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Company Accidentally Fires Entire Staff Via Email

redletterdave writes with an amusing tale of missent email. From the article: "On Friday, more than 1,300 employees of London-based Aviva Investors walked into their offices, strolled over to their desks, booted up their computers and checked their emails, only to learn the shocking news: They would be leaving the company. The email ordered them to hand over company property and security passes before leaving the building, and left the staff with one final line: 'I would like to take this opportunity to thank you and wish you all the best for the future. 'This email was sent to Aviva's worldwide staff of 1,300 people, with bases in the U.S., UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Finland and the Netherlands. And it was all one giant mistake: The email was intended for only one individual."

8 of 333 comments (clear)

  1. Re:moral of the story by bws111 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nobody was fired. RTFA. It was nothing more than a final note to a person who was leaving the company.

  2. Re:Wrong by bws111 · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you read the article, you will see that nobody was fired. Someone was leaving the company, and they got a note reminding of them of contractual obligations, procedures to be followed, and a thanks for years of service. That person would have found nothing odd at all about receiving the note. It was the people who weren't expecting the note who assumed they were fired.

  3. Re:Wrong by WillHirsch · · Score: 5, Informative

    Slow down there, champ. Despite TFA being headlined "[FULL TEXT]", the full contents of the email doesn't appear in the article.

    The link to Reuters in the article doesn't either, but contains the following statement from Aviva's spokesman: "An email which was intended for a member of staff who was leaving today was accidentally sent to all Aviva Investors staff worldwide."

    In other words, the intended recipient was well aware he/she was leaving, not even necessarily fired, and a form letter is used to lay out information outgoing staff need to be aware of. Worth a giggle at how for a moment it might have looked like all the staff had received a surprise sacking, but not really an excuse to get out your pet grievance about large organisational structures.

  4. Re:Wrong by samoanbiscuit · · Score: 4, Informative

    Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The opening credits have an awesome joke where they promise to sack the people responsible, then they promise to sack the people who were supposed to do the previous round of sackings...

  5. Re:Wrong by newcastlejon · · Score: 4, Informative

    They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which is patently bunk since this obviously couldn't contain 5 million words... unless you can read really fast.

    --
    If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
  6. Re:Wrong by TrekkieGod · · Score: 4, Informative

    average != median. Woosh !

    That is incorrect. The median is most certainly a type of average. The mean is another type of average, and the mode is yet another type of average. Most of the time, when people say "average", they are referring to the mean, but all three of those are averages.

    In addition, it's generally a good assumption that productivity at a company will follow a normal distribution, in which case the median and the mean have the same value.

    --

    Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.

  7. Re:Giant Mistake? by 24-bit+Voxel · · Score: 4, Informative

    It was invented by Disney during WW2 to help train soldiers to fight nazis. yes, they were trained by cartoons.

    Snafu was actually Private Snafu, who just fucked up everything he touched. Don't be like Private Snafu.

    It does mean "Situation normal all fucked up"

  8. Re:Giant Mistake? by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 4, Informative

    It was invented by Disney during WW2 to help train soldiers to fight nazis.

    That sounded facinating, but when I went to learn more I found that Wikipedia disagrees with you. It cites several uses of the word prior to the creation of Private Snafu.

    Still, it was interesting to find out about the Disney shorts. I must watch some on Youtube once my boss have left the building!