The Perils Of Getting Fired In The Digital Era

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Have any of you ever been fired in this manner? I hear the stories all the time but I've never actually met anyone that has been fired on Facebook.

It’s an old office joke horrifically come to life: Your access card isn’t just malfunctioning; it is, in fact, hinting that you’re about to be let go. As companies search for ways to streamline processes, and do so within increasingly interconnected systems—from HR to IT to communications—it’s more commonplace for employers to miss one important detail in a layoff: letting the affected employee know first.
 
lol, they aren't missing the "important detail" of letting the affected employees know first. You disable their access so they can't maliciously do anything before the individual employee is officially notified.
 
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A company I serviced layed off like 60+ employees.

The vast majority did not receive prior notice. Most of the time they found out when I came to pick the company Laptop and phone. In pretty much all cases they all claimed it was a mistake and quickly turned to HR only to find out it was true.

The HR girl told me they wouldn't tell them first so they would not try to steal the phone/laptop or any information. A few months later she was let go too and you guessed it, no prior notice.
 
I work contract employment and that has happened to me automatically when the contract expires. They can then extend/renew my contract or not.
 
As a Systems Administrator I've been used as a tool to facilitate this a number of times. I've felt filthy every time too. (not at my current job thankfully) HR runs in, "Make sure all access is turned off for so and so!! It's critical!" Then I ask, well what if they come to me to ask why. "Just send them to us." Ugh... So pathetic. If you're going to get rid of someone, at least have the decency to tell them in person.
 
Dated a girl once that worked for a multinational company. She told me it was common practice when they let people go, the person only found out when logins didn't work for the system. When they called IT about the problem, they were told they are no longer employed and security was on their way to collect company assets and escort them out.
I WOULD NOT work for a company that treated it's employees like that. :mad:
 
Stoly said:
The HR girl told me they wouldn't tell them first so they would not try to steal the phone/laptop or any information.
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This.

When they let someone go at my company, they let give me a time to disable their access, at the same time they will be meeting with HR. HR them escorts them back to their desk to retrieve their personal stuff.

The biggest problem is that we have some remote employees. Due to labor laws, you can't withhold any part of their paycheck or vacation pay to get them to return equipment. Only thing you can do is offer them an extra "severance" payment once the equipment is returned, or sue them for not returning it.
 
I used to work for a large computer retailer/service company that filed for bankruptcy and immediately shutdown with no notice. They had guards come out to each location and change the locks and escort everyone out. No one was even allowed to retrieve personal items from their desks. You had to make an appointment to come back in and retrieve your stuff in the following weeks.

They had techs that where contracted to customers, who normally didn't come into the office. Many of these techs where never notified, and went into work on the weekend or the following Monday. Some of them only found out when they read the news during their lunch break.
 
Back in the 90's when I was doing on-site service for an 8a contractor, we used to get our Zenith Z-248 parts from the local Heath/Zenith store.

I went there one morning around 7:30am on a Monday to pick up a Flyback for a ZCM-1430 Monitor and found the staff there, including the manager, walking around outside scratching their heads.

The door was chained shut.

Over the weekend "Central Office Expediency Staff" or something like that had come in and closed the store. Not even the manager was notified.

They were all told to come back at noon and they would be escorted in to get their personal effects and final paychecks.

Now ain't that all kinds of screwed up.
 
The problem is corporate America views us as disposable. We aren't people,we are numbers and essentially slaves to the system. It's disgusting but that's what it has become.
 
A few years ago our company got bought, and we had quite a few remote users let go. A lot of them just formatted the notebook and sent it back to us...
 
Saw something similar here awhile back. People didn't know till they showed up and the store was being emptied by a pick-up crew.

I've never had anything like this happen to me, but I have seen people escorted out if they were fired. Typically for us, there is a contract turnover. At that time, just before announcement of the win, the current contract will expire and we are all outprocess everything, go home, and wait for news, did we win, did our part of the contract get renewed, if not, is the company going to offer us a different position under the new contract, etc. It's usually a bit stressful for most. It helps a lot though knowing I don't have a mortgage to worry over, etc.
 
what also sucks is being head of IT and the person who has to know ahead of time that people are being let go and not say anything

especially so when they come up to you and are chatting about how we should have a few of us go out for lunch next week to blow off steam...

work once tried to send a non certified letter to one girls house to let her go.. she was out on "stress" leave.. I had to go over it many times that thats not possible.. it finally dawned on them when i brought it up just how many times how they been on jury duty? "never.. because i just ignore the notice and throw it away.." BINGO!!

its also sad just how spineless some "managers" can be.
 
