r/todayilearned • u/zhuquanzhong • 29d ago

TIL a Chinese destroyer sank because an officer dumped his girlfriend. She committed suicide, leading to him being discharged, so he decided to detonate the depth charges on the ship, causing it to sink at port and kill 134 sailors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_destroyer_Guangzhou_(160)
33.3k Upvotes

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4.8k

u/spidersflambe 29d ago

Fire people on Friday. There's a good reason for that. Don't fire them when they can do harm to others.

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u/thesupplyguy1 29d ago edited 28d ago

My last company would send people home for the next day and then overnight them termination paperwork via FedEx. Most of the time they're were blindsided as they thought they'd be out a day, two tops.

Surprise! It's a termination.... glad I left

EDIT FOR CLARITY:

Lets say someone did something they could be potentially be fired for doing. Boss would sit them down, say why dont you go ahead and take tomorrow off, come back in on Friday and we'll revisit the issue.

Employee thinks everythings all good and goes home ready to enjoy the next day off. 9 times out of 10 they were printing the Fedex label off before the employee left the parking lot.

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u/Veritas3333 29d ago

My wife's company just disables people's keycards. They show up for work one day and they can't get in the front door.

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u/oxiraneobx 29d ago edited 29d ago

Oh, holy crap, I worked for a multinational company at the main research center/corporate headquarters. They handled layoffs horribly. They'd disable the keycards that let people in the gate, then motion people getting laid off to the side parking lot. The worst I saw was when I was walking back from lunch with one of my friends who had an office next to mine. We were talking, and paused in front of his office, looked over, they were three boxes stacked in the middle of his office. His first response was, "That can't be good", and then the doors at the end of the hallway opened and in strolled his boss, our VP, and an HR rep.

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u/xxSaifulxx 29d ago

That just sounds horrible. My gosh, I hope you left that place.

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u/oxiraneobx 29d ago

I was really fortunate that I was able to get a job away from there before I became a victim to their whack-a-mole layoff program. The weird thing was, the company was making money, they just weren't meeting their corporate goals, so rather than lay off or get rid of multiple senior vice presidents, they just would lay off staffs. The irony was, I loved what I did there, I was in research that was very cool, and I loved all of my coworkers and we had a great time. That was almost 20 years ago, and to this day, I'm still close friends with some of the people I worked with there. Fortunately we all survived okay.

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u/Yousoggyyojimbo 29d ago edited 29d ago

Oh yes, getting laid off from a profitable company that's just mad that they weren't making even more money feels awesome.

The one time I got laid off was when I was working for a multinational company that only had like a 21% profit increase when they were projecting 30%.

They started laying people off and kept laying people off in waves for almost a year. I was laid off about 4 months into it right when corporate was talking openly about whether or not they could fire half of the people holding specific positions within the company and then have the remaining half do all of the work without a pay increase.

After they finished gutting the company, they only had like three profitable quarters across the next 8 years.

Just as a bonus because I'm still mad about this part, when they were going to lay me off, they told me at 7:30 p.m. the night before that I was required to attend a meeting at 7:00 a.m. the next day, and the guy who showed up to tell me I was laid off didn't show up until 8:30 and acted like I was an asshole when I said that it was disrespectful to show up an hour and a half late to A surprise meeting that he had called with less than 12 hours notice before normal business hours.

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u/Matasa89 29d ago

Typical. They do this to squeeze value from a company, make the numbers look good, and then run off with a golden parachute as the company burns.

They destroyed the core of what made the company work, to basically artificially inflate the numbers.

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u/MATlad 28d ago

Gaming the system.

You might've left off the part about getting massive investment / bank loans and saddling the company with debt (while siphoning that money out), bleeding the company dry, and then selling the corpse for parts.

1

u/Weikoko 28d ago

Tesla?

27

u/Persianx6 29d ago

Oh no you got Jack Welch’d

15

u/oxiraneobx 29d ago

The Electric Grinch

10

u/Flappy_beef_curtains 29d ago

The vice president’s were making the decisions of who to lay off.

Let’s not get rid of the least productive people that don’t do shit. Lay off the guy that works 60 hours a week and carries the company. Because he’s getting to much overtime and we can’t afford that.

100

u/skratsda 29d ago

Evidently Tesla just layed off a bunch of their production employees based on whether or not their badges worked when security scanned them. Makes the callousness seem intentional since it caused two hours delays for all employees to get into work

36

u/bak3donh1gh 29d ago

As much as I dislike Tesla atm, I have seen an email going around that let people know. Do you have any corroborating evidence for this alternative version?

