In my company with the IT folks I believe they were worried about sabotage. They got their 60 notice with full pay, they just got to spend it at home.
I work in IT and where it’s done it’s usually just a policy that applies to everyone. There’s not much point in it now, all that needs to be done is to kick the guy off the network to prevent sabotage. But in some cases there may be a legitimate fear the employee could steal valuable information.
In general, people are worried about a bad reaction from an employee who gets fired and the precaution will seem reasonable to the employer, although most of the time there’s no point to it.
I was escorted from the premises of a job that I QUIT. I was only there a month and my previous (and now current)company called me back to take a promotion, which I accepted. When security came to escort me I asked if “they thought I was gonna shoot everyone after Quitting the job voluntarily”
I the high rise that I worked in the CEO of one of the companies was escorted out. I received a work order to rekey the suite at 1:00 PM the next day because the CEO was going to be escorted out by the San Jose police department.
At a company I worked at, everyone with 2 or more years with the company was laid off regardless of department. My manager came back from the meeting and told me I could take 15 minutes to gather my stuff and then I had to leave but I would be paid for my whole shift. He was shocked that I had seen the writing on the wall that week and had already taken home all of my personal effects.
But the best was a small company I worked at. They had just hired a new director of marketing and three days later he called one of the owner’s ideas “asinine”. The owner left the biggest trade show in our industry and flew back to personally fire the guy and escort him out.
“Say Officer Obie, do you think I’m gunna hang myself for littering?”
Guy I knew worked for a small company as their database guy. The owner started dating a guy in another state who thought he knew databases, so the boss took my friend out to lunch, fired him, and took his keys.
Guess who got a call a few weeks later, begging for help? Yet another case of getting hired back on as an independent contract at a rate hugely above the previous salaried rate. I think that when you get fired, and then they call you asking for help, it’s about the best negotiating position possible to be in.
Yup. Terminated illegally by an employer, and escorted out by the biggest dude on the security team.
Silly people. I don’t dirty my own hands; I call the lawyers.
Similar to what happened at my company. I was out of town, so my coworker relayed to me about the layoff. She and some other friends were on break in cafeteria, and suddenly our supervisor comes in and tells them of an impromptu meeting with the director so they were all schlepped up into a room where he discussed the regular dealings of the company. They noticed some team members were missing and they figured the director had split up the group into several meetings thru the day. Then an hour later, another supervisor walked in and announced getting rid of about ten people. Then my coworkers figured out that hour was given to those ten people to clean out their desks and get the heck out of the building. I wasn’t part of the layoff but another coworker who was also out of town was and the supervisor had to call him to pick up his box of stuff from security guard since his badge would no longer work.
I know of two people who got a security escort when they were fired by my old employer. One was even banned from setting foot on the premises unless she was a patient, because she had made some threats (the nature of which I never found out). As for the other one, I found out later that whatever she did to get herself fired also led to the revocation of her license. :eek: 
That was quite a shock to me.
Yet another nearly left that hospital via the morgue. He wound up in the ICU when he wrecked his car on the way home, having OD’d on stolen drugs. I won’t say what those drugs were, except that some of them were not drugs commonly associated with abuse; it sounded like he simply pocketed whatever he could, and took them.
When I got the heave-ho (and I know now that they did me a bigger favor than I could have imagined at the time), my boss walked me out the door.
I was down-sized a few years ago after 30 years in a company.
A couple of days after the dirty deed, I went into the office to collect my personal things and the new guy, their “golden boy”, was sickeningly sweet to me but wanted the passwords for a number of spreadsheets that I had developed on my own. It seemed month end was coming up fast and he needed them.
No way I was giving them the passwords until my separation package came through. So I fumbled nervously with the passwords, blaming stress, shock, etc. for not remembering them.
“I can’t think straight, maybe when all this is settled”, I told Mr. Golden Boy. No effing way they were getting those passwords until the money was in the bank.
He wasn’t happy and wanted me to keep trying. He seemed like he wanted to prevent me from leaving. But out the door I went, and as I drove by the window, I gave him a big wave and a smile.
He got them about two weeks later.
The biggest thing these days is the unemployment benefits, and also sometimes termination benefits. Someone fired for cause is less likely to get a severance, although some companies still offer it. Someone laid off is more likely to get a severance, but some companies don’t offer it to them, either. Someone fired for cause isn’t necessarily entitled to unemployment benefits–but will often receive them. When someone is fired for cause they can file just like normal, the onus is on the employer to indicate they were fired for cause. Then they hold a hearing, the hearing is weighted toward giving the employee benefits, so the employer has to be willing to really put effort into this, make sure they have some rudimentary documentation that the person was properly fired for cause and etc.
In ages past, like when I was younger, being “dismissed without reference” was a career killer. For a mid-level professional if you had to apply for a job and couldn’t give your previous employer as a reference, you were in deep shit. These days that isn’t a concern because due to fear of lawsuits the vast majority of previous employers won’t really give references in the traditional sense. If someone calls them they’ll be told “so and so worked here, during x dates”, and that’s it. So to get a reference willing to talk to HR most people have to line up direct references not with the employer, but with maybe former coworkers, former managers at other jobs etc who you already know will give you a good review on the phone.
I mean, in theory it still hurts you to have a firing on your record, if you’re ignorant enough to say “well I left x company because they fired me for cause.” In reality most people with sense realize they can make up some BS reason “downsizing” or “I felt like I needed to pursue opportunities elsewhere”, in this age in which thorough references generally aren’t given it’s easy to get away with this.
Employees who aren’t part of the corporate world have it different, as a lot of small business owners will still give references as normal. I do, for example, but I don’t “editorialize.” I basically will confirm someone worked for me, if they were a good employee I give them a really good reference. If they were fired for cause I say that, but I don’t usually say much more. I don’t mind giving a good employee time out of my day to give them a good reference, but I don’t want to spend time bashing someone who didn’t work out five years ago, I’ll just be honest that they were fired but won’t get into it.
Also, and this again, is for big companies–someone laid off or separated for another benign reason is often “eligible for rehire.” Someone fired for cause almost never is. I’ve known a few people who worked for a big company for years, then got caught up in an “event” like a portion of the company being spun off as a separate entity/sold off, traditional layoffs or etc, who then applied for and were hired back to the original company some time later. Someone fired for stealing or pissing on his boss’s desk isn’t likely to be extended the opportunity to even interview for another position later on.
I know of three people to whom it happened - one employed by a city, and two employed by a church.
The city employee was humiliated and despondent afterwards - I honestly thought he might commit suicide, and spoke to him for awhile, reminding him that it wasn’t the end of the world, that there were people who loved and respected him, and that he would feel better after a good sleep. Fortunately he did.
The church firings were badly handled that way, I thought. Not a very kind, Christian way to do it, and there was nothing in particular that they might have done maliciously before being shown the door.