HR people smiling at you thinking that you are a complete moron

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?

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 removed pipes in with "Ham, at your seniority level you should just know." Fuck you, boss removed. 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

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 just happened a month or so ago at my place of employment... except there were no invites. No meetings. It went more like
9am: Hey, where did my chat with so and so go? Friggin teams...
11am: Now the other one is missing? Wtf?
1pm: Outside TM: Hey... dumb question, but do you have as many people on your team as you did yesterday?
Email Invite for 1:30PM has entered the chat

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.
- 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
- Did you get lucky with any of them? 😏
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.
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?

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.

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.

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.
- Sure, I'll gladly send the laptop back, you'll just have to pay my hourly freelance rate for the labor involved. My rate is $240,000/hr, I'll have it shipped out within 30 business days of payment. Alternatively, feel free to send a courier for pickup, my current address is 189 Beaker St, McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
- 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.
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…
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.

I had a meeting with plenty of important people tagged in, yet somehow I didn't think much, if anything, of it. Like it's just a meeting. Which it was. A meeting to inform me I was to be let go of the company. The possibility of that only occurred to me, I think, when prompted to think about it, on another meeting I had right before that one. That's right, two meetings back to back. Yet I was clueless…

Just deline the invite and you are safe ;)

Had a 3rd shift guy I was trying to fire get 3 extra shifts out of us by just not showing up to the meeting and not answering his phone. HR wouldn't let me just shut his account off until the 3rd one. That dude was a real POS for other reasons but I can't knock him for taking advantage of bureaucratic nonsense.

I don't get it, why does she need these projects for?

When you get fired they need to re-assign your work to others so they want to know what you're working on.
To onboard your replacement after you get fired at 4pm.
- The two or three juniors they'll eventually have to hire to do the job
To do the needful.
I'm guessing this is about perceived performance issues, potential or realized. But I'm not sure at all. I've never dealt with something like this. Only a few places I've worked have even had a proper HR department.
^

Ready to be laid off, i can feel it coming considering the economy feels like its on stilts and my company scrapping the bottom of the barrel for projects to work on.

I don't own anything and don't have anybody.

Prepared for my NEET life.

If you don't have anybody, it will be hard to be a neet. They are usually maintained by someone else (mostly parents)
Hope you will find a new job soon, It really sucks to find a job in these times 😞
Hmm, do we work at the same place? I can set you up with my old camping gear...

Well at least its suspect enough to prepare :). I once came in at 9am and we had random people funneling everyone into a conference room with HR people to tell us our department would no longer be needed.

This is why Europe is awesome, if they do that here they owe you like 3-6 months of salary.
- Not just Europe, Aussie here. I got the ol' covid chuck and between lack of notice, untaken leave and long service leave (had been there over 8 years) it cost them $58,000
- Damn Europoors hating their (HR departments') freedoms.
- 3-6 months of salary.
  ...per year worked, depending on the country, but it's more close to 2-3 months.

That's why I decline meetings without a proper agenda. No agenda = lack of preparation = waste of time = not a meeting.

It has to be a Friday too.

Accurate

MegaBux Inc. bought our small ag-biotech firm in 2018. I had developed a high throughput product screening system for natural products against a bunch of animal diseases. The program worked and we identified a bunch of candidates (I also developed the list of things to screen) for botanical/natural solutions to animal diseases. I should have guessed that I was on the chopping block when after finding out some of the things we screened actually worked, I got replaced as PI on the project by someone else much younger. A couple months into 2020 all the folks at the R&D center (including me) got laid off. They did pay severance to us- and mine took me out to October of that year due to my longevity with the firm that was purchased. A couple months after that, a bunch of the junior staff (who were well trained in my methods) got hired back. I was almost 69 at the time, so it was probably time to retire anyway. I was very lucky. This is so familiar! At least I made my stack and can live comfortably on my SS and pensions.

high-tech solution for measuring and promoting old tech efficacy? investors looking at this “How is this supposed to make us more profitable as a company?” CTO in response “…We could sell the information to other companies… or even trade it with third parties like individuals, or even organs of government…”. Investors: “Interesting! We would need to be careful with how we would go about doing that, no?” CTO: “sigh Time to reorganize the department again. and this time I must be sure to purge the lead designer on the software, so they don’t form any attachments to the use cases of the sale or propriety of the resultant information from the project”

