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What's worse than being escorted out of the building after being laid off

Candelaria Silva discusses the dead-man-walking phenomenon and other aspects of getting let go in these times.

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The ways in which people are being disposed of at work are cruel in and of themselves, and this post drives home that point.

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It is a good thing you useless bloggers can't be fired, only blocked. Or you could spend too much time at work on your side project and get shit canned that way - sound familiar? ;)

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He so cute when he's gwumpy.

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Were you canning shit, Adam? I wouldn't think there'd be much call for that.

Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com

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And it helps keep our sewer bills down:

Our fertilzer is transported via the historic Fore River Railroad.

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Fertilizer was never so conveniently packaged!

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I thought the part on insensitivity was interesting (in regards to firing/laying off.) It just seems like thats the way it has to be though. Its almost like watching one of those doctor shows where you have the "good" doctor and the "bad" doctor only to find out in one episode that the "bad" doctor was not all that bad because he made tough choices that kept the hospital running and in the long run may be keeping the majority healthy while the "good" doctor who refuses to let a patient die might actually be jeapordizing others because of it.

The problem with firing/laying someone off is it could devastate part of your business if your in the right business and you do it too cooly. Some fields depend on interpersonal contacts, and if you slice someone out of the loop too fast without allowing them to calmly tell their contacts through official means where they are going things can get out of hand very fast. I saw that happen when I was interning in an office and they (for reasons I will not get into here) did the whole march in and march the employee out the door thing (its the official policy I guess.) For the next three weeks we were fielding calls as to where she went, what happened to her, whos going to take care of xyz. Rumors were flying around like crazy , and some of them got to her by other means (Facebook was a force even back then!) Contacts and clients were lost, and the whole thing was an utter disaster. She was a reasonable person who Im sure would rather have bowed out gracefully then be dragged through the public square like she was, it could have been a whole lot cleaner for everyone.

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First things first, as an HR person, terminations suck for us, too. There is no "good" way to handle it, on either end. There are only mature and responsible ways to handle it, again on either end.

Key thing to remember: you want to leave a good impression. So tie up loose ends, make sure all your ducks are in a row, and then split.

Also, lingering over "Why me?!" is worse than pointless. They'll never tell you, and just as relevantly, if it's because of problems with co-workers or productivity, you'd know about it anyway. One of the good things about our lawsuit-heavy society is that employees now have time to get their act together and companies have to properly document why they're firing somebody with cause. So if you haven't had a conversation about either, then it wasn't anything to do with you as a worker. So let it go, and focus on the next job.

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