“oh I’m sorry, I had to leave early. Something’s come up. You’ll receive FMLA paperwork soon; I’m afraid I have to invoke mandatory legally protected family medical leave. See you in at least 90 days”
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.
And then?
Oh I still got laid off, just later in the day.
I think it messed with their plans to lock me out of everything after the meeting. Must be logistically challenging lining up all those layoff meetings. 🙄
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.
She looked like Anne Hathaway?😯
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.
Name and shame! That sounds like a horrid experience.
Ah yes, shaming shameless corp always works
it’s not about shame, it’s about people going “Oh so that company sucks, let’s not work there”, resulting in the shitty company not having any fucking workers
Might save someone else a similar experience.
Brb, backing up my script folder and deleting anything I haven’t already shared with the team
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 sent a bad chill along my spine. PTSD.
That smile. That damned smile.
I think this is their mask.
Do they get special training on how to lie with a straight face?
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 is why I have so far refused to be a people manager. I’m not going to be able to emotionally handle laying someone off.
take the job and ignore how they tell you to act, when the company lets someone go you just walk up to them with a basket of goodies (paid for with the company card) and shake their hand and share some complaints about higher ups
Same, I couldn’t take it. It’s hard to be in that position without feeling like a traitor.
Actually both times I got laid off my managers took the day off to hide while HR did their wetwork, only reaching out later to gush about how bad they felt.
Kind of cowardly tbh, but I get it—that’s why we aren’t managers.
It’s a prerequisite to get the job in the first place.
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.
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?” 👀
Everyone in HR at my current company is hot. It almost seems like a prerequisite.
It probably reduces the chance of male workers telling them to fuck off. Or the higher ups hire those so they can sexually harass them
Or take them to a Coldplay concert.
Did you get lucky with any of them? 😏
Christ… And people rail against claims that there’s sexism in [any_industry]
OBJECTION!
Men can be hot too.
Furthermore, I don’t know if @GladiusB@lemmy.world is a man or a woman neither do I know their sexual orientation.
So my comment was pervy, but not sexist. I deny the allegation!
You can be sexist to both women and men.
Nice. Equality at last. 😅
Overruled.
Sexism isn’t gender-restricted, reducing either gender to a sex object is sexist behavior.You can’t overrule me. You’re accuser, not a judge.
This is why I don’t like to roleplay with you. 😣
Neat, you gonna address the faulty premise of your position or just keep transparently deflecting with… whatever this cringe is.
I’m a guy that likes women. But they are ALL attractive. Even the men. But it’s like 1 guy in 10 women.
young company with a low budget for HR
Without fail, every single job I’ve had with an HR department its always been run by a butch lesbian whose dating someone in one of the bullpens or accounting. It’s one of those strange coincidences that stop being surprised by after the 3rd time.
I look at this smile and think “There is no HR in Ba Sing Se”
I remember years and years ago when I still a regular employee I got into work one morning to find I no longer had access to any git repos. nothing. Well already knew the reason right then and there. I usually got in before everyone else so by the time people were coming into the office I was packing my stuff up to leave. People were all “where are you going?” I said “well I either got fired or laid off so I’m leaving, I’m not sitting through a bullshit meeting telling me why I was laid off”
wiped the laptop, wiped my externals, walked out, went and sat in a coffee shop to revise my resume. I got a call like an hour later asking me where I was and why I didn’t attend the meeting I was apparently schedule for. I replied with “you laid me off” few minutes later they email me back saying they’ll just send my ROE and last paycheque in the mail and then proceeded to explain why I and a few other devs were laid off. I didn’t bother reading the rest of it.
Then I decided to become a freelancer and never looked back. best decision I made.
What REALLY annoyed me about the whole thing was I thought I was good friends with the IT guy that set up access to everything, he was the one that revoked my access the night before and didn’t tell me. I was literally having a beer with him that night and he never said a word. out of everything that hurt the most. never spoke to him again.
Great story on how you handled it. And totally agree with you on the IT guy. What a douche that he just couldn’t give you a heads up.
the insulting thing out of it is I paid for his beers! he KNEW I was getting laid off and didn’t say “hey…maybe I should be paying for these” nope, gladly accepted my money. He tried to contact me after the fact and I just blocked him.
Some people dont have the guts for it.
I was going to say that if the workplace is harsh and the IT guy would get fired for telling you, in his place I might not say anything and then immediately apologize. And apparently get blocked with no discussion.
But damn, letting you pay?
And it’s kind of irrelevant because you acted as if you already knew anyway, lol.
