They laid off the employee – on a Zoom call – who ‘built their entire product line’
Eric saw the writing on the wall, but he still wasn’t fully prepared for how it went down.
For him, 13 truly turned out to be an unlucky number. After having worked 13 years at a marketing agency, he was laid off in what he described as the most callous, scripted episode he’d ever experienced. Eric (not his real name) was one of 13 employees pulled into a Zoom call one afternoon and told, “There’s no easy way to say this — today’s your last day.”
No severance. No warning. Just a rehearsed speech about tight budget and tough decisions.
The irony was stark: Eric had literally built the product line the company is still selling today. When he started there, nobody at the company had any experience in his area of expertise; Eric pioneered it from the ground up, as he explained, reaching out to mentors at other agencies, teaching himself along the way and eventually turning it into the company’s main revenue source.
The company is still making money off that service — only now, it’s farming out the work to contractors via the freelancer platform Upwork.
Eric’s is just one example of the rise in ham-handed terminations, with employers firing long-valued team members via everything from mass emails to, as in his case, Zoom calls. Workplace strategist Mita Mallick, author of The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn From Bad Bosses, has a simple message for employers who rely on technology to deliver bad news: Don’t do it. “A large layoff is no excuse to not offer in-person conversations and treat your employees with the kindness and respect they deserve,” she said.
For Eric, what stung most was the “We’re like a family” speech management gave employees while literally kicking them out the door. It so bothered Eric, in fact, that he spoke up about it during the meeting: “This is a business. Don’t call us family when you’re being this callous. Family wouldn’t do this to each other.” The crocodile tears only added insult to injury, as he saw it.
Fortunately, Eric had had a second gig for almost a year because he sensed the instability at his day job. When the layoffs happened there, he immediately reached out to his part-time employer, who made him full-time in short order.
The whole experience at his ex-employer felt like an episode of HBO’s “Succession,” Eric related — remote, dehumanizing and purely about numbers.
What bothered him most wasn’t losing his job, he insisted; it was how management handled it. A little warning might have helped the team prepare, some transparency about the company’s financial situation rather than pretending everything was fine until the moment terminations were executed.
Eric was fortunate to land on his feet quickly; many people aren’t so lucky. But his experience confirmed every horror story he’d ever heard about how companies treat people on the way out.
“It’s just business,” they shrug.
The truth is, being let go affects virtually every element of a person’s life — something Eric thinks management ought to remember.