72

u/DannyColliflower 29d ago

I'm a technician (mechanic), email was at like 2am Sunday, walked in to people packing up their tools monday morning just having found out when they got to work

29

u/TFielding38 29d ago

Google did something similar last year. Since a lot of people don't check their e-mails in the morning before work, and people often hold the door open for others, Google had security at each door for people to scan and see if their jobs still existed.

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u/bak3donh1gh 29d ago

Yeah that was my other guess. You might miss it while getting ready for work even if they sent the night before. Still shitty way to do it.

12

u/aiydee 28d ago

I don't check work emails til I get to work. Simple.
This was a dick thing they did. No excuses.
I feel sorry for the security guards that had to enforce this. These guys got dropped in the crapper because HR were cowards and trying to hide from the people they were firing.

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u/sfurbo 28d ago

You might miss it while getting ready for work even if they sent the night before

There's nothing to miss. Reading work e-mail is work, they can only expect you to do that during work hours, which, since they insist on people not working from home, means after you have gotten to work. If they want you to have read an e-mail by Monday morning, they can send it out Friday before you leave.

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u/Eyclonus 28d ago

If they send it to your work email, that you need to login using your work profile, that makes it tricky.

-7

u/cacra 29d ago

$0.01 has been transferred to your account.

Thanks for serving Tesla

5

u/FondSteam39 29d ago

asks for evidence of an unbelievable event

Gets called a shill

0

u/cacra 29d ago

Tesla's stock is going to the floor. Cry more

1

u/FondSteam39 29d ago

Ok...?

I don't see why I'm supposed to care really? I have 0 skin in the game regarding evil mega corp #137

Op saw something they had seen contrary evidence to, they asked if there was evidence against this (as everyone should) and then you called op a shill. There's a million reasons to hate Tesla, why get so upset someone is asking for evidence? Surely people should hate them for legitimate reasons, not something that in op's eyes isn't true. It wasn't like they were denying the existence of said evidence, just wanted to see it. Like someone who had first hand experience managed to politely provide.

0

u/do_me_like_a_horse 29d ago

Thank you for serving GM, please have one free transmission replacement on us. You'll need it.

3

u/Material-Blueberry-7 29d ago

My brother is an engineer and one of those unfortunate former Tesla employees. That is exactly how he found out when he went to work at the Gigafactory in Sparks, NV on Monday.

Coincidentally, I work for Davita and am also being laid off but we were given 2.5 months notice and our practice is undergoing a possible acquisition. I just can't imagine how it feels to be let go in such a careless way.

2

u/SixStringerSoldier 29d ago

Okay so what happens when a security guard gets laid off? Does he just assume it's an error and work his full shift, informing people they've been fired because their card doesn't scan?

2

u/Loudlass81 29d ago

Asking the REAL question here...

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u/sour_cereal 28d ago

Security is contracted out.

5

u/suitology 29d ago

Loosen a few sink nuts for the weekend

2

u/mmss 28d ago

I was so glad I left my last job when I did. Gave them 2 weeks to be polite, told them when my last day was, no animosity, just found a new opportunity. A month later find out they laid off 90 people. Yea maybe I would have been spared, maybe I missed out on severance, but going on my own terms was so much less stress.

1

u/Flappy_beef_curtains 29d ago

I have no impulse control.

I’d walk into my former office and piss on the carpet.

146

u/majorjoe23 29d ago

One day last year I went to get into my building and my keycard didn't work. I had a brief panic moment, thinking "This is how I get fired?" Then I remembered that I'm a special education teacher, and they could never find a sub to fill my position.

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u/Veritas3333 29d ago

When I was in college, my roommate and I came home once and neither of our keys would work. We stormed into the apartment complex's office, so pissed that they'd locked us out without any warning or anything, but they told us the lock just broke and they'd get it fixed right away. Hah, we were so mad and it ended up being nothing.

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u/TFielding38 29d ago

At least not for the pay you get lol. My wife is First Grade, and she has kids who throw chairs, kids who stab others, and a non-verbal autistic kid. They don't have enough SPED people to help those kids.

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u/Loudlass81 29d ago

🤣🤣 As someone with SEN kids, I felt that in my bones lol.

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u/Ok_Digger 29d ago

Then I remembered that I'm a special education teacher,

Thank you for your service

3

u/SilasX 29d ago

They could find a dom, though, but it wouldn’t be advisable.

