Gather round and attend my layoff time tale of woe.
I worked for this company for four years. They fell on hard times and, in place of layoffs, required employees to temporarily give up a portion of their salary on the condition it would be repaid within 2 years with interest, plus increased bonuses proportional with how much you sacrificed. I voluntarily gave up 20% as the company had never had a layoff in its history (no layoffs was part of their alleged culture) and all the old timers gushed about their massive bonuses after downturns like these.
I was given my quarterly review in October and I get a perfect score. I work three weeks, then am badly hurt on the job. It requires fairly major surgery, so I’m out for almost two months.
I literally limp back, probably a little too early. The first day is fine and I’m getting back up to speed. Boss shows appreciation to my dedication as I reasonably could have taken more time to recuperate. I tell her I need to discuss accommodations as I’m still healing. She agrees and sets an appointment for the next morning. Great job HamSandwich, everyone loves you.
I arrive to the accommodation meeting to find the head of HR and my boss. I figure HR is there to help with accomodations. Nope, I’m being terminated. For performance. Huh. I ask about my stellar review. My boss tells me there were issues. I ask about the issues. She is unable to give me any examples. I ask how I was supposed to know I had performance issues when I had a perfect review three work weeks ago and no one can tell me what I’ve been doing wrong. HR boss bitch pipes in with “Ham, at your seniority level you should just know.” Fuck you, boss bitch. Fuck you.
As I’m packing up my things, I realize they cut me one day before my yearly stock shares were to be awarded. Security walks me out and tells me I’m one of many senior level employees being terminated. People are being fired for showing up five minutes late. Upper level admins are walking out in protest. It appears this was the strategy: bank on the company’s good reputation to encourage increased voluntary salary cuts, then dump as many high earners as possible if still in a downturn. My boss is a spineless twerp and went along with it. She lies and tells the rest of the department I was terminated for sleeping on the job. Fuck you, boss. Fuck you.
The company had its first round of layoffs a few months later. Those employees also lost the money they gave up. The company’s reputation is irreparably harmed and I’m currently suing them for lost wages.
If a corporation asks you to take one for the team, don’t. “The team” will never take one for you.
I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope you win your lawsuit. Fuck those goddamn bastards.
Well at least its suspect enough to prepare :). I once came in at 9am and we had random people funneling everyone into a conference room with HR people to tell us our department would no longer be needed.
This is why Europe is awesome, if they do that here they owe you like 3-6 months of salary.
Damn Europoors hating their (HR departments’) freedoms.
In outside sales so everyone is working remote. I get an email around 7PM that we are going to have a meeting tomorrow (on line of course) at 3PM. I had heard that a big layoff was coming. But why a call at 3PM instead of first thing in the morning if I was going to get laid off. Later that evening I get calls from friends about the 10AM meeting. I told them I never got a message about it, but I did about a 3PM meeting.
What they did was all the people they were laying off were on the 10AM meeting. It was half the total sales force. at the 3PM meeting for the survivors, they explained to us what was going on.
This just happened a month or so ago at my place of employment… except there were no invites. No meetings. It went more like
9am: Hey, where did my chat with so and so go? Friggin teams…
11am: Now the other one is missing? Wtf?
1pm: Outside TM: Hey… dumb question, but do you have as many people on your team as you did yesterday?
Email Invite for 1:30PM has entered the chat
Lmao in my case my computer just randomly restarted and asked for a security pin while I was busy working on something. I learned through our WhatsApp group that we got laid off lol.
Call with HR was when I already knew and nothing like this, I tried to get them to let me keep my $7k MacBook, no chance, literally everything was non negotiable so the call was absolutely pointless.
You should have kept the Mac, seriously. I often had no response trying to get laptops back from employees and was asking HR if we couldn’t get a form for new hires to sign regarding company equipment returns. Can’t remember the reasoning but HR told me the company is basically powerless to force the issue. In any case, the legal costs of suing you would quickly stack higher than $7K.
