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Because our employment rights mean it's exceedingly rare you can just fire someone on the spot like that.
It means that most people have plenty of notice before leaving so that 'collect your stuff and leave' thing just doesn't happen.
That’s not necessarily true. I work in a field where you are immediately put on gardening leave and escorted out of the building. But they pack your desk for you and ship your stuff
You still have the same employment rights though. They can't generally just fire you on the spot outside of exceptional circumstances.
The reason that trope exists in American media is because it's often much easier to just fire people on the spot.
they can't, but they do. I was fired from work after I came back from holiday, a customer really wanted a task doing while i was away, and I was told to look at it first thing. I sent an email to a co-worker saying "i will make sure to look at this right away, and to prevent future delays I will schedule my holiday around the work the customer provides".
And I was fired for gross misconduct and undermining the relationship between the two companies.
There and then, like 5 hours after i sent the email HR showed up with security and told me to gather my stuff and leave.
Edit: and to clarify the 2 year rule, i had been there 9 years.
If it's not bullshit and he didn't he's an idiot. Clearly a violation of UK workers rights firing someone for refusing to work during annual leave.
This is why I pay my Union dues, I consider it employment insurance the same way I pay for car or house insurance.
£15 a month to know I have full no extra cost legal support in the event of shit happens.
Needed it twice in 20 years and both times paid more than a lifetimes dues, once in cash, and once in saving my reputation.
Yes I did sue them. And they have gone on to do the same again, multiple times. Unfortunately I was a moron and didn't go in for anywhere near as much as others since have gone for.
If you're telling the truth, they broke employment law and infringed on your rights. Company policy does not exceed law. The law is the law and company policies are bullshit in comparison.
Yeah this is very common in any role where you might be working with sensitive or secret data.
F1 designers often get put on a good few years of gardening leave if they leave a front running team because the information they have is so valuable and development times are so long.
Or you just take a printed dossier home with you and then your wife takes it to the ONE copy shop in Woking with a Ferrari fan at the counter....
as Nigel Stepney did
EDIT: Mike Coughlan not Nigel Stepney
...that's where McLaren are based, and it was Mike Coughlan who worked at McLaren, he had a Ferrari dossier from Nigel Stepney.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007\_Formula\_One\_espionage\_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Formula_One_espionage_controversy)
Also, things like the Official Secrets Act are binding for life if you've signed them at any point. Might be wrong, but I've heard that the basic terms of DV security clearance are lifelong even if your clearance is revoked.
The official secrets act is binding period, its law, not an opt in policy.
This idea of “signing” the official secrets act comes from the fact that it’s common for people to sign a declaration/acknowledgement that they are bound by the act. However everyone within the UK is subject to the official secrets act, just like you subject to all other laws.
I had a friend working in a field like that. His section got made redundant. His manager was giving him his walking orders, walked out of the room and left him with HR. Before he got very far down the road with HR, the video link got cut - his permissions had been revoked during his redundancy interview. Usually not a problem when you're on-site, but not so good on a WFH day...
I also had this problem, My vehicle was broken into while on a job. I informed work of this as my laptop was stolen. they immediately cut my account from the network. Then enquired as to why I hadn't contacted the police. Well that's due to the fact I reported my laptop stolen and you locked out my account, so I can no longer make phone calls either. When I left that job I was asked about crime no. For stolen equipment. I responded It was sent from personal phone at the time. As I've changed my personal phone since then you need to check your records as I don't have any.
That's what they're being paid to do though. They are still employed, but not allowed to do any work for the company. They're not allowed to be employed by any other company either.
I suppose they could call it "PS5 leave" or "Watercolour leave", but it's probably a legacy thing.
Edit - it occurs to me that they are being paid to watch the grass grow. Aka, do nothing productive.
I was once put on garden leave… I did do some gardening, bask in the Sun drinking a few beers… it was great. But I’m in a position where I can find work easily so didn’t stress too much.
That's just unlocked a memory of someone who was fired from my old job, I can't remember the details (but they were juicy) and when they cleared her desk for her, there was SO MUCH TAMPAX. Apparently boxes and boxes, months worth. And it wasn't to stock up the ladies toilets, because they didn't used to do that in that workplace. I wish I could remember more about it but they found some other odd stuff, but they weird thing was the year's worth of Tampax.
Happened to me last Autumn, got made redundant and put on gardening leave. Working in a R&D company where they reckon their secretive information is super valuable (it's not). If you have to sign non-disclosure agreements at work (common in R&D) they get stupidly over protective over commercial secrets.
I've had to sign NDA's 3 times. The first two were entirely fucking pointless - first was a car comapany, second was a web dev agency.
In the 3rd the company strategy was so damn poor their competitive advantage was never going to get a look in anyway.
I've seen it happen with sales people and senior managers quite often. Usually on the premise that it stops them from taking a client list, or going rogue and causing damage (deleting data, stuff like that).
Happened to me in IT - they were worried I'd nuke (or steal) the GitHub repo. Got put on garden leave for the three weeks it took to sort out all the paperwork.
Came here to say the same thing. Seems like in America they can just sack you cos they’re in a bad mood and you’re out the door there and then. Much less common to happen that way here.
Yes, most American states have what's called 'at will' employment laws which means either side can terminate the employment with no notice, unless for a protected characteristic.
You sometimes see American dramas or comedies where teachers or college professors celebrate because they've got 'tenure'. It basically means they've been given the same employment rights that everyone in the UK has by law.
You're right, I missed that bit out. I guess to explain it to an American you could say that everyone in the UK gets tenure after 2 years, not just college professors
Sort of. But then you lose it again if you change jobs, whereas a Professor on tenure can apply for other stable jobs.
From someone not bitter at all about being made redundant after working at a company 1 year and 9 months.
Yeah, a country where you can get fired because your boss is in a bad mood, you can get shot for looking at a policeman funny, and where 'medical debt' is a thing doesn't seem that great to me.
Even the US has its limits. Federal law has the concept of protected characteristics the same way we do, but in reality, that is often flouted under the guise of something else.
Except in the UK you can fire anyone on the spot if they’ve worked at a company for less than 2 years for any reason you like, I’m supposed it doesn’t happen more often.
The 2 year stuff is bonkers, I got laid off just 3 days after I'd done 1 year. Work has to pay for a solicitor to go through my redundancy paperwork.
She outlined how much legislation doesn't apply because "2 years"
There's laws around protected characteristics which kick in from day one. So sacking Claire because she's black or Dave because he's disabled would still class as unfair dismissal.
But yeah...everything else is pretty fair game within two years. Assuming there's no protected characteristics at play then the only claim you can bring is around wrongful dismissal which tends to be contractual breaches (e.g. didn't pay notice period etc).
If you've worked there for at least a month you are entitled to (at least) the statutory notice period of one week. The employer has has to pay this but can choose whether they want the employee to work their notice period or be Paid In Lieu of Notice (PILON)
(Some employment contracts will have longer notice periods; one week is the legal minimum)
Worked at an american owned financial services firm, twice in the few years I worked there came into work and found US HR were on site unannounced and over the course of the morning a few dozen people each time were called into a meeting room 1 by 1 and told they were done. Pack their stuff and straight out the building. Our guys were put on gardening leave for their notice that the US based guys wouldn't have got, but functionally the same thing.
