Plain Dealer cuts

A Facebook friend at the Plain Dealer posts that editorial employees have been asked to stay home and wait for calls between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Wednesday.

 

That'll show 'em.

 

Reminds me of those NFL players who go out of their way to avoid the Turk. I remember one guy telling me the Turk would always catch the soon-to-be-former players as they came into breakfast, so guys who knew they were on the bubble would stop going to breakfast around the cutdown day.

Bottom line: They got cut anyway.

 

What if you have your friends fill up your voicemail and then just never answer the phone?

This discussion has come up before, and the general feeling among hiring/firing experts is that terminating someone by phone is the most cowardly and short-dicked way to do it. So at least the short-dicked cowards at the Plain Dealer have that going for them.

 

Why answer your phone? If you're fired, you're not responsible to them anymore.

 

This was the method at my place one time. We were told to be near our phones starting at 8 a.m.

Phone rings at 8:15.

It's a friend from outside the business asking if I survived the layoffs.

 

I had one acquaintance in the business who didn't pick up his phone the day he was supposed to be laid off, which was the last day of the month, and came into the office the next day and clocked in. They laid him off. He claimed that since he clocked in on that day, that he was a worker on the first of the month, that he should get his health insurance for that month. The company, surprisingly, didn't fight it.

 

While not exactly the most humane way of going about this, it sure beats what my shop did.

Layoffs were announced. They were done in an agonizing month-long period from department to department. We had no idea when the layoffs in the newsroom were going to take place. So we pretty much went three whole weeks knowing layoffs were looming but not knowing whether or not we were goners or not.

I survived. My buddy was sent to human resources in front of all of us.

At least everyone will know tomorrow if they pick up their phone. And if it were me, I'd be answering. I'd want to know. Having them tell me in person isn't going to stop the whole being fired thing.

 

So. Fucking. Awful.

My best to all at the PD.