We have all dreamed of sending the boss the big flip-off email, the final flounce-out, a few choice putdowns, a trenchant structural analysis of the company’s medium-term flaws, a colossally ironic final wishing of good luck. But what if you are the boss?
If you are Somerset bus company director Sydney Hardy, it turns out you do it anyway. On Sunday, Hardy sent an email to his 27 Nippybus drivers informing them that the company would be wound up and so not to bother turning up: “I am quitting to pursue my dream of not having to work here.”
“There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you have had enough,” he went on. “I have had enough and realise I cannot work with you, the people I employ, a moment longer.”
Hardy has put in a good bid for a place in the corporate villains’ pantheon, but there are plenty more bosses out there who kicked the footstool away from their employees’ gallows with equally bad grace.
AOL was treated to the spectacle of live bloodletting when CEO Tim Armstrong sacked a creative director in the middle of a conference call to 1,000 employees. Armstrong had been on the line discussing layoffs at a subsidiary, Patch Media, when Abel Lenz took an unauthorised photo of him, resulting in a swift bellow of: “You’re fired.”
In 2015, Alejandro Rhett, a vice-president at US clothing giant J Crew, sacked 175 employees, then retired to the company’s bar. After a few drinks, he and the still-employed loaded up Instagram with celebratory pics. In one shot, he and a colleague could be seen literally jumping for joy. He captioned another shot – of him pulling a “Number One” gesture – with references to the Hunger Games films, in which teenagers are forced to fight to the death: “#maytheoddsbeeverinyourfavor”. Once the media picked up on his posts, though, he rapidly found himself in the dole queue, too.
Thomson Local’s 200 sales reps received a mysterious email late one Tuesday in 2013, advising them to attend a meeting at head office. They were ushered into two rooms, where one half were told they had been sacked. Having surrendered their company cars, the unfortunate 50% were left to make journeys – some of hundreds of miles – home on public transport, clutching items such as child car seats that they had pulled from their ex-vehicles.
At Wigan council, environmental services director Terry Dunn was dubbed a “real-life David Brent” for sending an email discussing redundancies that ended with a cheery coda about his upcoming plans: “On the home front, off to a punk rock festival in Blackpool this Friday. The Damned, Stiff Little Fingers and the Buzzcocks are amongst the acts playing so those old enough may remember them. I am really looking forward to it as it forms a big part of my past.” Incredibly, not only did Dunn continue to work for the council, but two years later he allowed ITV to film a documentary – Don’t Blame the Council – with his team. It proved to be a hatchet job and the guileless Dunn was finally done in.
