Last week, at its headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, RadioShack laid off 400 employees. Layoffs are hardly news these days, but exactly how they laid off the workers is a bit more noteworthy. Employees received an e-mail that read:
“The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated.”
“The nation’s most trusted consumer electronics specialty retailer” has taken heat for the move, with its spokesperson defending the decision saying that employees were forewarned of the method of communication and that using email was both “fast” and “private.” True, the company sells phones and could have used those to notify employees, but most of its likely young and expendable workforce is familiar enough with email that the mode of communication may not have fazed them. Instead they had to realize that, as jobless claims are on the decline, they just joined the ranks of the unemployed.
Curiously, the company is currently hiring, using the tagline, R You Ready?, on their career page. They’re already using the lingo, maybe layoffs by text message are next?
