I don’t necessarily need or want to know why someone left, but just a heads up to the department saying ‘so-and-so is no longer with us, please direct inquiries on his workload to such-and-such’ would be nice. I completely get the need for confidentiality, but I also like to be kept up to date on who actually works here.
– Daerlyn, only slightly bitter about having an employee list for a department spread across three sites which is a year out of date.
In this case, yes, you are wrong.
If this were a situation where “Joe” suddenly had to give notice because his mother got terribly ill and he had to pack up and move out of state, or if he died (if he were ill he’d be on disability - they still wouldn’t say much), they’d probably give you some indication. Such as “Joe had to resign suddenly. I’m not at liberty to talk about the circumstances, but I know Joe had friends here and I can pass along your email addresses to him.”
This obviously wasn’t that, and what is was is none of your business.
The people I know who have been fired:
writing ‘erotic fiction featuring children’ at work
embezzeling
talking to the press about confidential information
surfing porn
hacking systems
telling other employees confidential information
not showing up at work for a long period of time
sexual harrassment
The stories themselves are juicy, but me knowing them does me no business or personal good - simply entertainment.
The one exception - when the man who sexually harrassed me was fired, they did tell me - and suggested I stay somewhere other than home for a bit and that I didn’t need to come to work for a bit if I didn’t want to. That was a safety thing - and they are obligated to let you know if your own safety is an issue.
In my work experience, there have been 3 times that one of my coworkers was fired.
The first person was fired for sexually harrasing a worker at a partner company via email. There was no official announcement made, but the rumors passed around quickly enough that everybody knew.
The second person was fired for forging his timesheets. My company decided to make an example of him, and while the official announcement (which included a new policy for submitting hours, due to recent abuse) didn’t mention him by name, everybody was able to put 2 and 2 together.
The third person was the company accountant (aka the guy who brought us our paychecks) and no announcement was made, and HE told everybody who asked that he quit, which was contrary to the office talk that he was fired for being an asshole. In this case, I feel like they should have said SOMETHING, since his departure delayed us from getting paid for a week.
No. We are only obligated to tell their immediate team or group that the particular individual is no longer employed with us. Depending if it’s 2 weeks lead time followed by a nice lunch or one day their desk is cleaned out, the staff can generally figure out if said individual was fired or quit on their own.
It’s not appropriate to discuss the circumstances of a termination and it’s petty and pathetic to be secretive or sour grapes about someone quiting.
I don’t think the company should say anything beyond “so-and-so no longer works here we wish him/her well,” because the only reason for going into detail is because some manager/boss/owner wants their version of the story to be told.
Example 1: I once worked at a small family-owned company with about 5 employees. I worked closely with one guy in particular and knew him absolutely to be good as gold. Like, we worked together ALL DAY for months and months and I knew that he was a model employee. One day he doesn’t show up and the owner calls a meeting. He says "so-and-so won’t be coming back. He hasn’t been doing his work (lie #1), he’s been abusing company resources (lie #2) and he stole $20,000 from the company (lie #3, and impossible: employees had no access to the books). It was just pure slander. The REAL reason he was fired is that owner’s wife (the accountant) made a pass at him and he turned her down.
We all called him up to sympathize and went out for drinks to try and cheer him up. Owner got wind of this and FORBADE us to socialize with him ON OUR OWN TIME. I started looking for a new job that very day.
Example 2: Another small company, maybe 10 of us, started by two college friends who became the manager and the lead sales guy. It was a real chummy, friendly company–also very, very gossipy and cliquey. Sales guy finds out manager’s email password somehow (manager prolly just told him) and he starts snooping in the guy’s email. This goes on for months before he gets busted and fired.
The office manager (not the senior manager who was snooped upon) told EVERYONE all of the details, including how senior manager feels so violated b/c “he does all of his personal business on his work computer, and he has arguments with his wife and everything over email that no one should read.” …the hell…?
Unless police are involved, just a one-sentence statement is sufficient and is all that’s appropriate.
Ha. One time I was cruising through another part of our corporate finance department and witnessed a pair of FBI agents taking one of our employees out in handcuffs.
I was on the Lunch and Gossip With Dr. Woo circuit for weeks after that one.
Not surprisingly, there was no official announcement by the company, but according to a friend it was because of some stock fraud the handcuffed person and a couple of accomplices had perpetrated. This was later documented in the newspaper, but with none of the juicy details that my friend provided.
To the whole company? No. To the affected employees? I’d say yes.
About two years ago, my boss was let go. Not to go into the gory details, but practically everybody in the department had complained to the department VP about her…me included. (Complaining may be too harsh a term…I “expressed my concerns.”)
The other manager and I knew more than the other employees, but I don’t think it caught anyone totally off guard when the department VP called us in to let us know she would no longer be working there. It was a bit awkward, as after the brief meeting we had to go back to our work area where she was cleaning out her office, but I appreciate that the VP took the time to let us know what was going on.
Not necessarily. As far as I know, my “sudden” absence from my workplace is unexplained. I’ve gotten a couple of tentative sympathetic emails from former coworkers, and I’m ignoring the hints, for now.
I quit with 2 weeks notice, am eligible for rehire, and simply asked my wonderful boss to keep it confidential. I despised 6 of my 192 coworkers, liked the rest, but did not want to spend my last week pretending we’d keep in touch, or that they’d remember and miss me forever, and I damn sure didn’t want to get into discussions about why I quit (I can afford to) with people who can’t. 
I’m sure the gossip is juicy in the meantime, and the truth will eventually come out – my exboss is great, but her chatterbox secretary will be back from vacation on Monday.