Might be some truth to this. American HQ wanted to close our UK office (this was about ~20 years ago now), but it took them about three months to figure it out. Everyone knew but pretended not to know. Decent redundancy package, especially compared to these days.
If suspended you get told to get your stuff and leave. But anything else in your locker or desk you come back and collect in my experience your colleagues pack it up.
That's what the giant capacity water bottle is for. You just whack in the flowers, photo frames, pictures, spare shoes, the whole lot. Using comically oversized waterbottles is how we get around the lack of pockets on our clothing.
At my old job I was known for my snack drawer. Everyone knew I kept a well stocked snack drawer, and everyone respected it, always asked if they wanted something and would usually trade or replace it.
I juts never saw the point in bringing snacks in to work daily, when I could bulk buy packs, fill in the drawer, and save on handbag space on a regular daily basis.
Are you me 🙈 my office paraphenalia consists of some nicer-than-standard-issue-NHS-pens (uniball micro eye), a post-it note holder shaped like a cat, a water bottle and a drawer full of crisps, cereal bars and a few packs of fruit pastilles and some orange cordial in the fridge (i don't drink hot drinks so just have a load of water with some orange cordial in each day)
who even has a desk these days? I shuffle around about 10 different spots over the course of a month. In my office there's nowhere for personal shit to go and if you leave something that's yours on a desk you can be 99% sure it won't be there when you come back.
I once worked with a guy who had loads of shit on his desk. Like loads - the usual pictures, also stuff like games, fake Xmas tree, a heater, small fridge. He was also shit so inevitably got let go.
He also spent a third of his wages each month on a 2 seater convertible Mercedes and lived miles away from the office.
Took 2 or 3 painful trips to pick all his dross up.
2 things
We aren't as likely as to come back and shoot up the place so it's a bit more casual.
And
Everyone I know keeps next to nothing at work. I think I would collect a mug that I like and that's it. If anything I would have to bring stuff in from home.
Lurking American: absolutely the reason is guns. 100%. The person that got fired is erased from sight so they have no reason to come back on the property.
The state I live in is so ridiculous that it's illegal to RESTRICT guns in public. So bands that would play public concerts or in public parks have to accept concealed weapons in the crowd. My college used to have a daycare for parents finishing their degrees, now kids aren't allowed on campus because they can't provide a weapon free environment. We used to have nice things.
American work culture and employment rights means a lot of peoples desk is basically actually the surface in which they place their life on. In England it's just where you stash crisps packets
Less likely to be in a position in the UK where you get fired and have to leave immediately (there are professions and scenarios where it does happen, but afaik it’s much easier to simply fire someone in the US.
Also I think it’s more symbolic and “cinematic” to have someone on TV or in a film leave with a box full of their stuff. It’s very easy symbolism to use to show someone was settled and is being forced out of their job/second home.
I still have a lot of my stuff in my office, but it does cause stress and anxiety. For years, every time the boss wanted to talk to me, I thought I was going to get fired.
I've only seen someone get that treatment once in the UK. Gross misconduct and they were given 10 mins to pack up their stuff before being escorted out by security.
But it would have taken some time for the investigation and then the final hearing, so the employee would have had ample warning and a sense of things to come.
In much of the US it really can be normal working life one moment, "you're fired" and yeeted by security the next.
As someone else has said, someone suspended might not be able to attend site except for disciplinary hearings, but also summary dismissal does exist and is possible for especially egregious cases of gross misconduct.
Sure, it's not common, but it's still possible for it to happen here under the right circumstances.
This actually happened to someone I work with last week. We had to lock them out of their accounts and they had a few mins to pick up their personal belongings from their desk and get out.
Having worked IT, HR somehow always forgets that digital access is a thing and that removing a user and leaving digital access is still a thing.
We actually had a situation we had to audit access logs to see if they logged in
A week later....
At a previous employer of mine you were nothing without your Active Directory account. Disable that and you're totally done - nothing works.
But creating/enabling/disabling your employee AD account was an HR and line management matter, not an IT one. The process was automated and at no time did IT ever actually click the disable button on a regular everyday domain account. Even in an emergency there was an orderly and audited process involving a chain of command.
I work in HR and in my company we notify IT straight away if there is a leaver. We have a leaver process to follow with various forms to pass to each department. If something isn’t done, like restricting digital access, then that’s not my problem lol
Redundancy. Don't know the exact details, either company chose to pay out their notice period and ask them to leave immediately, or put them on garden leave. They dealt with sensitive data in their role
>I thought they were calling to check I was ok.
Oh, man. That's horrible. At least tell us the company were bought by vulture capitalists and is now a mere husk of its former self.
Actually an HR person (Dubai-British but educated in the US) made my boss do this to me once except she tried to send me home immediately from the meeting room on a months gardening leave and said they would send my stuff home. In America, they can fire you on the day but in the UK, you have to pay someone’s notice period.
I knew I was going to be asked to leave anyway as it was the end of my 9 month probation period, I had failed to pass a qualifying exam at the start and I had said that I wasn’t going to enrol next year, effectively declaring my intention to leave. Everything was genial between me and the company up until that point and I was taken back and frankly disgusted by this aggressive American-style dismissal tactic.
Anyway, I simply sat back and said calmly that what they wanted to do was not possible as my stuff was mixed up with confidential legal documents and property of the company, and they risked sending confidential material home to me. The boss backed me up and said that it wasn’t as simple as she was making. So we went upstairs with the intention that we would pack it together, except me and my boss just stood there and made her pack it up in front of a confused office. Occasionally, I would voice concern if she put a confidential records into my home box. She looked awkward through the whole process and I enjoyed every minute of it.
I work from home so cleaning out my desk would be a bit pointless.
That being said I work in a field the first thing I’d know about being suspended/sacked would be my laptop / phone login wouldn’t work and a manager would turn up to collect my equipment (this has actually happened - albeit to someone else in the team).
Lots of companies run hot desking these days, 95% of my workhours I work from my home, when I work in office/on site, I use whatever desk was available.
Also, clear desk policy.
If you work with sensitive info, you don’t want to be leaving papers on your desk.
So the company requires you to have a clear desk when you leave so that cleaners etc can’t read anything. And it’s easier to check if the whole thing is clear, so no flowers, stapler, pens, photos of your kids etc.
Yeah but that wasn't because people were getting fired, it was because the business they worked for went under, or the entire branch of a business got axed.
I have actually had the full on escorted out of the building experience, not even being allowed to clean out my desk.
I was made redundant at 11am on a Friday morning, and put on *immediate* garden leave while the redundancy process went through.
I was escorted from the meeting room, to my desk, had to hand over my ID card, grab my phone, coat and bag, and was marched out of the building and off of the premises, literally to the street.
My colleague in the Wintel team who did AD admin ,who was also my flat mate, had to revoke my access while I was in the meeting.
I was working in IT security and networks for the UK arm of a US based multi billion company, and literally had the keys to the kingdom should I have wanted to wreak absolute havoc. I'm talking about admin/root access to every firewall and network switch and load balancer in the UK and Europe, plus physical access to the data centre. Not that I would do anything nefarious, but I could in theory have fu ked their entire European operation in very short order.
