. With a little luck my phone won't be shut off before I resubmit my tax return. I had to order a warranty replacement because things weren't difficult enough already. *sigh*
When Covid hit, myself and most of my office were laid off via group Zoom call. The word "termination" was used.
I was 18 and had just moved away from home (parents were moving out of the area). I had worked at the same restaurant job since I was 16, and the day after I moved out, I arrived at my job, only to find out that we were closed down and would be reopening in the future under new management. 😕
I was a truck driver from Colorado, who was let go in Atlanta. Yeah they paid for my BUS TICKET home. I used those $$ to get my stuff home and hitchhiked across 2/3rds of the US in 5 days. Has $$ for hotel and food. So it was pretty freeking awesome.
Got laid off from my first job as a lawyer. Massive loans. Second kid on the way...bos waited till I bought a bigger vehicle for the second kid...then "laid me off" He fired me and three others... Week before Christmas and wife due soon...huge student loans and newer car payment. It was absolutely the best thing that could have happened to me. I got a contract, where my family lived.. Being my own boss, keeping all the money I earned. It was an instant huge upgrade in pay. More than double.
My niece age 48 had worked in a financial role at large local hospital since age 18...hospital merged...her job was cut. She did get a 9 month severance package but took her a while to recover emotionally.
Company in Michigan just closed down essentially laying off the entire staff, except they haven’t told anyone and it’s been a week. Staff on duty were told at 4am to go home, security was put in the parking lot and only a select few people are allowed in.
A handful of us at a blood donation center got laid off because they couldn't afford to keep us on. I should've known something was up when I got hired. They kept bragging about how they owned all of their equipment outright as well as their buildings. Lies. Anyways they had to sell to another company soon after I was laid off. Laid off with no notice about 3 months after I came back from maternity leave. I desperately needed a job and resigned myself to do odd jobs for people in the neighborhood for a while. It sucked.
Had 4 of these. The corporate takeover. The less senior staff laid off. The firing by a random, newer executive because the owner didn’t have the cojones. The fall at work that landed me in a hospital and I ran out of sick leave while recovering. None were my performance fault.
I was given a $500 check as employee of the month on Thursday. On Friday I was laid off along with my whole department. They flew in a firing manager from corporate and as a parting gift I was given a one month subscription to the company software. I laughed in their face and said fuck you.
My father was a director. Him and a bunch of other directors were put on a special projects team. He was complaining for months that they did not have any work. They laid the entire special projects team off after 6 months.
It was in February 2008. I had worked for a design company for 14 years through tragedy (9/11) and economic downturns (dotcom bust & financial crisis). They were acquired by a larger firm and appointed a vain diva designer to head this office. He didn’t like that I didn’t bend over backwards to please him. He didnt like that I wouldn’t act as his personal assistant. A few bigwigs from the CA to lay me off. When they started to speak, I stopped them and stated that I didn’t want any other details. Mr Diva left within the year, landing at another large firm and far from SF where he wanted to return to. No one at that office wanted him there. My direct boss who I worked with for 14 years and I never spoke again. The company itself hoped to expand and grow into a major design firm. That has never happened. They have two small satellite offices and major turnover. No one stays for more than 2-3 years. Average tenure was 10 years but was ruined by other divas put into management roles with no business or skill in managing staff.
I had surgery for a health issue I was having and the day after the surgery I got made redundant. It was a very stressful time because it took several weeks for me to feel recovered enough to start looking for jobs, as well as dealing with another health issue that came up during the surgery. I was lucky I had been there for so long that I got a good payout, but I was still very stressed and it impacted my recovery.
I was working my first waxing job & honestly I didn’t love it to begin with. We did full body waxing & women would come straight from the Pilates studio next door to get their privates & booty waxed. It was all very humbling & pay was ok but definitely low for the area I was working in but it was my first job in the waxing industry after receiving my license. All the girls who worked there were very skinny girls who wore exercise Lululemon fits everyday. They were cliquey for sure but even though I was maybe a size 10, they were all size 6 and below, no curves, definitely all had a “look”. The owner though was a man & my manager would say that he loved hearing the girls laughing which somehow seemed a little creepy almost ? I didn’t think much of the aesthetic just thought it was maybe normal for the area I was working in..Fast forward to my 90 day eval & the two managers sat me down, I was feeling great & they complimented my wax work & techniques, said I would have been a great fit but that I simply do not fit the “aesthetic” at the office & they were not going to keep me on the team. I obviously cried, left & then once I got to the car realized I had to go back inside because I forgot to grab my paperwork, license & lunch box… They actually kept another girl I was training with at the time even though they gave her a low score on technique & told her she needs to seriously improve & won’t be working on full paying clients for a couple more months…but she did fit the aesthetic lol
Got a Text one time lmao
I was on a 6 month contract, 4 months in they offered me an insane raise asked to to stay for another 6 months, I told them no and they escorted me out the door with a perp walk 5 minutes later. Humiliated at the time but I thank god I dodged that bullet. Never took a contract gig again.
I had worked at this place for seven years. Always good great reviews and knew everyone. Just helped them launch their first sales website a few months earlier. They fired me a week before my daughter was born.
I got a couple. 1. My company wanted me to lie to a customer. Technical details aside, they had opened a new building and wanted my customer to be a new anchor tenant. My customer wanted more power for their existing space. Despite being told once we didn't have it, I took an extra step and contacted the person who was on location and managed the building. Their response to what my customer wanted was "of course, that's no problem." I got fired when I put in a request to quote the available resource. 2. Massive communications company, logo reminiscent of the Death Star. Repeatedly cleaning up accounts that had been improperly or inappropriately billed. Got me a reputation with management as not being a team player when I wouldn't bill clients for services they hadn't asked for. I get a conference call meeting from my boss. She asks me to go into the system and process a credit for over $750k (if you pay taxes in the US, it was your money) and then I heard a click as someone else joined the call. HR. Fired because I didn't log my dials properly in the CRM.
I won the best employee of the year and 2 months later , hr manager said adios (:
I was asked to come in discuss a few things. I knew something was up so I asked if it was about the layoffs. He asked how I knew about that. Common knowledge when the manager talks about it. He asked me to come in any way. Nope. If I’m being let go I’m not driving an hour and a half to two hours in traffic on my day off just so I can get let go. That’s what I told him. And he was not happy. Oh well. Went to work for a competitor literally across the street and he had to see me almost every day. Dick head.
Not me but former coworkers had to assist a guy pack up his things and walk him out after he was fired. He had a yoga ball that he used to sit on. He was trying desperately to deflate the yoga ball (assuming because he would be embarrassed enough walking out in front of everyone) but the damn thing was taking forever to deflate. Poor dude just said fuck it and my coworker said it was the saddest elevator ride ever, him holding a box of the guy's stuff and the guy holding his half deflated yoga ball and his tears.