The only good thing about getting laid off is 1) you can at least collect unemployment 2) It's easier to get another job because you weren't simply fired

What's the difference between being laid off and being fired?
- A lay off is generally broad in scope. A department might get laid off.
  Firings are usually with cause and individual. You are fired for showing up late every day. You're laid off when they simply don't need you anymore.
  This varies from state to state across the US and probably only applies here, but if you're fired with cause, you generally don't get unemployment benefits. If you're laid off you might get a severance on top of unemployment.
  Particularly shitty companies will always fire as many people as they can prior to a lay off. A big part of HR's job at these organizations is making sure they have a case to fire as many people as possible at any given time. If you've ever worked in any call center in the US, you've been subjected to this, knowingly or not. They'll document a handful of even the slightest grievances and make sure they have two in the chamber at any given time for any given employee, so if it looks like they need to get rid of a lot of people in the near future they'll start digging for a third infraction.
- You het fired for being bad at work, coming in late, etc.
  You get laid off for "we don't wanna pay you anymore."
- You can't collect unemployment if you get fired.
The best thing about getting laid off is still getting paid but not having to go to work.
Having responsibility that they don't want you to abuse, and having a robust social net that requires employers to pay out an employee for a specified time (mine was 3 month) is amazing. (Go Belgium)
A full 3 months of vacation and plenty of time to look for other jobs.
Unemployment isn't that easy to collect in a lot of states. My state's unemployment system is essentially designed to dissuade people from collecting. Tons of red tape, rules, and conditions to wade through and if the stars are right you might start getting checks worth 2/3 the value of your original paycheck a month later.

It is always tempting to try to justify one's position and get out of being laid-off/fired.

The decision has been made by those that "know your position", or your manager is being let go next.

Being sarcastic got me fired. Twice.

stooge /stoo͞j/

noun

The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedian; a straight man.
One who allows oneself to be used for another's profit or advantage; a puppet.
A stool pigeon.

She looks like a whitewashed Victoria Newman from the boys.

Who, Anne Hathaway?
She looks like that lady always smiling in severance
- You thinking of Sydney Cole Alexander?
She looks like she married the founder of WeWork

Oh. I heard this bluff from Pat Geisinger himself, in person.

I was employed by VMware many moons ago when Pat took the helm. He decided to start by cutting an entire department from my location, sight unseen.

We then changed all the furniture because they had two floors of the building and wanted to cut back since they just lost half a floor of people.

We go home, work from home for a while, then return. Then Pat comes by for a site visit.

He stood there with the gall to say that the team that was cut was a different business unit, and that was a business decision regarding that business unit (it was the front line team, which was then relocated to "low cost centers").... Blah blah blah.... This is a different department, a different business unit, blah blah, what happened to them is isolated, and doesn't mean anything regarding your employment.... Blah blah ....

I didn't buy it for a second. But I was too stressed out to do anything at the time.

The layoffs started less than six months later. I was part of the first round.

Fuck you Pat.

Since its clear you are a bad worker leave off a few important task. They can chalk it up later to themselves as proof they made the right decision when those tasks fall through the cracks.

All important tasks. Let them figure it out

Omg!

Finally no longer having to work
It's really been the absolute worst thing in life after "being a kid" and "going to school"

I know the setup is that if you don't job hard enough
then something even worse is coming up
living in the streets, which is illegal
then living in the man made hell
called prison, which is just another kind of school

But this time, by seeing it coming,
turns out there's a way to opt out of the bad bits !

"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"

Sometimes you can even see it through the telephone

Sending Anne Hathaway to fire me? I'll accept that.

She looks odd to me. Ever since I saw the video to Black Hole Sun...

That HR lady is totally breedable.

I'm usually quite a big fan of not having any prjunddices against people just because they are part of a certain group, gender etc. But please just shut the fuck up. Why do some people (often enough men) simply have to think with their dick and be disgusting human beings?
- It's being gross about it and referring to her like livestock that bothers me. Breedable. Yuck.
- I'd rather these cretins point themselves out so I know who not to help if they're on fire.
- This planet works on chaos and sex.