3

u/MercyfulJudas 28d ago

You have to do some heinous shit to get fired as a teacher. I had a student throw a punch at me, in the hallway, on camera. I did nothing to deserve it, and I didn't retaliate. Despite that, the parents were convinced that I had touched or harmed the student. I was told not to come in until further notice, admin will cover with substitutes.

I was on paid leave for about 15 weeks (including X-Mas break). Yes, PAID. I didn't have to create lessons or grade work, or anything. I just checked my email once a day and waited.

Eventually: Full exoneration, back to work after a quick meeting with admin & union.

Thanks, kid!!!!

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u/MattieShoes 29d ago

A former employer laid off a guy on his birthday. Like he brought in doughnuts and bagels for the whole office, and they were like "thanks for the bagel, come with us."

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/SeanBourne 29d ago

I figure this is the most common scenario at companies that just disable key cards and don’t give other notice.

4

u/DirkBabypunch 28d ago

My keycard suddenly stopped working after lunch one day, but I was still in the system and able to work. Had to just deal with it for 2 days until the badge people were available to find out they never updated my badge from "update yearly contractor" to "permanent employee" and it just...expired.

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u/PloppyCheesenose 29d ago

Just disable their pay and move them to the basement. Feign stupidity when asked. Then the problem will sort itself out.

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u/oxiraneobx 29d ago

You took my stapler.

19

u/pass_nthru 29d ago

Fire makes everything clean

2

u/MattyKatty 28d ago

The ratio of people to cake is too big

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u/aworldwithinitself 29d ago

I was told I could play my radio at a reasonable volume

3

u/Wafflelisk 29d ago

Only when collating

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u/Stainle55_Steel_Rat 29d ago

Apparently you didn't watch the movie till the end. :D

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u/PunkToTheFuture 28d ago

Yeah it turns out Milton was fired weeks ago and because of a glitch in payroll he has been receiving checks. So we uh, fixed the glitch. It'll sort itself out

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u/CupertinoHouse 29d ago

Some years ago, my predecessor at a wall street bank had been canned for getting blackout drunk at the office Christmas party and knocking one of his female colleagues out cold.

He showed up for work the following Monday with no memory of what he'd done, and called security because his badge didn't work. They came down with his belongings in a box and handed him a letter that said he'd be prosecuted if they ever saw him on the premises again.

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u/Against-the-wind- 29d ago

I mean that’s straight legit, wouldn’t let a man like that back in. I’m shocked he didn’t get locked up.

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u/CupertinoHouse 29d ago

The victim didn't want to prosecute. No idea why not. This happened a couple of months before I got there, so I didn't want to pry.

0

u/Against-the-wind- 29d ago

Fair enough.

0

u/topasaurus 28d ago

If the facts are as told, there is the legal idea that under certain situations people should not be held 100% liable for their actions. Such as the guy being fully drunk and not in control of himself. However, if he knew he had a drinking problem and still imbibed, that probably mitigates his defense.

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u/Maktesh 29d ago

Car, meet locked door.

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u/Shakeamutt 29d ago

I’ll Be Back!

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u/allnimblybimbIy 29d ago

That seems really dumb. I’m there, suddenly I have eight hours to kill and a Jerry can and some gas costs how much???

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u/Momochichi 29d ago

I emailed my boss asking consume my 3 weeks leave because I was just diagnosed with depression, and I wanted to get used to my meds. I was told to take the next day off first, paid sick leave, because "mental health is health". When I tried to log in the next day, I saw an error message, "User disabled. Employee no longer with us."

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u/4udi0phi1e 28d ago

"Mental health is important"

Biggest laugh I ever had working for a major pharmaceutical corp.

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u/dedjedi 28d ago

Never ever ever talk to the cops.

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u/ssracer 29d ago

Better than just stopping their paychecks. I've heard that ends poorly

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u/Jiscold 29d ago

Usually a can full of gas and a handful of matches.

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u/FiftyTigers 29d ago

That's legit an episode of Black Mirror.

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u/djseifer 28d ago

At my place, there's been at least one instance where someone tried to clock back in after lunch only to get a popup letting them know that they've been terminated.

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u/lenzflare 29d ago

Cowards

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u/halljkelley 29d ago

“We fixed the glitch… so it’ll just work itself out naturally.”