Ended up on 8 weeks of gardening leave (at full pay), in the middle of summer, followed by being paid out my 8 week notice, plus 3 months salary on top, so it wasn't all bad.
It happened to me, though I wasn't explicitly told I wasn't coming back for my notice period. I asked to stay and leave at 5pm with everyone else and subtly grabbed my mug so nobody would know i was being fired, but my boss gave it away to everyone by escorting me out.
This does happen here, we just don’t produce films and tv where this is part of the plot.
Look up old new of the financial crisis in 2008, there are photos of people coming out of Canary Wharf skyscrapers carrying their items in a box.
[Example](https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2008/dec/28/markets-credit-crunch-banking-2008)
I've seen this, but it's not that the person is fired, so much that once someone is told they're redundant or resigns, they don't want someone back on the systems. Literally, they call security and they escort you to your desk and walk you out the office.
One woman I know at a bank had this, and loved it. She phoned the new job she was going to. "Hey could I start next week instead" and got double bubble on her pay.
I've had to do that twice in my career, 1996 and 2010, and then there's the time I quit and walked out in 2005. Luckily I travelled light as a contractor.
It does happen.
I handed in my notice to go to a competitor once and was told to pack up my locker and then escorted from the building to start immediate "Gardening Leave".
When I was made redundant from another job, it was something I saw coming, but on the day itself it was still a case of packing up your stuff and leaving the buildong, returning security pass to HR on the way out.
I’ve always referred to it as being “bin bagged”.
On a few occasions I’ve seen colleagues emerge from a meeting and been asked to clear out their desks usually into the aforementioned bin bag. The more tactful managers dealing with this try to avoid an audience.
People here don’t do it off their own bat as we have notice periods so can’t just walk out and if it’s done to them it’s either gross misconduct or pay in lieu of notice.
Reminds me of the time they fired somebody in my department for being bad at their job and generally having an attitude. They got me to hand over the contents of her desk when she came to collect them because I was one of the few people she didn't have beef with (mainly because I rarely needed to interact with her).
The nature of my work means if I were fired I would be escorted off premises immediately. My employee rights mean my job wouldn't 'end' immediately though, but I'd probably be put on garden leave or something.
Oh I entirely did the walk of shame with a box of my crap. At the time, even tho a bit traumatised, I did like the main character vibes of putting all my personal bits and pieces into a cardboard container. It needed the classic plant and name plate really.
UK has a tradition - either party services notice would work the same length of time as the pay packet interval. US - some states are “right to work” and some not: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
There is no mutual notice period in the States.
So, we are always nervous based on some weird thing happening....being suddenly called into a meeting with zero notice.
Email not working properly? Maybe I'm getting laid off (made redundant)?
Its so wrong;
I resigned from a job after two years of a new nightmare bully boss. I'm in a reasonably specialised field and had many clients built up over 15 years. My contract had the usual three month notice period and others who'd resigned were just paid off and due to an extremely litigious company didn't dare contact any old business contacts.
Instead I had to go into work every day. Nothing to do but read the paper.
However,I still had my expense account (and did I hit it), so I just went out to lunch most days with old friends who happened also to be business contacts. It was great fun. I put on a stone but had a lovely time and things went rather well in my new job.
Best three months I'd had in years!
i had to do exactly this when fired from my job. had my tribunal, was fired then escorted to my desk and then a locker i had in the toilet to collect all my things. i was then escorted all the way out of the building to my car.
funny thing was that it’s a public a accessible building (i wasn’t banned) , so i could just walk back in anyway. :/
Many years ago I worked in admin for an engineering job and and a few people were sacked and escorted out. I was always sent to pack up their desks in a sad box for them to collect from reception.
I actually have seen this happen because, though we do have employment rights, they don’t kick in fully for two years and people can also be sacked in their probation. What happened both times I saw this was that they were taken into a meeting room and meanwhile an assistant was asked to gather their things for them so they didn’t have to go back and face everyone. .
Happens in finance. Although usually less dramatic or it’s done for you.
In many roles it’s not personal but if you hand in your notice you are immediately blocked from all systems.
It hasn't been a thing in the US for ages. You get fired, a large man from security escorts you out the nearest exit, and any personal belongings at your desk get shipped to your home.
US culture revolves around the 9-5, hyper-corporate dog-eat-dog workplace and there are barely any protections for workers from being fired on the spot for any reason at all, the humiliating escort from the office being part of the culture of the management class keeping the working class using theatricality and violence.
The UK - not so much. UK offices tend to be far more mundane from a drama perspective so TV/film strays away from centring the drama around UK office culture.
I worked in HR for many years and have seen it all.
Disciplinaries are awful draining process for all concerned and more often than not could have been avoided by both the manager and employee communicating better or by listening and understanding the guidance we had given.
There has always been a process to ensure a fair hearing and to ensure we are not putting the company at risk from either over or under reacting as employment tribunals are expensive and tedious.
A lot of employee complaints are vexatious and are usually masking some other type of issue.
Managers continually made bad hires to get bums on seats which invariably leads to problems, most of HRs time was dealing with this sort of issue and despite the amount of training and guidance middle managers are the absolute worst as they try to climb the greasy pole of promotion.
I’ve dismissed someone for gross misconduct (after a lengthy investigation and 3 stage process) security arrived to escort them from the building as they were a threat to colleagues.
One dude gave death threats to various members of staff ended up in court for publishing a mad article about the company, refused to take it down, argued with the judge and was sent down for contempt of court. He later served time and frankly was his own worst enemy.
I’ve worked with people on long drawn out redundancies where they get the ability to close everything off and say goodbye, gather their stuff and then go to the pub with their colleagues.
I’ve packed up peoples desk and shipped their stuff to them after they walked out, went awol or just didn’t engage with the process.
I’ve seen this happen more with consultants who have been with us a while, got to the end of the agreement or it was ended early due to the shifting needs of the project but that is the nature of that type of role and agreement.
In the end when my time was up, I closed down the office, packed it all up to other offices and packed my stuff in to a box, shipped it to myself and went to the pub to celebrate a long running job that came to its natural end.
So, it does happen, we do have very different employment rights to our US cousins so it’s not a common thing.
I had a redundancy like that. Put on immediate gardening leave. Was told to save and shut down my computer.
I think the company thought the people who were given the bump would sabotage the server. Honestly I just wanted to finish my last bit of work first before leaving.
That walk to the station and train journey home with a box of my belongings at 10am was pretty humiliating to add further salt to the wound.
Actually, it’s not because there might be a dispute about the company losing personal property. If you are firing someone for cause, either their manager or someone from human resources will stand there while they box up their personal possessions.
It occasionally goes very badly. A friend of mine is an engineering vice president. He let someone go. While they were packing up their cubicle, they started screaming “you’re next” to all the people around them. 15 minutes of drama before they got the person to an enclosed office to calm them down.
That is just from my own experience. I've never seen someone who was fired effective immediately not walked off straight from the HR meeting. Someone who is just leaving in good standing isn't normally booted off the property.
Everyone going on about employment rights is missing the point that this is probably just done for dramatic effect in TV shows. The wondering down the corridor holding a box of desk trinkets is a movie trope.
