Pedro68

I don't envy that job ... I've been through several rounds of redundancy with a former employer. I was employed by them for a total of 11.5 years and in that time, I think we went through about 5 or 6 "rounds of redundancies". Each one seemed to hit the same departments over and over ... middle management, then IT (probably 2 of the biggest salaried departments, beneath directors). Each one was an awful thing to have to go through.

In one round they handled it spectacularly badly ...

They had about 6 or 8 people from IT to make redundant and they (HR I think) had decided that the "best way" to do this would be to phone people at their desks and ask them to come to a meeting room and to bring all their belongings with them (from whence they would be escorted off the premises - not because the company feared they would do anything bad - it was just company policy due to most of IT having access to "sensitive data").

The first 2 or 3 went un-noticed, but then people eventually cottoned on to what was happening ... so rather than people sat around, head-down, working, phones ringing as usual, everyone was sat there in almost stunned silence waiting for a phone to ring ... then a phone rings ... and everyone looks round at this poor guy. Then we hear another guy at the other end of the office saying down his phone "Chris XXXXXXX .... c'mon on down!" (in a "price is right" kinda way). The humour was kind of welcome in a sick sort of way as it helped to lighten what was already a stressful situation, however that moment was short-lived for when the practical joker hung up his phone laughing his man-breasts off, his phone started ringing ... all he could do was put the phone down and say "see ya folks" ... the irony was that the guy he had called also was next on their "hit-list".

Like I say ... handled very badly indeed.

Managed to avoid the bullet that day, but 6 months later ... I was one of the redundant ones ... and to be honest, it was the best thing that has ever happened to me! I got 3 months "paid leave" (they had to give us 90 days notice because they were intending on making more than 100 people redundant), and I left for a much better job! Although I narrowly missed out on any redundancy money because I took the job 2 weeks before my official redundancy date and therefore had to give my notice (I effectively left before they made my redundancy official).

My uncle has had to do a similar thing though Ed, only some of the workers he had to make redundant he had been working below, alongside and above for the past 20 - 30 years - he just couldn't do that anymore and left the company himself after the last round of redundancies.