Oct 12, 2006

You Shall Know Our Velocity

Even if you leave on good terms, don't worry. You'll soon be vilified by your former fellow employees. There were a million little things you did that were wrong, if not criminal. You may have been Employee Of The Year but you'll be remembered as being a surly prick. Scorn will be heaped upon you and you will be burned in effigy.

If you didn't leave on the best of terms, this will only be worse. Heaven forbid if you were terminated. You can count on lots of lies to be told about you: "We gave them plenty of warning and had spoken to them on numerous occasions."

That could be true. Or it could have been that it just came a time when upper management just decided, "This Friday we're going to let some people go. Let us know who you'd like to see go." I wish I was lying, but... (see comments)

Don't let this fear of being the brunt of aspersions or having your good character maligned keep you from doing what you may need to do. You can either take the abuse now or just be scapegoatted after you're nothing but a bad memory.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

No, they don't do that on the Friday. They do it on the Tuesday before. They come in and say, "We're thinking of cutting some dead wood. Let us know who from your department you'd like to see go."

When I stayed mum on this strange proposal I was asked to step into my boss's office later on. "Why didn't you volunteer *** ***?" he asked me.

"I thought we had *** *** on an improvement plan and were giving him another chance."

"You were given this opportunity. I don't think you should let it pass you by." And, even though I had little to know position in the company I found myself being pressured into being the hatchet man that Friday. I didn't sleep well before that -- nor after.