I just read jnbmoore's layoff thread and it got me thinking. I've only been laid off twice but my best friend has been laid off three times and I've survived six sets of layoffs and counting in the ten months I've been working at Lucent (including a rather large layoff yesterday). Each company has its own way of doing things. There's no good way to tell people they've been laid off, but some companies handle it better than others. What's the worst-handled layoff you've seen?

My first layoff was pretty nasty. It was my first real full-time job, I had moved for the job, and had just gotten my first (very good) performance review. I worked for a very small defense contractor and the layoff consisted of just me (can it still be considered a layoff?). I had been hired to work on phase II of a contract (they neglected to tell me they didn't yet have the contract) and the company lost the contract and didn't have any more work for me. Here's the evil part:

1) I had to take a day off for some tests at the hospital on the Monday before they laid me off. They let me go but told me to take a vacation day. Like most companies they pay for unused vacation days but not unused sick days when you leave.

2) Our pay cycle was bi-weekly running from Friday to Thursday. They laid me off on the Friday starting a new pay period so they could remove extra deductions from my paycheck (an extra medical reimbursement sum, an extra medical and dental insurance premium).

3) They told me at 2PM and told me I had to be totally out by 5PM, even though they know I don't drive and had hired a college student to drive me to and from work (who wasn't due to arrive until 6:30). A coworker ended up driving me home out of the goodness of his heart even though it was way out of his way and he had to go back to work after.

4) I was followed by the company controller until I left (as "security officer" I guess). By followed I mean practically attached. He even wanted to go into the bathroom with me but I refused and he relented.

I came back the following week and spoke to the company president who agreed to pay me for my sick days as well as my vacation and to pay for half of my moving expenses incurred because I moved to Las Cruces from Albuquerque for the job ($2700 I had eaten). But that doesn't make the way they handled the actual layoff any better.

Some of the other evil layoff things I've seen:

* telling management and worker drones they are laid off at the same time in the same room
* Having a guard stop people from entering a door marked for employees only
* telling a large group individually and telling them they can't tell anyone until the next day because they haven't told anyone they are laying people off and don't want those affected to find out until officially told. Those people who leave right away just disappear and those who don't don't have any outlet for their emotions because they can't tell any of their friends at work.

Other contributions?

Janice

I think calling for 4,000 layoffs when your company is renting an aircraft carrier to promote a summer movie for 4 million bucks, you spend tens of millions of dollars on Tiger Woods saying he likes your company, and the CEO is looking to clear 100 million in salary and options and bonuses for the year is a classic.

Oh... wait... and you just shuttered your dot-com venture which is a clone of the failed Time-Warner Pathfinder mistake on the Net.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

I was good enough to volunteer, get rejected, and then have the general manager and his lackeys do their darndest to find any technicality to warn and launch me and not re-hire my job back.

Which is what the layoff packet strictly forbid.

Go figure. Their sales and ratings have never been worse, and I've lost 15 pounds of stress-weight. Got a few more to go.

When my husband's company in NY was taken over by a subsidiary of American Express, the takeover was managed by a completely morally bankrupt person.

He was once heard saying, "Do you know what makes my D*CK really hard? Firing 100 people!"

It is hard to believe that there are people out there who actually get a charge out of doing things like that, but I guess there are.

I think that normally it is common for security guards to escort employees out of the office after they have had their exit interview. Any time my husband has ever had to lay people off this has been the case.

But the very worst layoff I ever heard of happened to my friend's husband (they have recently moved to Austin, TX.) Her husband had been hired to find a buyer for the company and engineer a merger. His contract specified that he would get a percentage of the merger when it took place. Two days before the merger was announced, he was fired. They offered him a month's severance or so and said he'd be lucky to get it. He refused it and currently has a lawsuit against them.

I hope that someday he realizes a good settlement from it.

A security escort isn't unheard of, but in my experience it isn't that common either (and his wanting to go into the bathroom with me was just sick).

In my other layoff and most of the layoffs I've witnessed employees are not escorted out and in many cases get 2-4 weeks to vacate the premises. At my second layoff I was given the choice of leaving immediately or working for another 2.5 weeks paid where I was free to interview/whatever while paid. I chose the 2.5 weeks, but had I chosen to leave immediately I wouldn't have been escorted out. At Lucent people are being given 30 days where they are free to use the facilities while searching for a new job before they are off payroll and out of their offices. I've seen places go as long as 6 weeks in similar arrangements although most are between 2-4 weeks.

Janice

I was in a team meeting one morning discussing our project time-lines. The DBM said he was hoping to take vacation during X time, and asked our manger if that would be Ok. Our manager hesitated for a brief moment, then assured the DBM that it wouldn't be a problem.

The DBM was fired at lunch-time. Found out later that the manger, and TPTB had had the paperwork and 'layoff' explanations ready for over two weeks.

The last time I was part of a "RIF" (quite a while ago now), I could smell it on the wind. I'd had all my personal things cleaned out of the ol' cubicle for a week--and it was a good thing I did, because from the moment I was called in for my "exit interview" to the moment I found myself off the company campus, it took a grand total of two minutes. Most of that was the exit interview. I left the room to meet with security, who "escorted" me to the edge of campus and waited with me until someone came to pick me up and take me home. If I'd had any belongings, I couldn't even have returned to take them; I'd have had to phone or send an email list of the items I wanted, and they'd mail them to me. (Nice, eh?)

My friend recently lost her job--and they had a very crass way of letting her know. She went in that morning, left her area to use the restroom, and when she tried to return to her desk her company keycard wouldn't work.

Did you know that there's a nursing shortage? Apparently the management at my hospital was a little slow clueing into that one.