Being in IT all my life, i've had hand in personally terminating accounts and retrieving equipment prior to employee dismissals and they've mostly all felt gross.

Worst thing I've had to do, go to a remote office, hand off a "new" laptop to a high level employee, take their current one because of "suspicious activity", shortly after I left the office, they were terminated.

Feels bad, man.
 
Not just a computer thing, I was fired from a teaching gig, due to lack of funds was the official explanation, but it wasn't told to me until I started asking what classes I was going to teach next year "Oh yeah... about that..."
 
Yea I think it isn't all digital era stuff. I feel like people just care less about firing someone. Although it does depend, if you are fired because you are lazy or do not cooperate etc etc, then whatever, but at least say why so they can hopefully improve. I was laid off due to outsourcing and was told 6months in advance and offered a special severance bonus if I stay the entire time and assist in the job transfer. I stayed and helped as I know it was not my bosses choice but the 'higher ups far away'. But that kind of consideration isn't common by any stretch. I have seen people laid off friday evening after 10 years of work, it's terrible.
 
I had one with two guys who used to argue and accuse each other of shit all the time. One worked CITRIX and the other AD. The government people and my company supervisor said that they suspected one of them had been accessing the servers from off-site and had me go through the log files, etc, to look for evidence of improper access. It felt really shitty having to dig around looking for dirt on these guys. I didn't dislike either of them, but they were like oil and water and always being petty with each other. I didn't find anything, but a few months later the contract was renewed and one wasn't around anymore.
 
One of my old employers used to add a ZZZ to a persons email account on the day they were being fired. We used to check the GAL all the time looking for the "ZZZ" so we knew whose time was coming.
 
Darunion said:
Yea I think it isn't all digital era stuff. I feel like people just care less about firing someone. Although it does depend, if you are fired because you are lazy or do not cooperate etc etc, then whatever, but at least say why so they can hopefully improve. I was laid off due to outsourcing and was told 6months in advance and offered a special severance bonus if I stay the entire time and assist in the job transfer. I stayed and helped as I know it was not my bosses choice but the 'higher ups far away'. But that kind of consideration isn't common by any stretch. I have seen people laid off friday evening after 10 years of work, it's terrible.
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Firing people is always hard for a decent person to have to do. Assholes got no problems with it. I don't want to be in charge for exactly this reason, I had enough of "leading" other people when I was in the Army and I am not interested in climbing that ladder. Today's technology and the new attitude that workers might do something spiteful on the way out the door, just make it easier to dodge a direct and personal firing. A good person will still feel like shit about it, but at least they can dodge part of the experience.
 
I was forced to let one of my guys go due to lawyers justifying their existence on a non-compete violation. My boss had our lawyers draft up a letter and send it to my guy, basically saying we got notice of a non-compete violation and that we were going to abide by it and let him go.

I was to wait a few days until he received the letter from our lawyers, wait for him to come to me about it and then tell him that it was true, we were letting him go. Seriously.

I immediately pulled him into my office and let him go like a man(it was not fun). First thing my boss says was "He already got the letter?".

I mean, christ. Really?
 
You can thank legal for this cowardly breakout of employee dismissal/firing. People should have the fucking decency to let people go to their face, even if it's one or a million people. Do it to their face you assholes. Tell them why you are taking their livelihoods away from them.

The whole, "They'll take our data!!!" nonsense is just that nonsense. If I wanted your data, I'd have taken it way way way before I got sacked. Morons.
 
I work in payroll at a hospital. We tend to be pretty up front with our employees. If you don't know ahead of time that your ass is on the chopping block, then you weren't paying much attention. Probably not the norm, but we're in a growing micropolitan area that still has a solid "good ol' boy" attitude. I have known people who have been cut with no warning before. Shitty business practice if you ask me. If they are high risk then the least you can do is have their access disabled while they are being informed.
 
viscountalpha said:
The problem is corporate America views us as disposable. We aren't people,we are numbers and essentially slaves to the system. It's disgusting but that's what it has become.
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While this may be true sometimes, very often it has nothing to do with treating people like shit but with security. I have access to a lot of critical stuff at work. It would be deeply irresponsible to fire me without taking my access away ASAP because you are totally rolling the dice on what I would do vs. what I could do, and what I could do is detrimental enough that they shouldn't roll those dice.