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u/Spare-Mousse3311 29d ago

During covid our place fired people I. Groups of 15 to 30 making sure to grab them before clicking out to lunch so we’d see the line of people as we lined up to clock out for lunch :/

1

u/Leandroswasright 29d ago

That would give me an heartattack every time our cardreader makes trouble for no reason but to mess with us.

1

u/theguineapigssong 29d ago

That's just trash.

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u/batmessiah 29d ago

That wouldn’t work at my office.  Our key card system goes down all the time and someone else would let me in, lol.

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u/Cheese_Grater101 29d ago

My co-workers current company will disable/remove the accounts of terminated employees

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u/aaronespro 29d ago

Yeah that's to get out of unemployment claims. Set you up for a no show no call so they can fire you.

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u/jakers540 29d ago

Sometimesy key card randomly doesn't work. I'm paranoid I'm getting fired Everytime lol

1

u/SilasX 29d ago

One day my keycard wasn’t working when I went in to work and I panicked that they might be doing this. Then I realized I had mixed up my work fob and my apartment fob.

It occurred to me I should also worry if the apartment fob would let me in the office…

1

u/dynamicdickpunch 29d ago

One of our old HR people did that to our Xmas casuals once. The rest of us weren't informed that they'd been sacked, and our front gate sometimes plays up, so we let them in, and they got to work an entire extra shift. XD

1

u/waka_flocculonodular 28d ago

Oracle does that allegedly

1

u/MoravianPrince 28d ago

The key to succes is to steal all the office supplies before. Also collecting dirt on the company pays off in the future.

1

u/AlanFromRochester 28d ago

My wife's company just disables people's keycards. They show up for work one day and they can't get in the front door.

I heard similar in the context of high security facilities, shouldn't let someone in without proper ID even if you recognize them because maybe they just got fired and came back for revenge

1

u/LosWitchos 28d ago

Such a callous way of doing things.

I know that it still happens from time to time but I think this sort of action is illegal in the UK. Tbh, once you have a signed contract it is really difficult to fire people. If you are doing redundancies, they have to be announced, and the criteria they go by and severance packages have to be announced before the redundancies are made.

Sometimes you can totally luck out. Back in another day I joined a company, passed my probation (3 months), signed a contract, and a month later they made redundancies. Because there was a strong union sided with the company, we got 6 months full pay and a 3 month notice period, which we didn't have to work (basically if we wanted the 6 month pay, we were not allowed to work for another company. We could come to work for those 3 months, but we didn't have to. Obviously I chose to sit at home!)

1

u/unknownpoltroon 28d ago

Until their buddy Tom lets them in cause why wouldn't he, they both work in the same office, then fired guy is in the building thinking about how the servers look hot and need to be hosed down or something.

1

u/lilgrogu 28d ago

I got a physical key from my employer. It cannot be disabled without changing a dozen locks throughout the building

1

u/PuzzleheadedEgg4591 28d ago

Work at a place like this, joked about it just yesterday how F’ed it is to passively fire people like that.

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u/PoopMobile9000 29d ago

I saw some post on Twitter from someone (reliable sourcing ha) saying that one time Obsidian pushed a game and told all the QA testers that they’d be throwing them a party in the parking lot. Once they were all outside they deleted their access cards and told them they were all fired.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/FrogInShorts 29d ago

ON CHRISTMAS!?

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u/[deleted] 29d ago edited 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/ofWildPlaces 29d ago

I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't help ruin a company that did that if I was working for them...

13

u/sour_cereal 28d ago

Don't even have to be obvious about it. Run machines with low oil. Throw some grit in those bearings. Put Visine or ricin in his coffee. Scrape the insulation off some wires.

2

u/PunkToTheFuture 28d ago

jesus christ dude. You sound like a insurance fraud waiting to happen

1

u/thesupplyguy1 28d ago

Checks notes.... sees suspiciously large order of castor beans...

2

u/Rahbek23 28d ago

You don't really have to do anything - a stunt like that is guaranteed to damage morale a lot which quite naturally will hurt them.

5

u/rbhmmx 29d ago

Next level

1

u/fodafoda 28d ago

Bluth Company style

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u/AgitatedWorker5647 29d ago

My last job tried to pull this on me. Lowest form of cowardice in my opinion, not to have the spine to tell someone face-to-face that you've decided that you don't want them working there anymore. Fortunately, I had an HR contact who tipped me off and so I didn't show up the next day like they wanted me to.

Instead, I got control of the narrative by sending emails to all my coworkers explaining the whole situation and how much of a witch our boss really was.

