Final Notice
One of our departments shut down at noon thanks to an HVAC issue. The building management needed to move cubicles and pull out a chunk of the drop ceiling, so the manager took us all out to the bar for a “team-building exercise.” We had no idea we were walking right into a disaster.
Everyone in the department arrived the next morning to a “Final notice in lieu of termination” on their desk. Apparently, our awful HR department found out about the trip. The notice also cited that we had been “drinking on the job and wasting company time.”
The manager who was with us had an extra-special third citation for improper use of a company credit card. None of what we’d done was against company policy, so the manager’s boss, the vice president, called HR and told them to back the heck off.
Instead, HR forwarded over a brand-new policy manual and told the VP to make sure all the write-ups were signed and returned by the end of the day. The VP then up the chain to his boss, the CEO. The CEO hadn’t even seen it nor authorized it. But HR didn’t want to back down, even when the CEO called them.
Sure, he hadn’t authorized it, but he had asked them to consider revamping it back in March. This was the glorious revamp! Oh, and they’d been enforcing it since May, so it would probably be best for him to just sign off on it and any concerns he found could be incorporated in a future revision.
Yeah, no. The CEO didn’t make it past the first page before finding a contract law violation. Actually, there were several all throughout it. The head of HR was asked to resign. When she refused, she was fired.