

If you have to lay people off, don't do it this way - ccraigIW
http://weblog.infoworld.com/lewis/archives/2008/12/a_very_badly_ha.html

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smoody
Absolutely true store: I once knew a professional hatchet man (a person
spineless companies hire to fire large numbers of employees -- usually to fire
an entire building of people). He told me once that he was part of a team that
had to fire everyone working at an office building that held two-to-three
hundred people from the looks of it. They were doing a lot of secretive work,
so it was important that both everyone find out at the same time and security
guards must escort them to their desks -- both measures to prevent anyone
stealing documents or information of any kind.

So here's what they did: They pulled one of the fire alarms. Everyone,
thinking it was a fire or drill, exited the building. Then this man, from
inside the building, put a bullhorn to his mouth and said "Attention! This is
not a drill! You're all fired!" (thinking, of course, that it was a clever
play on words). They then let people back in one by one to collect their
personal items and that was that.

~~~
mynameishere
I doubt that's true. Pulling a fire alarm like that is illegal. Committing a
crime in order to insult 100s of people, while those same people witness the
crime, is not the best idea.

~~~
ars
Not if he pulled it as a drill - just notify the fire department first, and
say we are having a drill at so and so oclock.

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DenisM
Let's make something clear - if the thought of being laid off is frightening
_you have already lost_.

You lost control of your destiny and the bosses can boss you around. The right
way to live is to tighten the belt and have enough surplus to hold you over
for a reasonable period of time. Of course hardly anyone does it, but
following the crowd is not wise in this regard.

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gaius
Many years ago, I was working as a consultant at a UK high street bank. My
client told me a story about the last round of layoffs there. One by one, his
colleagues were called into the boss's office, then they slunk out again, tail
between their legs, packed their desks and left. He was determined to go out
with some dignity, so he had stashed a bottle of champagne and a stack of
paper cups in his drawer, when his time came he planned to walk back to his
desk head held high and pop the cork. The poor bloke was the only one not to
get the chop!

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josefresco
Holy ad attack Batman!

First when you load the page you get a pop up (which FF3 blocked) on top of an
intrusive interstitial ad and then to top it off once you load the article
there's a DHTML ad overlayed over the article that you 'have to' act on.

Can I make a motion to ban infoworld until they clean up this mess? I know
times are tough and all but that's just excessive.

~~~
boredguy8
I don't see a thing: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865> and
subscribe to "easy list"

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blurry
A friend of mine worked for a company that thought it would be a good idea to
have everyone share the pain. The way they did it however was quite horrible.
Every single person was invited into a room and handed identical envelopes.
Once you opened the envelope, you found out whether you were fired or not,
kind of like a reverse lottery. Of course, no one explained it very well, so
everyone thought they were fired and there were a lot of bad feelings among
both groups.

~~~
gaius
The NY office of one company I worked for just told people to report to
meeting room A or B. The A crowd were told they kept their jobs (this round at
least). The B crowd were escorted by security guards out of the fire escape
and down onto the street.

The same company laid me off in London, the lucky ones (i.e. those of us who
got it) took the rest of the company out for a drink to celebrate!

------
blang
A friend who worked at one of the large investment banks said you knew you
were fired if you couldn't log into your computer. When you went to the IT
office to ask why you couldn't log in, security guards would be waiting to
escort you back to your office.

~~~
dgabriel
I worked very briefly as a consultant at a company that let you know you were
axed when your key card no longer worked. You had to buzz the admin, who
carried your box of belongings to the door and handed you your paperwork.

------
sokoloff
> We even had some employees who volunteered to be "rif'ed." Two I know had
> already received offers from outside the company that were still open, but
> they were declined, so the company could axe those that H.R. chose instead.

Why should the company "take volunteers" for RIFs? Now I don't argue for a
purely chance-based system for doing layoffs, preferring instead that a viable
company make thoughtful choices about whom should be let go, I will observe
that a random lottery will likely produce better results for the on-going
company operations than allowing for a voluntary round of layoffs (presumably,
with severance). In a voluntary round, your most employable are
disproportionately likely to volunteer, meaning you're worse off than if you
left it to chance.

(From the less-than-median employable employee's point of view, naturally
allowing for a voluntary round is preferable, but it's the company's choice of
how to do it, not the worst employee's choice.)

------
petercooper
_Sounds like the company handled this just about as badly as I can imagine,
with the proviso that it handled it in a way unlikely to land it in court._

Yet, it's the legal system and employment laws that have encouraged companies
to be less than friendly when it comes to layoffs..

