We've all been asked to assemble in the training room for an important announcement

Perhaps we’re all getting a bonus :slight_smile:

Or sacked :eek:

Resume all dusted off? Laptop cleared of all non-work stuff? Have enough office supplies stocked up at home?

Be sure to eat some chocolate after the announcement. It will make you feel better.

I’ve been thrown out of far classier places than this!

It was all rather dull really. Just an announcement from the head of our division that he’s retiring in June.

Somebody probably put coffee grounds down the sink again and caused it to clog up.

At the companies I worked at in the past, layoffs were announced via being brought into the manager/V.P.'s office, via registered mail (“We’ll send your personal effects after we’ve had time to root through them,”), or once by e-mail. The latter was fun because then you could play the prank of registering an e-mail address from a domain that was almost identical to that of the employer (say, BigCheese@Widges.com rather than BigCheese@Widgets.com) and then freak out select employees with bogus firing notices. Cruel and sophomoric, but when you know that your entire company is going to go fuzzy-side up inside of three months the gallows humor is the only thing that makes the work bearable. Plus, it’s a great way to get back at those marketing pricks who’ve been making your life hell for the last year and a half by promising things that couldn’t possibly work outside of a Merrie Melodies cartoon.

I mean, not that I’ve ever done that. Not so far as anyone can prove. Thank you, I will take the Fifth Amendment; how nice of you to offer.

Stranger

It wasn’t me that peed in the coffee!.. um, if inded the coffee was peed in.

At EDS, the only time we ever had to assemble the entire department for an announcement from management was when there was a major change in policy. Firings were strictly done in private with a mass email sent out afterwards saying that the terminated employee was, “…no longer allowed in the building.”

Bah. My last “mandatory meeting” was a not-so-pleasant restructuring of our corporate footprint. [sub]I can’t believe I just said those words[/sub]

My new job is better anyway. Pffffffffft.

Make him buy the chocolate, then.

Last time I heard those words it was from Ward Cleaver.

Once when I worked in a government office, a memo went around instructing all employees to gather in the lunchroom at a certain time. When we arrived there, we were told “This is a fire drill. Please exit the building in an orderly fashion.”

A few years later there was an actual fire, but the response was total chaos, since no memo had been sent around to announce the fire and summon us to the lunchroom.

And who is Ward Cleaver?

The victim of a typical lieu-pun.