Comments on: Can you beat these layoff blunders?

By: OH HR

OH HR — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:36:01 +0000

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….

By: Beth B.

Beth B. — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:51:31 +0000

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

By: Keith

Keith — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:29:29 +0000

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.

By: Pat

Pat — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:43:03 +0000

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.

By: Marie

Marie — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:41:00 +0000

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.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:35:05 +0000

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.”

By: Nanette

Nanette — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:54:40 +0000

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…

By: Cindy

Cindy — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:53:27 +0000

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.

By: Maggie

Maggie — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:32:33 +0000

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!

By: Angel M

Angel M — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:02:27 +0000

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