Some Twitter Employees Found Out They Were Laid Off Through Email Lock Outs
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- As the news of Twitter laying off 336 employees rocked headlines Tuesday morning, some now former employees reported finding out a rather unpleasant way: via blocked access to their company email accounts.
Software engineer Bart Teeuwisse tweeted a screenshot of a pop-up notification indicating he was blocked from accessing his email. After reading the morning news, it didn't take long for him to realize he was one of the hundreds laid off.
But not long after, he tweeted that he received a missed call and voicemail from Twitter's human resources office with the news.
Another former Twitter employee posted on Reddit having the same experience.
But surely it's not the worst way to be informed you've lost your job. Getting handed a pink slip is almost always a difficult experience, but here are three especially cringe-worthy layoff stories:
1. Seeing Your Job Posted In The Newspaper
On a Yelp forum, Richard K. of Manhattan Beach, CA recalls:
"Was reading the local paper, and cruising through the Sunday classifieds when I spotted 1/8th page ad for a friend of mine's exact position at the company we were both working at (he was still employed). I called him, and he had also just seen it. Went into work Monday and asked what was up, and they said 'we are letting you go.' Pretty harsh ..."
2. Attending This Pizza Party From Hell
In a series of layoffs in the video game industry, Kotaku shares this story:
"The testers at [MAJOR PUBLISHER] had just finished wrapping up testing on a project we'll call "Biolands." And to congratulate them, the man in charge arranged a huge bowling/pizza party for the end of the week. Of course everyone is hyped for the event. So the day finally arrives and all the testers show up. They all start bowling and eating pizza. After a few hours of everyone enjoying themselves, the VP asks for everyone's attention. When he does manage to get the team to listen, he begins to thank them for their hard work and has the leads hand them their termination papers.
After that event, the crew could no longer throw events without scaring everyone to death."
3. Getting Laid Off, And Then Training Your Foreign Replacement
The New York Times reported on this less-than enchanting Disney pink slip:
"About 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.
'I just couldn't believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly," said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. 'It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can't grasp it.'"