Merc1138 said:
lol, they aren't missing the "important detail" of letting the affected employees know first. You disable their access so they can't maliciously do anything before the individual employee is officially notified.
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Actually, they are very often missing an important detail, and that is providing a warning when it should be a surprise. The big failure is that they now have all these inter-related processes and business logic and zero ability to coordinate all of them. That includes HR. No element should lead the pack. Not HR, not anything else. It looks like they are awful because that tends to be hard, and the least critical area to fail in that is having the HR portion happen late.
 
Methadras said:
You can thank legal for this cowardly breakout of employee dismissal/firing. People should have the fucking decency to let people go to their face, even if it's one or a million people. Do it to their face you assholes. Tell them why you are taking their livelihoods away from them.

The whole, "They'll take our data!!!" nonsense is just that nonsense. If I wanted your data, I'd have taken it way way way before I got sacked. Morons.
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Many people steal data from its former employee.
 
It's crazy companies can fire people without prior notice without any compensation. Mostly sad, though. The US sounds extremely competitive.
 
raz-0 said:
While this may be true sometimes, very often it has nothing to do with treating people like shit but with security. I have access to a lot of critical stuff at work. It would be deeply irresponsible to fire me without taking my access away ASAP because you are totally rolling the dice on what I would do vs. what I could do, and what I could do is detrimental enough that they shouldn't roll those dice.



Actually, they are very often missing an important detail, and that is providing a warning when it should be a surprise. The big failure is that they now have all these inter-related processes and business logic and zero ability to coordinate all of them. That includes HR. No element should lead the pack. Not HR, not anything else. It looks like they are awful because that tends to be hard, and the least critical area to fail in that is having the HR portion happen late.
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It just isn't this hard. You set an appointment for your employee. You keep your appoint. You set a date and time for terminating his access to the network, etc. You call him in and lay it out for him. You take a good hard look and see how he is doing. If you are going to let him go immediately then you call in Security and have him clear his possessions and see him to the door. This is if you are firing someone.

If it's something less personal, something that cuts many employees. It's a little tougher but even more so you own them to stand there in their face and tell them how it is. That's how I feel about it.
 
All these phone numbers out there and no one ever thought to use one to save people the grief of coming in?
 
dgz said:
It's crazy companies can fire people without prior notice without any compensation. Mostly sad, though. The US sounds extremely competitive.
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But if you don't give us 2 weeks.....no 4 weeks, we will make sure you never work in this town again!

*oh and it's cool if we still call for a while after you leave when we get stuck right?*
 
lcpiper said:
It just isn't this hard. You set an appointment for your employee. You keep your appoint. You set a date and time for terminating his access to the network, etc. You call him in and lay it out for him. You take a good hard look and see how he is doing. If you are going to let him go immediately then you call in Security and have him clear his possessions and see him to the door. This is if you are firing someone.

If it's something less personal, something that cuts many employees. It's a little tougher but even more so you own them to stand there in their face and tell them how it is. That's how I feel about it.
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I agree ... I left Intel in a voluntary layoff and almost got laid off by Flextronics 2 times (but found a job internally before the layoff date) and that is how both were done ... I had a long lead date since they needed me to complete work before leaving ... we signed a letter acknowledging the layoff and the package I would received when I left ... I then worked and once I found the internal job I was moved off of the layoff list ... since the worst that happens if you leave before your date is you lose your layoff package you can use the extended time with a paycheck to look for work in the evenings and weekend ... it is definitely the right and much more professional way to handle a separation that isn't for cause
 
At my last company, the access control system was tied to E-Directory. We always joked that if you got to the parking garage and the gate didn't open, it was going to be a bad day. Either there were E-Directory problems or you were fired.
 
It's not that new. This happened to my mother about 10 years ago. She was working as a telephone insurance salesperson. Showed up to work one day, tried to sign into her workstation, and got a failed login. She called the IT guy and worked with him for about an hour before her boss finally showed up and let her know that she no longer worked for the company. Good times.
 