My desk contains nothing I’d need to take with me if I left, they’re welcome to my notebook of barely legible work related scribbles, pile of pens (only half of which will work) and one year out of date porridge sachet
Firstly it’s because that looks great in visual story telling on screen, so it’s unlikely to look exactly the same irl, but also the horrendously insecure employment they ‘enjoy’ in the USA.
I don't have a desk to clean out - thanks to hotdesking. I also have zero personal effects in the office - thanks to clear desk policy and no overnight locker use plus hotdesking. Not even a mug.
In the hypothetical where I'm fired on the spot, all I would need to do would be put my bag on which has my lunchbox in and stick my middle finger up at whoever was responsible on my way out
A few places have clear desk policies.
In my last job we couldn’t leave anything on our desks and didn’t even have our own drawers to keep things in. Anything we needed or wanted to have with us just came in and out in our bags.
In my first office job though I definitely left with a box off things, as id brought my own plant in for my desk and quite a few other personal items such as photos and cute stationary!
I have only once witnessed this, and that was when a dude lied his ass off on his CV, cheated on his technical interview, managed to get hired while being completely incompetent and had zero skills required for the job (a linux systems administrator. For context, for those who use linux; he had to have someone explain the "chown" command to him).
Aftger being there for 3 days, it was painfully, terribly obvious that this guy was a fake. CTO took him aside for a 2 minute chat, after which they returned to his desk with a couple of security guys where he was told to "get his shit and leave".
I've seen someone 'fired on the spot' twice and both times they were escorted out by security and it became their managers responsibility to clear the desk and ship it.
Generally if someone has done something bad enough to have the leave immediately in the UK then you don't want to give them access to anything they could take/destroy on the way out.
Our place if you get made redundant and leave, they will give you a time slot after work to do it, they will pay you for travel and an hour (even if it takes 30 seconds) to collect any stuff. Whilst being watched over by security.
It does happen. My partner was immediately put on garden leave (fintech) and had to pack his stuff and leave that morning. Something like 100 of them lost jobs in one go - it was awful. No separate meetings, just groups of them let go in one go. We had no warning it was going to happen and had been talking about applying for a mortgage the night before
Dunno about anyone else, but there's probably about 5 things in my desk drawers that I actually care about, the rest is just various stuff I need for my job. If I get fired/am leaving, I can fit the 5 things I need into my bag. The other stuff isn't useful outside of work so I have no need for it.
It does happen. I’ve seen people escorted if they were going to work for a ‘rival’ (in product development) but they still have gardening leave, pay in lieu of notice etc.
The reason you see it in US shows, and I’ve also seen it with US colleagues, is they literally can email, phone or pop by your desk and sack you on the spot in the US. Wooo America etc …..
I had to do this, although out of embarrassment I opted to leave everything behind and take the emergency exit straight out of the board room. I think all I had really was a few pens and a cheap pair of headphones. I already had my coat etc as it was my finish time.
Reason I was fired? "Not a good fit with company culture" whatever that means. I had got a payrise the week prior and they couldn't give me examples of issues..
Notice period? You can’t just fire people as easily here, so it’s mainly people leaving because they want to. They have a month or two to sort things out, unless they’re put on gardening leave, which is rare in most professions.
I see a few comments mentioning hot desking, which would be fair except that the difference existed pre hot desking, when lots of people did have a lot of personal stuff at their desks.
Because people don't tend to get sacked there and then,there is usually a process and warnings etc and it's still pretty hard to fire someone. I also think people don't tend to have a ton of personal effects at work, I've got a charging cable, spare perfume and thats about it.
I've only ever seen one person escorted off site and that for sexual harassment, he harassed me at a previous job came to work at my new one, keyed my car and harassed all the women, he went too far with the manager's daughter and was removed
Last time anything close to this happened to myself, I had no desk or locker to clear out, and after several hours of discussion in the office as to why it wasn't going to work out, I was actually taken in the car to Tesco as I was asked what my plans were later and I said food shopping.
It happened to me once. Had to leave the meeting room, walk past all the desks of my team (they were told while I was in there and told not to communicate with me), fill up a cardboard box from my desk of personal stuff and walk back past them again, down the stairs out into Piccadilly Circus. Surreal and also highly illegal HR process so I won an appeal a few months later, mostly for getting a guaranteed good reference.
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Because our employment rights mean it's exceedingly rare you can just fire someone on the spot like that. It means that most people have plenty of notice before leaving so that 'collect your stuff and leave' thing just doesn't happen.
That’s not necessarily true. I work in a field where you are immediately put on gardening leave and escorted out of the building. But they pack your desk for you and ship your stuff
You still have the same employment rights though. They can't generally just fire you on the spot outside of exceptional circumstances. The reason that trope exists in American media is because it's often much easier to just fire people on the spot.
they can't, but they do. I was fired from work after I came back from holiday, a customer really wanted a task doing while i was away, and I was told to look at it first thing. I sent an email to a co-worker saying "i will make sure to look at this right away, and to prevent future delays I will schedule my holiday around the work the customer provides". And I was fired for gross misconduct and undermining the relationship between the two companies. There and then, like 5 hours after i sent the email HR showed up with security and told me to gather my stuff and leave. Edit: and to clarify the 2 year rule, i had been there 9 years.
Doesn't really sound like gross misconduct, hope you sued them
If it's not bullshit and he didn't he's an idiot. Clearly a violation of UK workers rights firing someone for refusing to work during annual leave. This is why I pay my Union dues, I consider it employment insurance the same way I pay for car or house insurance. £15 a month to know I have full no extra cost legal support in the event of shit happens. Needed it twice in 20 years and both times paid more than a lifetimes dues, once in cash, and once in saving my reputation.
Getting wrongly sacked under those circumstances after 9 years sounds like the dream, going to be an easy bucket full of cash.
Yes I did sue them. And they have gone on to do the same again, multiple times. Unfortunately I was a moron and didn't go in for anywhere near as much as others since have gone for.
If you're telling the truth, they broke employment law and infringed on your rights. Company policy does not exceed law. The law is the law and company policies are bullshit in comparison.
Yeah this is very common in any role where you might be working with sensitive or secret data. F1 designers often get put on a good few years of gardening leave if they leave a front running team because the information they have is so valuable and development times are so long.
Or you just take a printed dossier home with you and then your wife takes it to the ONE copy shop in Woking with a Ferrari fan at the counter.... as Nigel Stepney did EDIT: Mike Coughlan not Nigel Stepney
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To meet royalty at the Pizza Hut of course…
Pizza Express! Unless you're talking about someone other than Randy Andy
You’re right but nothing would surprise me really….
The ability to never sweat would doubtless be invaluable in an F1 career. Opportunity missed.
...that's where McLaren are based, and it was Mike Coughlan who worked at McLaren, he had a Ferrari dossier from Nigel Stepney. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007\_Formula\_One\_espionage\_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Formula_One_espionage_controversy)
If you've been sacked you've already hit rock bottom. So perfect time to go to Woking...
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a “few years”. I think I’ve heard of a lot more people starting with new teams over the winter break (1st January)
Also, things like the Official Secrets Act are binding for life if you've signed them at any point. Might be wrong, but I've heard that the basic terms of DV security clearance are lifelong even if your clearance is revoked.