They spent all last summer (that's 2000) telling the staff in my unit that they were NOT downsizing. We knew better, we just wanted to know how many and how they were going to do it, because the rest of the hospital was hurting for nurses. We'd just had a slowdown in admissions that had lasted for over a year, so we knew we were often overstaffed -- but just in my unit.

So what did the bright folks in admin decide to do? They held a staff meeting -- just for 8 of our people. They called them individually to tell them that there was a MANDATORY staff meeting. One had worked night shift the night before. She had the good sense not to come in. The others called their friends to find out if they were coming in for the staff meeting. "What staff meeting?" -- OK, so they knew coming in.

The presentation was just lovely. The 6 nurses affected were told that they had 24 hours to choose another position in the hospital. That particular dirty trick means that if you opt to leave instead, you're not eligible for unemployment because YOU quit, they didn't RIF you. Funny thing about that, though. The folks in admin forgot to read the newspaper. It seems that several area hospitals were offering sign-on bonuses -- up to $8,000 for nurses in my particular specialty. Better than that, if you recruited another nurse you got an additional $10K. The first one to head there really cleaned up.

Oh and just after the RIF, I had to take 3 weeks off to complete my radiation treatments. I'd told them that, but I guess they forgot. THEN 2 of the full-time nurses who weren't RIF'ed fell down and injured themselves so severely that both were out of work for 4-6 months. Oops. Then they had the nerve to have our scheduling secretary call some of the folks who'd just left and beg them to cover shifts for us.

It was ugly, allright. Our census has doubled on a fairly consistent basis since the RIF. They had to hire 2 of the nurses back -- couldn't get any of the other 4, so they had to hire a couple more. Don't you just love poetic justice.

Oh, and the CEO got his retirement notice just about the same way, only they didn't offer HIM another position, so he got severance.

Hubby found out cause he went in after lunch on a Monday (I had had some medical tests and couldn't drive myself)

He gets in -- his department is a ghost town. Not a soul around.

the first straggler comes in and tells him of the lay offs "for economic reason"

He tries to log in "This account has been disabled"

He makes his way down to HR and asks the head of HR (who later that week he had his exit interview with "Was I personally affected by these layoffs" the replies "I don't know let me get your manager. Just wait in the lobby") Boy that is a bold face lie and screams get out of here sucker

He was told in to come in a few days later to clean out his desk. Which he did. no security watching or anyone watching him for the two hours he was there

Icing on the cake -- In Sunday's paper was a help wanted ad for his postition

but that's okay -- he had his choice of four positions -- we're on our way to Kansas City..........

Bridgette

I've been laid off twice.

Time 1:

I worked with an e-commerce company. On a Thursday, we had to stay late to do an upgrade of the web site. When we left, there were something on the order of 5,000 products in the product database. When we got into work the next morning, we started receiving phone calls from the sales department, which was deluged in calls to the sales lines to query why there were only something like 400 products listed on our site. Later that day, we were told that there was a "warehousing problem". No further details were given. On the following Monday, there was a huge snow, so I called in and said I wouldn't be in. Later that day, my boss's boss called and said that I had been laid off.

Time 2: (last week)

The week before I was laid off, we had a project meeting where we went over project plans for upcoming revisions. Plans indicated that we were actually short one person of having enough to meet the schedule.

Last Monday, I called in and said that I couldn't be there during the day because my daughter was sick. Late Monday afternoon, I received a phone call and was told that I needed to come in Monday evening to help get a server ready. I went in and was there until 2 AM. Tuesday, I went in late and worked about 4 hours. From what the client said, they were happy and looking forward to the next phase. On Wednesday, I was sick, so I didn't work. On Thursday, when I got to work, I found out that some yutz had ruined one of our in-house servers. So I spent an hour or so getting that fixed. The lead engineer for the project told me that he wanted me to call the client and give them the bad news that the tests that they had run the day before would have to be re-run.

About the time I was finished working on the server, my hubby called and said that my daughter was sick again. So I went to talk to OwnerA. Since I was behind on some work for another project, I said, "Why don't I just zip up this work and take it home." To which he said, "That's a good idea. Why don't you do that?" So I went back to my desk to get things ready to go.

About 20 minutes later, OwnerB came into my office and asked me to follow him. To my surprise, we went to OwnerA's office, where they both told me that I was being laid off.


But that's not the worst one.

When I worked in the defense business, I saw some of the ugliest lay-offs around. One of the worst hit a bunch of really good people who had been with the company for a long time. The explanation that was given to them was that they "didn't have the skills that the company needed."

A few days later, I happened upon a newer employee who was reading "Unix for Dummies".

Skills, my eye!

My husband's company has rounds of layoffs every few years since he has been there, but he's never been one of them. We were on vacation in Nevada in August and my husband's supervisor and wife were vacationing there too, since were are friends. We heard about more layoffs while we were there, and at dinner one night, hubby and boss joked about not having jobs to go back to. Turns out it was true for the boss, but not my husband. We have a feeling that there might be more layoffs in January and dh will get the boot then. So far every one has gotten a severance package of several months pay, and 90 days to exercise their stock options. Unfortunately, most of the people in this last round of layoffs was probably waiting for the market to pick up a bit. That ain't gonna happen now, I don't think. Oh well, I'm hoping that if my husband is laid off that he too will get a severance package.

My own personal experience of being laid off wasn't too bad. I was called in on my day off and the distract manager kind of mumbled some stuff that made no sense to me, then shoved a letter towards me and said "You can file for unemployment, and here is the letter you will need showing you've been laid off." Suddenly the light dawned.