Losing your job sucks. So after Reddit user ScottzTotz94 sensed that he might be laid off, he started looking for another one.

Luckily, when the final moment came, he had already secured himself a position elsewhere. The transition was smooth and the crisis seemed averted.

A few months later, however, the man received a call from his former employer. Recalling the chat on the subreddit ‘Today I [Messed] Up,’ he revealed that due to a mistake, nobody had terminated him in the first place.

This guy recently received the news that he was being laid off

Image credits: benzoix / envato (not the actual photo)

However, after he started another job, his former employer called back, and things got pretty weird pretty fast

Image credits: voronaman111 / envato (not the actual photo)

Image credits: ScottzTotz94

This case is a vivid reminder that corporate communication isn’t always as effective as everyone would like it to be

The mistake we just read about sounds ridiculous, but it’s not the first time something like this has happened and it’s not the last. For example, a few years back, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer accidentally began laying off employees who were meant to stay on at the company.

Based on internal leaks, the reports claim the layoffs were of low-performing employees who had been the unfortunate victims of a “bureaucratic snafu.”

“They put people on firing lists who they didn’t mean to — people who were lower on the performance scale but who weren’t meant to get fired,” an insider explains. “But no one told the managers, and then they had the conversations, and it was like, ‘Oops.'”

Even though the guy behind the post handled the transition beautifully, receiving news that your position has been eliminated can be shocking and upsetting.

So when people hear the news during a group call, in a one-on-one meeting, or over email, they should pause and review all of the information they have about the separation as outlined in those meetings — companies aren’t required to offer severance, but, as we were just reminded, many do.

Nowadays, employees aren’t the only ones on edge about losing their jobs – CEOs are quite nervous too.

A new survey by AlixPartners among over 3,000 CEOs and senior executives across the world revealed that 59% of CEOs are anxious about losing their jobs, too. And screw-ups like this one can definitely exacerbate their fears.

As his story went viral, the man joined the discussion in its comments

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