Firing someone for cause is easy.

Laying a decent person off because of cost savings, etc. is the difficult part.

Either way, it is indefensible for people to only find out by being unable to access their accounts or having IT tell them. It is not fair to the employee being let go, and it is also not fair to the IT person who was not hired for that.

Ideally accounts should be suspended while the soon to be ex employee are in the HR office getting the news. I can understand that fuckups happen, and sometimes things get done out of order, but if an organization is doing this on purpose, that is awful.
 
My friend found out indirectly she had been laid off. She comes to work, her badge won't let her in. So, someone else lets her in (this stuff happens enough where its not unusual). She then goes to sign in - can't login.
A little while later, her supervisor sees her and becomes very nervous. Apparently, he sent her an email telling her she no longer worked at MegaChode. However, since she could not log in, she could not read it. That guy was a puss.

I had another job in which 37% of the staff was laid off via assembly line. You came in, sat down, and waited to see if your number was up. Our IT director had to fire about 40 people that morning. After he was done firing people, he was called upstairs and was fired. (Unfortunately, I did not get let go - they were giving people severance packages and I was going to leave the company soon).

Many years later, I've become a supervisor. I've had to let go a few people - every time it sucks. Every time it was deserved. I should not have felt bad, but I can say I probably hated the experience more than the people that I had to let go.
I at least met with them in person and did the deed properly.
 
I was working for a very large company through a temporary contract. The person who hired me had to let me know that my renewed contract was being cut short because of cost cutting measures. That company is still on a hiring freeze.

Thing is, he came and told me personally. The engineering department and HR gave me a gift for my service, and the business manager for that division asked if I would be willing to come back if business conditions allowed.

Not all companies or all people screw this up. It's usually just inexperience and lack of awareness that cause these grievances (in my opinion).
 
Some guys down the hall who worked for another company came in on Friday and were told it was their last day, grab a cardboard box and gather your things, etc. It was a shitty way to do something that everyone in the contract business knows happens. I mean we all know contracts come and go so why turn it into such a shitty thing. A few years later I wound up working for the same exact manager who had done those other guys wrong.

Our contract wasn't renewed and he brought us all in and told us like three months out. That's how much lead time he had. He asked us if we could stay and continue to help the company meet the contract requirements that they would do all they could to place us when it was all done, but he had no promises. At the same time he said if we needed to move on and find something new that was stable then he would understand and wish them well. I stayed until the end and afterwards I couldn't get anything for months. I was ok, I wasn't under a financial hammer but it was hard on my wife and our relationship was strained. Women don't handle uncertainty well. But I did find another job and I have built a strong reputation here. I guess that guy felt really shitty about the way he had done things before. I suspect someone told him to do it that way, made him stay quiet. I just know he gave us all the lead time he could and we all appreciated it. Doesn't make it suck any less but it doesn't make it shittier then it has to be and that's the part that makes a difference.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041961183 said:
Firing someone for cause is easy.

Laying a decent person off because of cost savings, etc. is the difficult part.

Either way, it is indefensible for people to only find out by being unable to access their accounts or having IT tell them. It is not fair to the employee being let go, and it is also not fair to the IT person who was not hired for that.

Ideally accounts should be suspended while the soon to be ex employee are in the HR office getting the news. I can understand that fuckups happen, and sometimes things get done out of order, but if an organization is doing this on purpose, that is awful.
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And the problem with that, is when laid off employee #15 gets called over to HR for an exit interview, packs up their stuff, and leaves, employee #26 in the same department that hasn't had a visit from HR yet may do something irrational if they still have access to things, if it's obvious that they're going to be called in and laid off.

If I were stupid enough to do it, I could effectively put my company out of business due to the access I have. Sure, if they could prove I did it, they could probably sue me afterwards but it wouldn't change the damage done. Even other employees with nowhere near my level of access could do things problematic enough to disrupt the operation of the company for days at a time while we're stuck fixing it.

Even worse is when you've got remote employees, you have to cut their access off. This same topic was already discussed ad nauseum a while back when the twitter employee found out working from home that his accounts were locked out, as if the company was supposed to let him still have control over anything company related.
 
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