Can you beat these layoff blunders?
November 6, 2008 by Fred HosierPosted in: Fun stuff on the Web, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
It’s often HR’s job to make sure notifying employees about layoffs goes as smoothly as possible. A Web site has been collecting stories about when that wasn’t the case.
Gawker asked its readers to send stories about firings that were handled badly.
Among recent submissions:
- The employee who was told by a relative who worked at the same company that she was laid off
- A worker who found a document regarding her dismissal before she was notified, and
- The HR rep who was let go the day after organizing all the paperwork for exit packages for other employees.
You can read more here.
Know a story about layoffs that were handled poorly? Let us know about them in the Comments Box below.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
This was not a layoff but this was handles badly.
My Supervisor called me into the office to tell me that the company was reducing my hours by two a day. That meant 10 hours a week off of my paycheck. A whole day plus two hours and this was to start the next day. This was not done well or articulated well at all.
Some things are a bitter pill to swallow but does HR reps. have to make the pill even more bitter?
Thanks for the outlet.
November 7th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Not a layoff story but a classic HR blunder.
A co-worker in the HR department found out she was not being promoted into a new role when she picked up the acceptance letter from an external candidate for the position after it rolled off the fax machine.
Not a very progessional way for a HR department to treat one of their own; neither of us works there anymore (by our own choice.)
November 7th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
In the middle of a staff meeting, the CEO told one member that her hours were reduced immediately from 40 to 10 hours per week, to be worked two hours a day (thus reducing her chances of getting another job).
November 7th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Our new controller wanted to reduce our hours as well, being exempt we agreed (finally get to leave at 5:00PM). He was surprised when payroll did not reduce and wanted to change our wages retroactively. We are now looking for a new controller…
November 7th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I was hired away from a comfortable job by a much higher salary, during a transition in the new company, and I was assured that my job was secure since two Generalists have always been required. After one year, in which I was responsible for heading up all reduction in force processing, including telling the employees that their jobs had been eliminated, I was informed that my job, too, is being eliminated so I’d better start looking for another.
November 7th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
My former employer had a large layoff. One of the people affected was on vacation and would be back on Monday. When he arrived at work, a co-worker asked why he came in to work since he was laid off. Everyone in the company was told, but no one bothered to call the employee and tell him.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
I shared a computer with my boss (and a couple of other people) at a previous employer. They weren’t especially computer or e-mail literate and they never emptied the Deleted Items box, so I would. As I was emptying the folder, I saw “Staff Reduction Plan” as the subject of one of the e-mails. Naturally, being in HR and thus having no clue what was going on, I read it. I found out my job was being eliminated, along with 1/3 of the other staff, in about 5 months. I didn’t say anything to my boss or anyone else. Time passed. Finally, 2 weeks before the ax was to fall, I went to her and told her I knew about the layoff. She told me she hadn’t said anything to staff because she didn’t want to upset them until she absolutely had to! Arrgh!!! So I volunteered to help her through the layoffs (my name had been first on the list) so I got a couple of extra weeks before my last day.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
not lay-off but blunder none the less!
I recently been overlooked, I thought due to the lack of an incumbent HR Director, for a scheduled pay increase. I approached the General Manager about the oversite and was told verbatin “you are just lucky you have a job”. Effective the end of next week, this will be my former employer
November 7th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I just have to let K. Hamm know I laughed at his/her comment: “Naturally, being in HR and thus having no clue what was going on…” It made my day. Thanks.
November 7th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
K. Hamm you are right! I am in HR and am always the last to know when someone is let go and when someone is offered a job HAHA
November 7th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
The day my daughter was born (at 7:00 in the morning), my husband called in to work at 10:00 to tell them why he wasn’t at work. He was told not to bother to come in since his name was on a list of 100 salaried employees being let go that day. At least it is not hard to remember the date of his termination!
November 7th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
I was once called by a previous boss at 5:00 am and told I needed to come to work immediately. When I got there he was putting 10 boxes together and going around putting notes on 10 employees doors saying they had to meet with me ASAP in the conference room. I was then to tell everyone that they were being laid off that day, they were to pack their box, turn in their keys and leave ASAP.
The same “boy wonder” then held a meeting and told the remaining staff not to “wait for the other shoe to drop because it won’t.” Two months later 12 more staff were laid off and I was one of them. Oh well. I know now it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
November 10th, 2008 at 7:54 am
I will never forget one particular layoff: At the time I was working as an assistant branch manager for a bank which had recently been purchased by another institutuion. I was informed that it was my responsibilty to prepare the paperwork to terminate 2/3 of our staff, including myself! Yes, I actually had to type my own termination papers…
November 18th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Everyone’s replies to this story leads me to one simple conclusion: that there are a lot of employers out there not well-versed in the finer detail of laying people off. I would hope that this is always the case…to some extent. I would hope that nobody becomes well-versed or comfortable to any level in such a horrible type of employment situation such as layoffs. I guess the balance of this, though, is that employers really need to think through new and unfamiliar situations a lot more thoroughly and really think about using common sense no matter what. For employers to be callous is never appropriate, but especially when they are impacting peoples’ lives to this degree. Legitimate blunders will happen even if the employer has the best of intentions when they are working through a situation they aren’t comfortable with and likely don’t want to be facing. Layoffs are potentially awkward for anyone, but that doesn’t give permission to be anything less than understanding and supporting despite the situation. The important thing, then, will be how the employer responds after discovering their own blunder. Are they remorse, apologetic, embarrassed? Employers certainly can be all of these if something really wasn’t intended to come out the way that it has. “How we part ways with an employee speaks louder than how we meet.”
November 28th, 2008 at 11:41 am
A supervisor called all his employees to be laid off and told them they were “laid off, to call HR” five days early because he was going on vacation for two weeks and did not want to reschedule it.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I was balancing some payroll GL accounts when I came upon some strange balances. Turns out they were from my final paycheck. Ouch!!! This happened at about 10:00 AM. Seems they wanted to get the full 8 hours out of me on my last day. The person I needed to speak to was in a meeting….needless to say I was packed up and waiting to say good-bye to him when his meeting was over.
December 18th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Can you believe that my boss needed to communicate layoffs to all salaried exempt employees in his department. He waited until 10 minutes to 11:00 and called me into his office and told me to go tell the people on the list that they were to be laid off for 2 weeks. He couldn’t do it because he had to leave the mill in 10 minutes because he was “Taking a half day of vacvation”. At best, these people were all at the same level as I am.
January 21st, 2009 at 8:51 am
Although, we had a layoff and voluntary reduction in hours across the board, a senior managment member attempted to hire a new person promising 40 hours to cover an employee on FMLA and then to be layed off when the FMLA employee returned to his job.
As a member of a 3 person Hr Department, I was the only one that complained of the almost blunder and therefore it did not occur
March 6th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Here’s a funny: our executive team took a 10% paycut in salary in order to “save jobs” and made sure they released it to the media for everyone to think they were such a great group of leaders…. But what they didnt release to the public is that one of the guys was demoted but kept the same salary and benefits anyway, and 3 others were first given 20% raises 2 months prior to the paycut …which of course was not published….