I truly love Halloween. It’s a great holiday without family or guilt obligations. It’s candy and costumes, and what could be better? Nothing.
But what could be worse?
Oh, dear me, a whole lot worse than I could have imagined.
So terrible that I hope this is fake.
If you don’t wish to click through the TL;DW (too long, didn’t watch), is that:
- The company conducted layoffs
- The company decorated for Halloween
- The decorations were ghosts
- With the names of the recently terminated employees attached to them
I mean, holy smokes, I hope this is fake. If it’s fake, it’s funny. If it’s real, it’s horrifying.
Terminations are not funny. Yes, having some gallows humor around terminations can be a natural response to something awful. But, whoever decorated the office was not at all sensitive to the feelings of the terminated people (who would undoubtedly hear about it) and those still employed–who may be suffering from survivor’s guilt.
I’m all for having fun on Halloween. I’m for candy and costumes. But I’m not for being mean and heartless. This is mean and heartless.
Be funny. Be clever. Bring candy. Don’t be cruel.
To me this reads as a pissed off employee, either current or laid-off. If it is the company and I worked there I would have torn it down. Great sarcasm if employee. Messed up if company approved.
Yeah, I’m calling shenanigans. I trust TikToks by way of reddit about as far as I can throw my partner’s Beetle. My money is on “done by angry, vengeful (and clever) employees” or 100% staged.
That said, no one in HR or leadership should ever try to be funny at the expense of/make jokes about people you’ve laid off.
Let’s assume the still-employed employees created the ghosts of employment past. I think it’s a great statement to the management that let them go that:
1. the employees aren’t forgotten
2. the actions of the management aren’t forgotten
3. this really isn’t a nice place to work, and no one has any loyalty to the company anymore
It’s not funny…it’s serious and I love it. Stick it to them…like they did their staff.
There was a manager at a company I worked for that made a cape out of the cube name plates of employees that got RIFed over the years and wore it to work on Halloween. He thought it was funny. It kind of was humorous but also sad.