To give benefit of the doubt maybe IT guy was told HR already let you know? Still sucks overall good choice in freelancing.
no. I was talking about projects I was working on with him. he knew, he let me talk about them and said nothing.
If IT guy thought they new, why not bring it up, offer consolation, maybe buy a few rounds…you know, human with empathy stuff?
HR lady once spit a whole ass pack of lies about my work performance, and had cut off my email access so I couldn’t prove her wrong, which would have been trivially easy. Realized before I spoke up that if the HR director is lying this bad, there’s no reason to even try to “prove” I’m right, just a really toxic company.
I got an invite for a meeting the next morning. I was like “they wouldn’t be that stupid, right?”. Well, they were. I had time to prepare something funny but I was disarmed by their stupidity.
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.
Yeah but they would hold back the severance pay until they received the laptop, they have done this before lol
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.
No, at least not in the US. It does not meet the legal definition of theft because (I believe) the property was initially acquired legally.
Otherwise, the police would be doing repo for things like delinquent car loans, which is dystopian corporate hellscape stuff.
Really?
Over here in Germany refusing to return items which someone contractually entrusted you is a misdemeanor. You would be treated like, say, a car repair shop who refuses to return your car you entrusted them to repair.
This differs from not paying debt, in that case you are legally in possession (not ownership though!) of whatever indebted item so the only recourse is a civil lawsuit. Besides, repossession can only be done through a court-ordered official:
Due to the state’s monopoly on the use of force, foreclosure may only be carried out by state foreclosure bodies, such as bailiffs. With the exception of permitted self-help, unauthorized foreclosure by the creditor is prohibited and is generally unlawful as vigilante justice.
This translation sucks btw, the term “foreclosure” is inaccurate because it refers to a court ordered official either seizing money/stocks/investments and/or physical valuables (valuables = items not required for a modest lifestyle such as jewelry, designer clothes, fancy non-IKEA furniture etc) or foreclosing your property. In case of specific debt like your car they would probably seize that instead unless you demonstrate you rely on it to get to work unless it could be substituted with a cheaper car which would then be provided in exchange.
Technically, yes criminal conversion is certainly a thing. If the laptop was expensive and you lived in a really low crime area where the cops were bored that might get pursued. My experience is that cops are practically more likely to say, absent a court order, to sue the person because it’s he-said she-said. It’s just too much effort for a potentially muddy situation.
You’d be surprised how often things that are theft/technically theft are not actually pursued by police in the US. The property crime clearance rate (resulting in at least arrest) is <15%.
Holding onto a rental car, on the other hand, is both expensive and cut-and-dried enough (contract states definitive end date ahead of time) to be a bad idea.
Never bought a Mac before, but what the hell are the specs in a $7k Macbook? I didn’t think they went over $3k.
The big ones start at 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…
Yeah I had that one, absolute beast would never buy that for myself but would have loved to keep it
Probably equivalent to about a $2k PC.
the laptop I’m working on right now cost me $1600 new in March and it is AWESOME. It replaced a Mac I bought in 2016 for $1800. My son uses PCs. He’s bought 4 in the same time period for about $1000-1200 each. Tell me whose computers are most expensive.
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
I got laid off about five and a half years ago, at the start of Covid. The meeting was with my manager and his boss (who I was also friendly with). I got a meeting invite and asked if we could push it back an hour so I could drive my wife to work, they said sure. I told my wife on the drive that I was getting laid off. Sure enough, I was. They paid me five weeks severance and gave me resources to file for unemployment. It was due to Covid causing a huge drop in money coming in, which was understandable. Honestly, I didn’t like my job, I had already hired a company to rewrite my resumé. So it worked out. At least my boss and his boss had the spine to do it personally. I’ll always give them credit for that.
Man, I was on that manager side, having to lay people off because of some bad decisions from upper management.
I usually do everything I can, like give them recommendations letters, try to get them as much money as possible that they’re owed… Literally bend over backwards.
Everyone takes that news differently. One guy cursed me out, kicked some shit and stormed out. And I just got up and cleaned it all up because brother, I get it.
When I’ve had to let people go, I’ve always believed it important to do it personally. It’s difficult, but it’s part of the duty of a boss to face the person they’re letting go.
I’ve been accused of being cold when doing it, but that’s because I don’t feel like I have the right to show the emotional impact on me when it’s someone else’s life being wrecked.
I’ve also violated company policy several times and given glowing reviews of former staff instead of simply confirming they worked at the company.
Interestingly for me, the bosses I got along with always got fired first. Both companies I got laid off from had several rounds of layoffs, and in both cases my boss was round 4, and I was round 5 several months later.
