Accidentally Learning You're About to Be Fired

Sept. 17, 2009 — -- Heather, a sales professional in the health insurance industry, got the mother of all accidental e-mails last year.

"A representative from HR accidentally cc'd me in a letter discussing plans for my termination," the San Diego resident said. "Within moments of sending the e-mail she tried to recall it, but that only drew more attention to it. The cat was out of the bag."

For Doug, a financial analyst from Greensboro, N.C., the tipoff was finding his own position listed online. For Eric, an advertising professional in Phoenix, it was stumbling upon a new seating chart his boss had left in the copier -- minus Eric's name. And Valerie, a social media marketing professional in Denver, received a premature note of condolence from a friend of her manager -- on Twitter.

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There aren't any statistics on the number of employees who've been subject to such sloppy information leaks since the recession began. But I didn't have to look far to find workers who'd learned of their impending layoff from an errant e-mail, ill-timed job listing or confidential document mistakenly left in a public printer.

Just last month, this kind of "soft firing" happened to two friends of mine at two different companies. Last September, it happened to the entire staff of a prominent ad agency.

Shocking and upsetting as it may be, there's a right way and a wrong way to deal with a soft firing like this. So let's talk about what you should do, who you should tell and what you should fight for if you find yourself on the losing end of such a bean spilling.