Of course, she'd lost her appetite by then. But those on the receiving end of the old heave-ho will tell you that there are plenty of nasty ways to do the deed. In this era of penny-pinching, employers would be wise to remember that tact costs nothing, and kindness can go a long way toward easing the blow of bad news. Unfortunately, layoffs have become a way of life lately. You can hardly open the newspaper or turn on the TV without hearing about some major corporation laying off thousands, or a dot-com company booting an entire staff in a sitting.
Numbers tell part of the story.
A sobering 540,519 cuts nationwide were recorded from December 2000 through March, compared with just 186,535 for the same quarter a year earlier, according to the Chicago-based outplacement firm of Challenger, Gray and Christmas. And behind those numbers are thousands of different layoff tales - from the delicate to the downright dirty. Here are some of the lowlights. Good references are, after all, still important. An Unwanted Package For David Fogle, the boot came by way of FedEx.