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Comment by bryanrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of a story about a top investment bank in Copenhagen (told to me by a long time employee but don't know the level of embellishment), one day there was a big company meeting down in the very expensive lovely cafeteria they had.

When people came in they looked up their names and gave them either a red or blue card. At the end of everyone coming in the person in charge stood up and said "as you arrived you received a red or blue card, the ones who received a red card have been let go, please get your things and exit the building."

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One of my previous companies handled it this way: We knew layoffs were coming, and that they would happen on a certain day. On that day, you got invited to one of two meetings - one on the 6th floor, and one on the 7th floor. One meeting was for everyone getting laid off, the other one was for people staying.

You didn't know which meeting was which until you got there, of course. It was awful.

One of my previous companies did this same thing, but the meeting where people were being laid off (myself included in that group) was held in the large break room. Everyone was crammed in there while a rep from an outside firm retained to actually do the layoffs read a pre-prepared statement. What made it super-awkward was the vending machine guy was there restocking the Coke machine and no one asked him to leave.

Sears Canada (retail store) did something like that.

Employees either instructed to go to the Convention Centre (to get fired), or a fancy hotel (for a planning meeting):

https://www.thestar.com/business/2017/07/12/laid-off-sears-c...

I’ve heard similar anecdotes of a sales force arriving for a central meeting and similarly being allocated to one of two groups. The two groups were then directed to different meeting rooms; one group was given the bad news.

Also reminds me a of a story I had heard when I lived in a major city 15+ years ago. A major airline was laying off a bunch of staff. Called an all hands meeting and during the meeting pink slips were placed on peoples desks so they wouldn't know if they were on "the list" until they got back to their desk. Heard this from a friend so not sure how accurate it was.

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