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Comment by dfraser992 | Hacker News Reader

You forgot about being 'sent to Coventry' - i.e. the company doesn't want to pay you redundancy, and can't fire you for incompetence, so you get ignored, not given any work, get put in a useless role, etc until you wise up and quit/find another job. British passive aggressiveness at its finest!

Being American. I would have had no problem with being fired aka 'you're now surplus' and it would have been far more helpful (i.e. get it over with) vs. letting me twist in the wind for a few months... or even have a hard talk with me to see if I might be useful elsewhere in the company because I was bored etc.

But the procedure they used to downsize the workforce earlier that year before that was cruel - straight out of the Victorian era...

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I've heard that that practise (what a name!) Is relatively common in Japan: I've never heard of it in the UK before.

I have heard of "gardening leave" though: where you're left on full salary but kept out of the building for your notice period, to stop you passing up to date market info to your new company. (It's the only legal way I know of in the UK to implement a non-compete clause.)

I love the fact that no one seems to know why we say "sent to Coventry" as well.

Probably related to Coventry being "ignored" in WWII by British officials so that German wouldn't catch on that the enigma machine was broken.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11486219

The phrase is much older than that..

>Grose's The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue - 1811:

>>To send one to Coventry; a punishment inflicted by officers of the army on such of their brethren as are testy, or have been guilty of improper behaviour, not worthy the cognizance of a court martial. The person sent to Coventry is considered as absent; no one must speak to or answer any question he asks, except relative to duty, under penalty of being also sent to the same place. On a proper submission, the penitent is recalled, and welcomed by the mess, as just returned from a journey to Coventry.[0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Send_to_Coventry

Wow, I wonder how effective time-out was on infantrymen of the early 19th century and how often it was enforced. It seems like an analog to solitary confinement while still forcing you to be a contributing member of your armed forces.

This is actually fine by me: if you want to pay me to do nothing, that's fine -- I'll just look at it as conditional severance. As an employer, you should know that I'll be using the time to look for other jobs on my phone though.

Japan does something similar, called "chasing-out rooms": http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/business/global/layoffs-il...

Sent to Coventry appears to be Constructive Dismissal under UK law

https://www.gov.uk/dismissal/unfair-and-constructive-dismiss...

Of course it might not be worth the lawsuit.

It's almost always worth the lawsuit, it's cheaper for a company to pay an employee off than fight them in court.

The actual numbers of people who take abusive companies to court is low, just look up the statistics of companies who constructively dismiss women after pregnancies, compared to the number who actually get sued.

It's a thing to do carefully; especially in a small industry. Unless the situation is pretty messed up it's generally better to take a small hit than become known as someone who litigates against their employer.

On the other hand, full respect to anyone who stands up for themselves when the situation warrants it.

Really not going find a new job easily if you say you have been fired vs redundancy as that implies you did something wrong.

In Australia that's generally called "special projects".

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