Merry Christmas- you're fired

[wilt the stilt]

I have 2 friends who just got the Merry Christmas you're fired end of the tear present

[Warpy]

1. I'm not surprised

Heartless corporatists love to fire people just as they've charged up their credit cards to give the kiddies a good Christmas.

Bastards.

[gateley]

2. I'm sorry. It's beyond comprehension how employers can do that. nt

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. Nah, it's not beyond comprehension at all. It's the end of the year --

accounting-wise and year-end-financial-statement-wise, it's a good time to let people go.

It's kind of sad that the end of the year and the many holidays are packed so closely together, but seriously - what's the difference between laying someone off this time of year, or in May or in September?

I don't see why people feel the need to be more indignant over a December firing than any other one. :shrug:

[Mountainman]

12. Well because it is close to the beginning of a new year. I think most people hope that the new year

will bring good things with it. To start off the new year newly unemployed is a depressing thing to have happen to anyone.

[Rabrrrrrr]

16. Well, sure - of course it's depressing. But why is it more depressing

than being laid off or fired in June? Or September?

A "new year" beginning 10 days after the Winter Solstice is an entirely random and abstract human invention.

[Mountainman]

19. Invention or not people feel that it is a beginning. A fresh start, that's why there are New Years

resolutions. I'm sure you were aware of that fact unless of course you live on a different planet.

[Rabrrrrrr]

20. Some might say I live on a different planet.

:7

I'm a firm believer in not putting stock in arbitrary divisions of time, however. Instead of New Year's resolutions, I prefer "today" resolutions.

There is no specialness to the evening of Dec. 31 into Jan. 1, except as we imbue it to be so.

And thus, I would like to get people away from the idea that they only have one chance a year to begin anew and fresh, and come to believe and know that they can actually do it at any moment (though, of course, for accounting one only wants to have once a year starting with new books).

And thus, I don't think that there is any special nastiness to laying off someone at the end of the year (which, as I said above, actually makes sense, since we've arbitrarily decided that it's a good time to end the books and start with new ones) compared with any other time of the year.

But, my argument really has little to do with how we arbitrarily decide to celebrate revolutions around the Sun.

When someone gets laid off at Christmas, we make more of a deal out of it ("Oh, you poor dear! Laid off! And right at Christmas time! How horrible!") than the poor guy who got laid off in July ("Wow - sorry to hear it").

[Angela Shelley]

3. When complaining about corporations,

please remember the stockholders who don´t ask about layoffs.

[supernova]

4. My condolences

Tell them just try to enjoy their holidays (hard I know) and then find what to do in the new years.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. Happened to my husband once

and it happened to a friend this year, too. Really rotten, especially to put the pink slip in an envelope that looks like a Christmas card.

[undeterred]

6. 17 years ago

I was fired the day of the Christmas party- it was on the Friday before Christmas. I came in all dressed up with a present for my boss. It was the last day of a 6 month grant that I was paid out of and apparently that was the reason. My boss didn't get the next grant she applied for but instead of telling me that she just threw me out. The really horrible and humiliating part was- they made up bad behavior- so the 4 step termination process was done in 10 minutes and I was marched out by security. She was a very important person, and she treated lots of other people just as badly as she treated me, so I should not have been surprised.

I still have the Georgia O'Keefe note cards I was going to give her as a gift. She was my first female manager and I still have a deep distrust of female managers.

[truedelphi]

8. So much for "And Good Will to Men"

Sorry that happened to you.

People will say "It can't happen here" but when you think about the major neurotic behavior and weirdness people experience at work on an emotional level, it doesn't take a giant leap of imagination to see that it can happen here.

[undeterred]

11. She had a major feud with one of my former employers

(a surgeon) and he had warned me about her. I maintained a good relationship with him during my employment with her and I think I became the voodoo doll that she could torture because she couldn't get to him. Ultimately I realized that she was totally childish and unprofessional- she was a woman breaking into a man's world but she made everyone hate her. At first I thought they were all sexist but after 6 months with her I was happy to go back and work for one of the men - they'd never do something as vicious as what she did.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

13. I've had horrible bosses of both genders.

Equal opportunity recta.

[undeterred]

17. I'm sure I have too.

But this one gave a stunning example of how to be a disaster as the first woman dean of a medical school- and make all the clinical faculty hate your guts within the first year, even though you've got a ten year contract. She knew the Dean would not fire her and eat her salary, so she just went to extremes. She wasn't doing women anywhere a favor. Aargh. So glad its in the past.

[Enrique]

9. I've heard they do it in part for the employees' sake

so that they know not too spend too much on xmas and get into more trouble than they might if they knew.

[book_worm]

10. I was told by somebody just recently that companies routinely do this so that they can start the new

year with a clean slate or something like that. It sucks!

[Mountainman]

14. I worked at a place, Denmat, maker of Rembrandt tooth paste, that always fired people just before

Christmas. It was done to cut payroll expense for the year end statements. No one knew who would get fired because it wasn't based on anything they could account for like poor work, etc. Since no one knew if they were going to be one of the ones fired each year there was general fear and loathing in December. People were afraid to shop because they didn't know if they could afford to be spending the money.

[shadowknows69]

15. I got let go the day of our scheduled Christmas party

cheap bastards didn't even want to give me a last meal and half hour open bar.

[blues90]

18. That happened to me in 2004

Right before the elections in the end of oct after 12 years of hard work . Just getting fired out of the blue is bad enough but at christmas , that's an abomination . Employers for the most part could care less what happens to a persons life when the employees fate is in their hands . Thanks to the good old at will clause .