Can’t they just file a police report suggesting you stole it? It’s the government’s job then and since the police barely have to investigate anything they are sure to actually do something. That’s a quick way to get a search warrant filed.
Sure, I’ll gladly send the laptop back, you’ll just have to pay my hourly freelance rate for the labor involved. My rate is $240,000/hr, I’ll have it shipped out within 30 business days of payment. Alternatively, feel free to send a courier for pickup, my current address is 189 Beaker St, McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
Yeah but they would hold back the severance pay until they received the laptop, they have done this before lol
Never bought a Mac before, but what the hell are the specs in a $7k Macbook? I didn’t think they went over $3k.
I’ve never priced one that high, but I’d suspect 16" screen and multi-TB nvme are the main culprits.
e: I was curious so I went and priced one. $7.3k for the 16" Pro with absolutely every bell and whistle. M4 Max 16/40 core, 128GB RAM, 8TB. It’s a beast but holy shit that price tag…
The big ones start at 3k.
It would be nice to get some time in advance as notice. Like Trump get 4 years as he can’t be fired for some unknown reason even though he has and is still doing illegal things(tarifs without kongress approval etc.)…
Apparently being a child fucker isn’t a reason to get fired either
Solder another SSD in that bad boy
Just deline the invite and you are safe ;)
Had a 3rd shift guy I was trying to fire get 3 extra shifts out of us by just not showing up to the meeting and not answering his phone. HR wouldn’t let me just shut his account off until the 3rd one. That dude was a real POS for other reasons but I can’t knock him for taking advantage of bureaucratic nonsense.
That’s why I decline meetings without a proper agenda. No agenda = lack of preparation = waste of time = not a meeting.
Where the fuck do y’all work that your HR “rep” looks like Anne Hathaway? Every company I worked for had a lady that looked like she retired after thirty years of proctoring detentions at a public highschool.
Everyone in HR at my current company is hot. It almost seems like a prerequisite.
I literally worked for a company where one of the two people in HR paid for her studies with modelling, the kind where you mostly keep your clothes on. Also I’m pretty sure my boss only hired her because he wanted to fuck her.
“Why do you keep winding up speaking to HR?” 👀
young company with a low budget for HR
She looks like a whitewashed Victoria Newman from the boys.
Who, Anne Hathaway?
She looks like she married the founder of WeWork
She looks like that lady always smiling in severance
You thinking of Sydney Cole Alexander?
yup
stooge /stoo͞j/
noun
-
The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedian; a straight man.
-
One who allows oneself to be used for another’s profit or advantage; a puppet.
-
A stool pigeon.
-
In my previous company, at about 9PM, about half the company got an invite for a 9AM meeting, and the other half for a 10AM meeting, we saw all the name in our invite of course. Let’s say the evening was hard, to guess which group was staying and which group was fired! I was in the “stay” group, this repeated every quarter and after 3 or 4 quarters it was my turn to be in the fire group, the next quarter they closed the company and fired the remaining employees.
The HR lady was like the picture.
Brb, backing up my script folder and deleting anything I haven’t already shared with the team
Sorry, too busy. Why can’t my manager fill you in on my current projects?
Haha I tried that one, because I was legitimately too swamped and management got very upset.
It has to be a Friday too.
That smile. That damned smile.
I think this is their mask.
Do they get special training on how to lie with a straight face?
It’s a prerequisite to get the job in the first place.
I know a couple hr people personally, and they speak in a kind of coded manner at work. Some of them will legitimately try to help you out, but of course the nature of their profession means they can never be a true ally. Not for long, anyway.
I’ve been friends with HR people at a number of jobs. They generally party hard. I’ve also always had the understanding that if they have to walk me we’d be professional about it. I’ve never been let go.
Yeah this matches my experience. HR person is always the one to have a bottle of whisky squirreled away for a good time.
I’ve been let go twice. It’s shitty, but I realise they have very little power in a situation like that.
This sent a bad chill along my spine. PTSD.