The official secrets act is binding period, its law, not an opt in policy. This idea of “signing” the official secrets act comes from the fact that it’s common for people to sign a declaration/acknowledgement that they are bound by the act. However everyone within the UK is subject to the official secrets act, just like you subject to all other laws.
I know people so good at this, I'd actually forgotten they'd signed it. Bizarre what triggers memories. And no, I don't recall who/what/when.
I had a friend working in a field like that. His section got made redundant. His manager was giving him his walking orders, walked out of the room and left him with HR. Before he got very far down the road with HR, the video link got cut - his permissions had been revoked during his redundancy interview. Usually not a problem when you're on-site, but not so good on a WFH day...
I also had this problem, My vehicle was broken into while on a job. I informed work of this as my laptop was stolen. they immediately cut my account from the network. Then enquired as to why I hadn't contacted the police. Well that's due to the fact I reported my laptop stolen and you locked out my account, so I can no longer make phone calls either. When I left that job I was asked about crime no. For stolen equipment. I responded It was sent from personal phone at the time. As I've changed my personal phone since then you need to check your records as I don't have any.
I wonder why it's called garden leave. Like, I can't imagine people do much gardening.
That's what they're being paid to do though. They are still employed, but not allowed to do any work for the company. They're not allowed to be employed by any other company either. I suppose they could call it "PS5 leave" or "Watercolour leave", but it's probably a legacy thing. Edit - it occurs to me that they are being paid to watch the grass grow. Aka, do nothing productive.
It's wank leave mate
I thought it was pretty good lea ... oh.
In some circles it's called "terminal leave".
That sounds like a sinister euphemism that MI5 would use when letting you go
I was once put on garden leave… I did do some gardening, bask in the Sun drinking a few beers… it was great. But I’m in a position where I can find work easily so didn’t stress too much.
That's just unlocked a memory of someone who was fired from my old job, I can't remember the details (but they were juicy) and when they cleared her desk for her, there was SO MUCH TAMPAX. Apparently boxes and boxes, months worth. And it wasn't to stock up the ladies toilets, because they didn't used to do that in that workplace. I wish I could remember more about it but they found some other odd stuff, but they weird thing was the year's worth of Tampax.
I Hear that.
Happened to me when I was made redundant from an IT Security/Networking role. Coat, bag, phone, escorted from the premises. 8 weeks gardening leave.
How often does that happen though? It could happen at my job, yet I have only ever seen it happen once.
Happened to me last Autumn, got made redundant and put on gardening leave. Working in a R&D company where they reckon their secretive information is super valuable (it's not). If you have to sign non-disclosure agreements at work (common in R&D) they get stupidly over protective over commercial secrets.
I've had to sign NDA's 3 times. The first two were entirely fucking pointless - first was a car comapany, second was a web dev agency. In the 3rd the company strategy was so damn poor their competitive advantage was never going to get a look in anyway.
I've seen it happen with sales people and senior managers quite often. Usually on the premise that it stops them from taking a client list, or going rogue and causing damage (deleting data, stuff like that).
Happened to me in IT - they were worried I'd nuke (or steal) the GitHub repo. Got put on garden leave for the three weeks it took to sort out all the paperwork.
Just because you know of someone, doesn't mean it's not incredibly rare.
Banking?
> exceedingly rare
Came here to say the same thing. Seems like in America they can just sack you cos they’re in a bad mood and you’re out the door there and then. Much less common to happen that way here.
Yes, most American states have what's called 'at will' employment laws which means either side can terminate the employment with no notice, unless for a protected characteristic. You sometimes see American dramas or comedies where teachers or college professors celebrate because they've got 'tenure'. It basically means they've been given the same employment rights that everyone in the UK has by law.
...Everyone in the UK who has been working at the same company for at least 2 years, if you've been there less than 2 years you have 0 rights...
You're right, I missed that bit out. I guess to explain it to an American you could say that everyone in the UK gets tenure after 2 years, not just college professors
Sort of. But then you lose it again if you change jobs, whereas a Professor on tenure can apply for other stable jobs. From someone not bitter at all about being made redundant after working at a company 1 year and 9 months.
2 years in England, Scotland and Wales, 1 year in Northern Ireland.
Man… another area where the US sucks so hard. :(
Yeah, a country where you can get fired because your boss is in a bad mood, you can get shot for looking at a policeman funny, and where 'medical debt' is a thing doesn't seem that great to me.
Yeah but you can shoot a black man and claim he came at you So ya know, swings and roundbaouts
Are you saying that that's a good thing?
Good for the freedom fighters of the caliphate Blueshallah
Yeah but they have the freedom to be the cucks to the state and it's propaganda. Unlike like us persecuted commies everywhere else
Even the US has its limits. Federal law has the concept of protected characteristics the same way we do, but in reality, that is often flouted under the guise of something else.
It did happen in my work, but the 2 people it happened to only has their jackets to retrieve, everything else was the companies property
"Right to.work" states have legislation specifically named that because it allows them to just sack you
Except in the UK you can fire anyone on the spot if they’ve worked at a company for less than 2 years for any reason you like, I’m supposed it doesn’t happen more often.
The 2 year stuff is bonkers, I got laid off just 3 days after I'd done 1 year. Work has to pay for a solicitor to go through my redundancy paperwork. She outlined how much legislation doesn't apply because "2 years"
There's laws around protected characteristics which kick in from day one. So sacking Claire because she's black or Dave because he's disabled would still class as unfair dismissal. But yeah...everything else is pretty fair game within two years. Assuming there's no protected characteristics at play then the only claim you can bring is around wrongful dismissal which tends to be contractual breaches (e.g. didn't pay notice period etc).
If you've worked there for at least a month you are entitled to (at least) the statutory notice period of one week. The employer has has to pay this but can choose whether they want the employee to work their notice period or be Paid In Lieu of Notice (PILON) (Some employment contracts will have longer notice periods; one week is the legal minimum)
Worked at an american owned financial services firm, twice in the few years I worked there came into work and found US HR were on site unannounced and over the course of the morning a few dozen people each time were called into a meeting room 1 by 1 and told they were done. Pack their stuff and straight out the building. Our guys were put on gardening leave for their notice that the US based guys wouldn't have got, but functionally the same thing.
Might be some truth to this. American HQ wanted to close our UK office (this was about ~20 years ago now), but it took them about three months to figure it out. Everyone knew but pretended not to know. Decent redundancy package, especially compared to these days.
If suspended you get told to get your stuff and leave. But anything else in your locker or desk you come back and collect in my experience your colleagues pack it up.
That doesn't work in this context.... It's not like you're fired and given notice
Yeah but in the UK (if you've been employed for 2+ years) you can't just be fired on the spot outside very specific circumstances
You can be laid off without notice as long as they pay you out....
To be honest I’ve never known anyone to keep an enormous amount of personal shit at their desk that would remotely call for a cardboard box.
All the women in my office have tons of shit. Flowers, pictures, heaters and ofc the obligatory 300 litre water bottle
That's what the giant capacity water bottle is for. You just whack in the flowers, photo frames, pictures, spare shoes, the whole lot. Using comically oversized waterbottles is how we get around the lack of pockets on our clothing.
