CORPORATE LIFE

We Treat Roaches Better Than Fired Employees

Your Inbox: 1 New Message, 6:00 AM. Subject: Surprise! Surprise!

Image source: adobestock.com / Author’s subscription

Text of the 6 am kill shot email below.

The contract between employers and employees has been broken. Years ago, there was an unspoken agreement between workers and bosses. We work for you and provide a decent day’s work; you pay us and treat us with dignity and respect. Dignity and respect seem to have left the building.

In the last two years, corporations have treated people as if they were worth nothing. It doesn’t seem to matter that you worked faithfully and successfully for twenty years; your loyalty is not considered. When the decision has been made to reduce staff, you are gone.

These days, when the time to let you go is imminent, they treat you no better than roaches.

Company thanks employees for their hard work by removing them from payroll

At the time, I was the North American site leader for multiple plants in multiple states, and I had laid off thousands of people. Back then, if a plant was shutting down, I flew in to make the announcement. We had an all-hands meeting where I explained what we were doing, how many were involved, and the severance packages. This meeting had no question-and-answer period.

I had them set up a desk for me in a private office, where I would take questions for two days. Outside the private office, there was coffee and pastries. Everyone who requested to see me could do so, even if they were upset. Security was close by but hidden. We had just delivered life-changing information to them. Many were stunned into unexpected behavior.

The coffee, tea, and water allowed me to be polite and to give the people something to hold and sip while they asked their questions. The most common question was always, “Is this temporary or permanent?” The second most common was, “Can I stay on?”

In my 35-year career, I only had one person whose layoff I reversed, and that was because he had gotten a performance review in which his boss promised him a long career if he continued to perform. He was laid off the next week. The boss noted their exact conversation in his review.

What I did not tell him was that we had received the layoff recommendations from the plant managers via a rack-and-stack rating list of all employees. The same boss put him in a stacked position to be laid off based on his ranking of all his employees.

I pulled his review, then asked HR, his manager, and his director to show me how they reached their decisions. They had ranked him as superior and then put him near the bottom of the stack. Both could not be true. I addressed the issue. He was recalled to his position a week after the layoff, but I never saw him again. I got an email from him, thanking me. I hope he realized I had acted in the company’s interest and it had worked out for him.

HR discovers new efficiency hack by firing 3,000 people before lunch

Roach perimeter spray application — The spray the entrance method: send a high-level manager to address the layoffs and answer questions. This method was preferred when there was the closure of an entire entity. No matter what the employee said, once they walked over the threshold of the conference room, they were dead. The same way that insects that walk over poison that you have put around your home’s interior and over your home’s threshold to kill any bugs that just walk in. People who cross the barrier are done.

The Roach Motel method: Later in my career, the company I worked for used the Roach Motel method of laying people off. Here, you were called to a conference room, checked in with HR, and then released from your position on the spot. You never checked back into the plant. Roaches check in, but they do not check out. Someone from your department would pack your belongings, and we would deliver them to your home address.

This method took accountability away from your supervisor and made HR the culprit. I never liked this method. The difference is that when roaches entered the Roach Motel, they believed there was food for them.

The house tent method: When you notify a group of people without using HR or management to fire them, that is the equivalent of setting a home on fire to kill everything in it. That is the current method companies have developed. The DOGE notification by email stated that you were being laid off without a stated reason. The Oracle 30,000-person layoff, announced in an early-morning email, was one of these. The email was signed by “The leadership team,” which is to say, no one in particular. The culprits live somewhere in the cloud.

The Company always says it values transparency, as they fire you with a no-reply email

Text of the actual email:

“We are sharing some difficult news regarding your position.

“After careful consideration of Oracle’s current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day.

“We are grateful for your dedication, hard work, and the impact you have made during your time with us. After signing your termination paperwork, you will be eligible to receive a severance package subject to the terms and conditions of the severance plan. You will receive an email from DocuSign to your Oracle email address with details on your severance and termination date. Immediate Action Required To receive important follow-up information, including FAQs and separation documents to help you through this transition, you must provide a personal email address.

“Please click here to submit a personal email address immediately. If you make a submission error, please re-submit a new form. Please Note: The personal email address will only be used for correspondence regarding separation-related information and severance agreements.

“Access to your computer, email, voicemail, and files will be deactivated soon, and you will be unable to log into your computer. As a reminder, you are prohibited from downloading, copying, or retaining (including emailing yourself) any Oracle confidential information.

“Thank you for your contributions to our organization. If you have additional questions, please reach out to the HR team via the Ask HR page or at (888) 404–2494.”

Oracle Leadership”

Employees learn they’re ‘like family’ — we don’t love you either

Imagine you are one of their 10-year employees. You knew Oracle was going to fire people as they announced the restructuring the week before, and by now, every person working in the United States of America understands what the word “restructuring” means: fewer jobs.

The fact that there was an entire leadership team that believed this was an acceptable way to treat all of their employees, no matter the level or time the person had with the company, shows employees what the real deal is with work. Come to work, give them a full day’s work, then go your ass home. Ignore any talk that the company is your family because it is not.

The key today is to realize that at any time, anyone can be fired. You could be notified of a life-altering event delivered via an innocuous email. Be prepared.

[embed]Toni Crowe — Medium Read writing from Toni Crowe on Medium. Sharing the hard lessons I’ve learned in life. Adding truth in a time of lies…tonicrowewriter.medium.com

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Image by Toni Crowe ©All Rights Reserved

Image by Toni Crowe ©All Rights Reserved

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