This is a no-win situation!
The boss clearly wanted to show support to a worker whose promotion would’ve been a positive for the company. Chances are that this guy had no say in the hiring and firing process anyway! That’s often something that HR teams handle. But still the overall optics are just bad. There’s no way around it. It makes this boss look super out of touch. And it gives the impression that he’s giving some kind of weird backhand compliment to the worker who has just been given the boot.
It’s odd that this worker would still have access to a Slack channel (at least, I think that’s what this is? I have no idea what that one robot in the chat is talking about). But with the way this company is running, a lack of communication about removing previous workers from the channel might have just fallen through the cracks.
Best wishes to this worker, of course. They’re acting extremely professionally to an extremely unprofessional situation.
As for the boss? He should probably write out an apology ASAP. That would also be a good time for him to echo support to the remaining employees, who have probably got a low sense of morale at the moment. Losing your coworker friends to layoffs is a huge disapointment… now would be the time for the boss to say something, rather than letting rumors fly across the office.
Author: Kayitsi.com