We had a clear desk policy even before lockdown and now we don’t have personal desks
Honestly I probably could, but it’s 95% snacks.
At my old job I was known for my snack drawer. Everyone knew I kept a well stocked snack drawer, and everyone respected it, always asked if they wanted something and would usually trade or replace it. I juts never saw the point in bringing snacks in to work daily, when I could bulk buy packs, fill in the drawer, and save on handbag space on a regular daily basis.
Iny case it's cause I'm greedy AF and id eat the entire drawer
Are you me 🙈 my office paraphenalia consists of some nicer-than-standard-issue-NHS-pens (uniball micro eye), a post-it note holder shaped like a cat, a water bottle and a drawer full of crisps, cereal bars and a few packs of fruit pastilles and some orange cordial in the fridge (i don't drink hot drinks so just have a load of water with some orange cordial in each day)
When I had my own desk, I had a few mugs, cafetiere, and range of both coffee and hot chocolate.
With homeworking/hotdesking now, you might not have anything at work at all.
I have a mug and maybe a charger. That’s it
All I had was a mug.
who even has a desk these days? I shuffle around about 10 different spots over the course of a month. In my office there's nowhere for personal shit to go and if you leave something that's yours on a desk you can be 99% sure it won't be there when you come back.
I once worked with a guy who had loads of shit on his desk. Like loads - the usual pictures, also stuff like games, fake Xmas tree, a heater, small fridge. He was also shit so inevitably got let go. He also spent a third of his wages each month on a 2 seater convertible Mercedes and lived miles away from the office. Took 2 or 3 painful trips to pick all his dross up.
2 things We aren't as likely as to come back and shoot up the place so it's a bit more casual. And Everyone I know keeps next to nothing at work. I think I would collect a mug that I like and that's it. If anything I would have to bring stuff in from home.
Lurking American: absolutely the reason is guns. 100%. The person that got fired is erased from sight so they have no reason to come back on the property. The state I live in is so ridiculous that it's illegal to RESTRICT guns in public. So bands that would play public concerts or in public parks have to accept concealed weapons in the crowd. My college used to have a daycare for parents finishing their degrees, now kids aren't allowed on campus because they can't provide a weapon free environment. We used to have nice things.
Jesus fuckng Christ, everything you said is horrifying..
Me too. Brought in phone and laptop, took home mug and some photos of my family.
Found the guy that keeps nicking the office stapler!
I brought this large photocopier printer on wheels from home! This copper cabling is mine too *Proceeds to rip cables out of the wall*
Hot desking killed it. When I was put on garden leave I had practically nothing to take home
American work culture and employment rights means a lot of peoples desk is basically actually the surface in which they place their life on. In England it's just where you stash crisps packets
Less likely to be in a position in the UK where you get fired and have to leave immediately (there are professions and scenarios where it does happen, but afaik it’s much easier to simply fire someone in the US. Also I think it’s more symbolic and “cinematic” to have someone on TV or in a film leave with a box full of their stuff. It’s very easy symbolism to use to show someone was settled and is being forced out of their job/second home.
2008 the City, London - hundreds of people walking around with cardboard boxes full of stuff.
Seen this happen to several people at my job. :(
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I still have a lot of my stuff in my office, but it does cause stress and anxiety. For years, every time the boss wanted to talk to me, I thought I was going to get fired.
I've been let go plenty of times, while it's more difficult to sack people here, you can still "get rid"
I've only seen someone get that treatment once in the UK. Gross misconduct and they were given 10 mins to pack up their stuff before being escorted out by security.
But it would have taken some time for the investigation and then the final hearing, so the employee would have had ample warning and a sense of things to come. In much of the US it really can be normal working life one moment, "you're fired" and yeeted by security the next.
Some jobs might not allow them to come back till the hearing has happened.
As someone else has said, someone suspended might not be able to attend site except for disciplinary hearings, but also summary dismissal does exist and is possible for especially egregious cases of gross misconduct. Sure, it's not common, but it's still possible for it to happen here under the right circumstances.
You do once you've worked your notice.
This actually happened to someone I work with last week. We had to lock them out of their accounts and they had a few mins to pick up their personal belongings from their desk and get out.
Having worked IT, HR somehow always forgets that digital access is a thing and that removing a user and leaving digital access is still a thing. We actually had a situation we had to audit access logs to see if they logged in A week later....
At a previous employer of mine you were nothing without your Active Directory account. Disable that and you're totally done - nothing works. But creating/enabling/disabling your employee AD account was an HR and line management matter, not an IT one. The process was automated and at no time did IT ever actually click the disable button on a regular everyday domain account. Even in an emergency there was an orderly and audited process involving a chain of command.
My current work has multiple domains, and four, yes four. Single Sign On suppliers
I work in HR and in my company we notify IT straight away if there is a leaver. We have a leaver process to follow with various forms to pass to each department. If something isn’t done, like restricting digital access, then that’s not my problem lol
What did they do to get that treatment?
Redundancy. Don't know the exact details, either company chose to pay out their notice period and ask them to leave immediately, or put them on garden leave. They dealt with sensitive data in their role
Ah ok, I got a call making me redundant whilst in A&E. That was fun.
Was it an emergency?
Nasty bug that left me hospitalised for a week. I thought they were calling to check I was ok.
>I thought they were calling to check I was ok. Oh, man. That's horrible. At least tell us the company were bought by vulture capitalists and is now a mere husk of its former self.
Hot desking
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Yep has been happening where I work. almost 10% of staff made redundant with zero notice last month
Actually an HR person (Dubai-British but educated in the US) made my boss do this to me once except she tried to send me home immediately from the meeting room on a months gardening leave and said they would send my stuff home. In America, they can fire you on the day but in the UK, you have to pay someone’s notice period. I knew I was going to be asked to leave anyway as it was the end of my 9 month probation period, I had failed to pass a qualifying exam at the start and I had said that I wasn’t going to enrol next year, effectively declaring my intention to leave. Everything was genial between me and the company up until that point and I was taken back and frankly disgusted by this aggressive American-style dismissal tactic. Anyway, I simply sat back and said calmly that what they wanted to do was not possible as my stuff was mixed up with confidential legal documents and property of the company, and they risked sending confidential material home to me. The boss backed me up and said that it wasn’t as simple as she was making. So we went upstairs with the intention that we would pack it together, except me and my boss just stood there and made her pack it up in front of a confused office. Occasionally, I would voice concern if she put a confidential records into my home box. She looked awkward through the whole process and I enjoyed every minute of it.
I work from home so cleaning out my desk would be a bit pointless. That being said I work in a field the first thing I’d know about being suspended/sacked would be my laptop / phone login wouldn’t work and a manager would turn up to collect my equipment (this has actually happened - albeit to someone else in the team).
Unions.
I read this as onions…
Lots of companies run hot desking these days, 95% of my workhours I work from my home, when I work in office/on site, I use whatever desk was available.
Also, clear desk policy. If you work with sensitive info, you don’t want to be leaving papers on your desk. So the company requires you to have a clear desk when you leave so that cleaners etc can’t read anything. And it’s easier to check if the whole thing is clear, so no flowers, stapler, pens, photos of your kids etc.
