I weathered three rounds of layoffs and that was pretty harsh too. Every morning we'd check fuckedcompany.com and look for Ask in there. One morning it popped up with a 60% layoff in two days. It was almost exactly right; 16% of staff were laid off. Someone mis-heard the number.
I was in a smaller off-shoot office, so when people were cut they were called into the managers office, and while there security would pack their desk. When they came out of the office the box was just sitting on the floor, right outside the door. By the second round the manager just wouldn't come in that day, and the main office would send some stranger to do it.
At first I rationalized the people who were cut as people who weren't valuable, weren't adding to the bottom line. They were the less technical people, and their jobs were more nebulous, so it was easy to ease any mental pangs. It was a way of coping with something similar to survivor's guilt. Then when I was laid off, well, it was a tough time for me personally. I couldn't help applying the same rationale to myself. I wasn't valuable. I wasn't adding to the bottom line. The company is better off without me.
They gave me a pretty nice severance check. I convinced them to keep me on for another week to document my project. It was actually one of the only cash-positive projects at the company, due to contracts with Visa and Nike. That extra week pushed me into 2 years of tenure, which bumped my severance from two months pay to three.
I did not do anything mature with the money.
Generally the attitude I saw was to hunker down and try to weather the storm. Nobody interviewed because nobody could get recruiters to answer the phone. And nobody wanted their manager to think they were interviewing; that was a great way to be called in first during the next round. And lots of late nights working; gotta show you're still committed, despite everything crumbling around you.