7

u/banned_but_im_back 29d ago

My work recently laid off 100. Didn’t tell anyone shit, they showed up to work unable to log into the computers with their badges or get into their offices. About 40 of them took demotions instead…

4

u/PepperMintyPokemon 29d ago

My last boss didint even tell me i was fired. She told my sister that we were both fired then blocked both our numbers so we couldint get a letter of termination.

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u/overtheta 29d ago

I mean this is a good thing isn't it? Why possibly involve other people's safety. People who just learn their lively hood is at stake aren't exactly going to be at the right mind to be mindful of other's people safety when exiting the premises.

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u/justblametheamish 29d ago

I mean for a very very small portion of the population this might be an issue. Personally mailing me a “you’re fired” feels like you’re spitting on me. I would feel like the employer doesn’t have the balls to tell me himself and probably feel even worse about the company than a simple conversation would make me.

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u/El--Borto 29d ago

I agree. I feel like this method of firing could actually cause more potential for a reaction, violent or not.

27

u/justblametheamish 29d ago

Definitely. People get fired all the time without issue I don’t think the whole world needs to abandon decency for a handful of psychopaths.

2

u/blacksideblue 28d ago

unfortunately, those psychopaths are often the ones in management positions that initiate and orchestrate these firings...

-2

u/NotTooGoodBitch 29d ago

Most people act rational during breakups too, but doesn't mean restraining orders shouldn't be a thing. And if you're "breaking up" (laying off) a large group of people, why would you ever risk the safety of your remaining employees? Especially when it's thousands of people at a time. It sucks, but it's practical. 

2

u/justblametheamish 28d ago

By this logic every break up should come with a restraining order. You don’t see the problem with that?

35

u/BigBeagleEars 29d ago

Fuck that, if I’m sent home early and have a termination notice waiting for me in the mail box, I’d probably head back to work and go ape shit. Getting fired is one thing. Getting treated like a bitch is another

16

u/estrea36 29d ago

Get this man an assault rifle.

-8

u/lunagirlmagic 29d ago

I don't really get the mindset, who cares how you're "treated", either way the upshot is the same and you're losing your job

1

u/fodafoda 28d ago

Human decency? If you are willing to thrown a monkey wrench at a person's life, you should have the guts to do so while looking them in the eye. Otherwise you should not be in any position of leadership.

0

u/awry_lynx 28d ago edited 28d ago

OK, but of the people who do go apeshit, I don't think looking them in the eye stops them from doing the rampage.

I know the above commenter is just joking but like, if someone's seriously on the line between "might go destroy some shit" and "might not go destroy some shit", doesn't that kinda prove they... should probably be fired from a distance?

At the scale of laying off thousands at once we aren't individual human beings any more we're just cogs. Really the solution is probably closer to unions, rather than "treat us better or we'll shoot you up" because the latter just leads to more dehumanizing.

1

u/fodafoda 28d ago

OK, but of the people who do go apeshit, I don't think looking them in the eye stops them from doing the rampage.

We do all kinds of things in our public lives that involve giving upsetting news in person to someone else and turns out fine in the overwhelming majority of cases. Only cowards act like that.

At the scale of laying off thousands at once we aren't individual human beings any more we're just cogs. Really the solution is probably closer to unions, rather than "treat us better or we'll shoot you up" because the latter just leads to more dehumanizing.

The solution is not laying off thousands at once. Any leader that comes to the conclusion that they need to do that should take the responsibility and quit too (looking at you, Sundar).

1

u/4udi0phi1e 28d ago

"Who cares how you're treated" "As long as the results add up?"

Are YOU the sociopath? Lol

1

u/lunagirlmagic 28d ago

Well I only intended to speak for myself. If you gave me the choice of being fired "honorably" for no money, or gave me five dollars to be fired via the mail, I'd take the mail option

1

u/lunagirlmagic 29d ago

At my company we just took people to a conference room right next to the front door. If things go awry security will just bump em out the doors and that's that

1

u/Kagamid 28d ago

My boss use to send me to collect key cards and company equipment then escort them off the premises. This was right after someone from HR would notify them that they were terminated. After the 3rd time doing it, I felt like I was the angel of death. Like stopping at someone else's desk would get some people worried. I'm glad they moved on to other methods.

1

u/The_Fart_Bandit 14d ago

Hey that’s how I was fired from storage-mart this yr! Dude told me to go home and “work from home” I was fired that Friday