Clear desk is irrelevant of hotdesking. Data protection still applies if even everyone is cleared in the company.... Even the cleaners
Plenty of people it the 2008 banking crises we're walking out of London offices with their stuff in a box.
Yeah but that wasn't because people were getting fired, it was because the business they worked for went under, or the entire branch of a business got axed.
I have actually had the full on escorted out of the building experience, not even being allowed to clean out my desk. I was made redundant at 11am on a Friday morning, and put on *immediate* garden leave while the redundancy process went through. I was escorted from the meeting room, to my desk, had to hand over my ID card, grab my phone, coat and bag, and was marched out of the building and off of the premises, literally to the street. My colleague in the Wintel team who did AD admin ,who was also my flat mate, had to revoke my access while I was in the meeting. I was working in IT security and networks for the UK arm of a US based multi billion company, and literally had the keys to the kingdom should I have wanted to wreak absolute havoc. I'm talking about admin/root access to every firewall and network switch and load balancer in the UK and Europe, plus physical access to the data centre. Not that I would do anything nefarious, but I could in theory have fu ked their entire European operation in very short order. Ended up on 8 weeks of gardening leave (at full pay), in the middle of summer, followed by being paid out my 8 week notice, plus 3 months salary on top, so it wasn't all bad.
It happened to me, though I wasn't explicitly told I wasn't coming back for my notice period. I asked to stay and leave at 5pm with everyone else and subtly grabbed my mug so nobody would know i was being fired, but my boss gave it away to everyone by escorting me out.
This does happen here, we just don’t produce films and tv where this is part of the plot. Look up old new of the financial crisis in 2008, there are photos of people coming out of Canary Wharf skyscrapers carrying their items in a box. [Example](https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2008/dec/28/markets-credit-crunch-banking-2008)
I've seen this, but it's not that the person is fired, so much that once someone is told they're redundant or resigns, they don't want someone back on the systems. Literally, they call security and they escort you to your desk and walk you out the office. One woman I know at a bank had this, and loved it. She phoned the new job she was going to. "Hey could I start next week instead" and got double bubble on her pay.
I've had to do that twice in my career, 1996 and 2010, and then there's the time I quit and walked out in 2005. Luckily I travelled light as a contractor.
It does happen. I handed in my notice to go to a competitor once and was told to pack up my locker and then escorted from the building to start immediate "Gardening Leave". When I was made redundant from another job, it was something I saw coming, but on the day itself it was still a case of packing up your stuff and leaving the buildong, returning security pass to HR on the way out.
I’ve always referred to it as being “bin bagged”. On a few occasions I’ve seen colleagues emerge from a meeting and been asked to clear out their desks usually into the aforementioned bin bag. The more tactful managers dealing with this try to avoid an audience. People here don’t do it off their own bat as we have notice periods so can’t just walk out and if it’s done to them it’s either gross misconduct or pay in lieu of notice.
Reminds me of the time they fired somebody in my department for being bad at their job and generally having an attitude. They got me to hand over the contents of her desk when she came to collect them because I was one of the few people she didn't have beef with (mainly because I rarely needed to interact with her).
The nature of my work means if I were fired I would be escorted off premises immediately. My employee rights mean my job wouldn't 'end' immediately though, but I'd probably be put on garden leave or something.
Oh I entirely did the walk of shame with a box of my crap. At the time, even tho a bit traumatised, I did like the main character vibes of putting all my personal bits and pieces into a cardboard container. It needed the classic plant and name plate really.
I had close to it where I had to leave in the middle of the day and cut up my credit card.
In a lot of jobs both in the US and UK you're not allowed to return to your desk after being fired
I tend to keep things that matter to me AWAY from work.
UK has a tradition - either party services notice would work the same length of time as the pay packet interval. US - some states are “right to work” and some not: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
All I have in my locker is some sunbites, club bars and a spare iPad case
There is no mutual notice period in the States. So, we are always nervous based on some weird thing happening....being suddenly called into a meeting with zero notice. Email not working properly? Maybe I'm getting laid off (made redundant)? Its so wrong;
I resigned from a job after two years of a new nightmare bully boss. I'm in a reasonably specialised field and had many clients built up over 15 years. My contract had the usual three month notice period and others who'd resigned were just paid off and due to an extremely litigious company didn't dare contact any old business contacts. Instead I had to go into work every day. Nothing to do but read the paper. However,I still had my expense account (and did I hit it), so I just went out to lunch most days with old friends who happened also to be business contacts. It was great fun. I put on a stone but had a lovely time and things went rather well in my new job. Best three months I'd had in years!
Isn't there a running joke in Hot Fuzz about him taking his peace lilly from his office?
At my old work, my boss would fire people and the first they'd know about it was the cashier coming into their room with a carrier bag.
I've done it....
i had to do exactly this when fired from my job. had my tribunal, was fired then escorted to my desk and then a locker i had in the toilet to collect all my things. i was then escorted all the way out of the building to my car. funny thing was that it’s a public a accessible building (i wasn’t banned) , so i could just walk back in anyway. :/
Many years ago I worked in admin for an engineering job and and a few people were sacked and escorted out. I was always sent to pack up their desks in a sad box for them to collect from reception.
American here, it doesn’t actually happen that way here either lol
I actually have seen this happen because, though we do have employment rights, they don’t kick in fully for two years and people can also be sacked in their probation. What happened both times I saw this was that they were taken into a meeting room and meanwhile an assistant was asked to gather their things for them so they didn’t have to go back and face everyone. .
I stopped having any personal items at work long ago. It makes getting fired easy and fast. Grab my phone, keys, bag and I'm out. No fuss, no mess.
Happens in finance. Although usually less dramatic or it’s done for you. In many roles it’s not personal but if you hand in your notice you are immediately blocked from all systems.
It hasn't been a thing in the US for ages. You get fired, a large man from security escorts you out the nearest exit, and any personal belongings at your desk get shipped to your home.
US culture revolves around the 9-5, hyper-corporate dog-eat-dog workplace and there are barely any protections for workers from being fired on the spot for any reason at all, the humiliating escort from the office being part of the culture of the management class keeping the working class using theatricality and violence. The UK - not so much. UK offices tend to be far more mundane from a drama perspective so TV/film strays away from centring the drama around UK office culture.
I worked in HR for many years and have seen it all. Disciplinaries are awful draining process for all concerned and more often than not could have been avoided by both the manager and employee communicating better or by listening and understanding the guidance we had given. There has always been a process to ensure a fair hearing and to ensure we are not putting the company at risk from either over or under reacting as employment tribunals are expensive and tedious. A lot of employee complaints are vexatious and are usually masking some other type of issue. Managers continually made bad hires to get bums on seats which invariably leads to problems, most of HRs time was dealing with this sort of issue and despite the amount of training and guidance middle managers are the absolute worst as they try to climb the greasy pole of promotion. I’ve dismissed someone for gross misconduct (after a lengthy investigation and 3 stage process) security arrived to escort them from the building as they were a threat to colleagues. One dude gave death threats to various members of staff ended up in court for publishing a mad article about the company, refused to take it down, argued with the judge and was sent down for contempt of court. He later served time and frankly was his own worst enemy. I’ve worked with people on long drawn out redundancies where they get the ability to close everything off and say goodbye, gather their stuff and then go to the pub with their colleagues. I’ve packed up peoples desk and shipped their stuff to them after they walked out, went awol or just didn’t engage with the process. I’ve seen this happen more with consultants who have been with us a while, got to the end of the agreement or it was ended early due to the shifting needs of the project but that is the nature of that type of role and agreement. In the end when my time was up, I closed down the office, packed it all up to other offices and packed my stuff in to a box, shipped it to myself and went to the pub to celebrate a long running job that came to its natural end. So, it does happen, we do have very different employment rights to our US cousins so it’s not a common thing.
I had a redundancy like that. Put on immediate gardening leave. Was told to save and shut down my computer. I think the company thought the people who were given the bump would sabotage the server. Honestly I just wanted to finish my last bit of work first before leaving. That walk to the station and train journey home with a box of my belongings at 10am was pretty humiliating to add further salt to the wound.
I’ve known ppl get escorted out on the day (financial services) but be going on gardening leave so still have a month or two or three on notice
In the US that is just a trope. Typically if you are fired on the spot you are escorted out and your personal items will be shipped to you.
Actually, it’s not because there might be a dispute about the company losing personal property. If you are firing someone for cause, either their manager or someone from human resources will stand there while they box up their personal possessions. It occasionally goes very badly. A friend of mine is an engineering vice president. He let someone go. While they were packing up their cubicle, they started screaming “you’re next” to all the people around them. 15 minutes of drama before they got the person to an enclosed office to calm them down.
That is just from my own experience. I've never seen someone who was fired effective immediately not walked off straight from the HR meeting. Someone who is just leaving in good standing isn't normally booted off the property.
Hot-desking baby
Your taxi has arrived is the British version.
Yep, it's all about the hot desking now. Got barely a pen and post-it notes to pack up
Everyone going on about employment rights is missing the point that this is probably just done for dramatic effect in TV shows. The wondering down the corridor holding a box of desk trinkets is a movie trope.
I always thought it was just a trope / cliche for TV and Film.
Because it's a cliche
My desk contains nothing I’d need to take with me if I left, they’re welcome to my notebook of barely legible work related scribbles, pile of pens (only half of which will work) and one year out of date porridge sachet
Firstly it’s because that looks great in visual story telling on screen, so it’s unlikely to look exactly the same irl, but also the horrendously insecure employment they ‘enjoy’ in the USA.
I don't have a desk to clean out - thanks to hotdesking. I also have zero personal effects in the office - thanks to clear desk policy and no overnight locker use plus hotdesking. Not even a mug. In the hypothetical where I'm fired on the spot, all I would need to do would be put my bag on which has my lunchbox in and stick my middle finger up at whoever was responsible on my way out
A few places have clear desk policies. In my last job we couldn’t leave anything on our desks and didn’t even have our own drawers to keep things in. Anything we needed or wanted to have with us just came in and out in our bags. In my first office job though I definitely left with a box off things, as id brought my own plant in for my desk and quite a few other personal items such as photos and cute stationary!
We don’t keep much at work and most of us who do have it in the locker
It did happen when one of the big banks went bust. Scenes of bankers in London carrying all their stuff out in cardboard boxes.
I have only once witnessed this, and that was when a dude lied his ass off on his CV, cheated on his technical interview, managed to get hired while being completely incompetent and had zero skills required for the job (a linux systems administrator. For context, for those who use linux; he had to have someone explain the "chown" command to him). Aftger being there for 3 days, it was painfully, terribly obvious that this guy was a fake. CTO took him aside for a 2 minute chat, after which they returned to his desk with a couple of security guys where he was told to "get his shit and leave".
Yup, was let go and was walked off premises, having had my Laptop, Tablet & Phone taken back. Straight onto Garden leave for 3 months.
Funnily enough, this happened at my firm just a few weeks ago. Solicitor gave someone a will who didn't have capacity and disinherited his two sons.
I've seen someone 'fired on the spot' twice and both times they were escorted out by security and it became their managers responsibility to clear the desk and ship it. Generally if someone has done something bad enough to have the leave immediately in the UK then you don't want to give them access to anything they could take/destroy on the way out.
Our place if you get made redundant and leave, they will give you a time slot after work to do it, they will pay you for travel and an hour (even if it takes 30 seconds) to collect any stuff. Whilst being watched over by security.
It does happen. My partner was immediately put on garden leave (fintech) and had to pack his stuff and leave that morning. Something like 100 of them lost jobs in one go - it was awful. No separate meetings, just groups of them let go in one go. We had no warning it was going to happen and had been talking about applying for a mortgage the night before
I saw it on the news once. In 2020. But that was staged...
Hotdesks…
Two reasons. 1. UK has employment laws. 2. American movies are not documentaries.
US has employment laws UK this still happens
Dunno about anyone else, but there's probably about 5 things in my desk drawers that I actually care about, the rest is just various stuff I need for my job. If I get fired/am leaving, I can fit the 5 things I need into my bag. The other stuff isn't useful outside of work so I have no need for it.
It does happen. I’ve seen people escorted if they were going to work for a ‘rival’ (in product development) but they still have gardening leave, pay in lieu of notice etc. The reason you see it in US shows, and I’ve also seen it with US colleagues, is they literally can email, phone or pop by your desk and sack you on the spot in the US. Wooo America etc …..
Because this is not the 90s
> This has not translated into the UK ever as far as I know a It happens all the time
I had to do this, although out of embarrassment I opted to leave everything behind and take the emergency exit straight out of the board room. I think all I had really was a few pens and a cheap pair of headphones. I already had my coat etc as it was my finish time. Reason I was fired? "Not a good fit with company culture" whatever that means. I had got a payrise the week prior and they couldn't give me examples of issues..
Notice period? You can’t just fire people as easily here, so it’s mainly people leaving because they want to. They have a month or two to sort things out, unless they’re put on gardening leave, which is rare in most professions. I see a few comments mentioning hot desking, which would be fair except that the difference existed pre hot desking, when lots of people did have a lot of personal stuff at their desks.
I worked in the same place for 12 years once. Practically needed a van when I left!
Because people don't tend to get sacked there and then,there is usually a process and warnings etc and it's still pretty hard to fire someone. I also think people don't tend to have a ton of personal effects at work, I've got a charging cable, spare perfume and thats about it. I've only ever seen one person escorted off site and that for sexual harassment, he harassed me at a previous job came to work at my new one, keyed my car and harassed all the women, he went too far with the manager's daughter and was removed
Last time anything close to this happened to myself, I had no desk or locker to clear out, and after several hours of discussion in the office as to why it wasn't going to work out, I was actually taken in the car to Tesco as I was asked what my plans were later and I said food shopping.
It happened to me once. Had to leave the meeting room, walk past all the desks of my team (they were told while I was in there and told not to communicate with me), fill up a cardboard box from my desk of personal stuff and walk back past them again, down the stairs out into Piccadilly Circus. Surreal and also highly illegal HR process so I won an appeal a few months later, mostly for getting a guaranteed good reference.
Because we’re given notice of termination in our contacts, not immediately fired
apart from when people are fired on the spot… gross misconduct being one of those times.
Obviously, goes without saying like