Palm slaps employees in the face at Christmas

If you’re going to fire a bunch of workers right before Christmas, can you at least try to sound like a human being about it?

It happens every year. Every year, right about Dec. 15, we’ll get an e-mail from a reader, or from several readers. The note invariably starts out with some variation of: “Can you believe this?” Or, “Can you believe the timing of this?” Or, “These rotten sons of bitches!” The e-mailers are referring to a company that decided to lay off a significant percentage of employees smack dab in the middle of the holiday season. Every year, it seems, there are companies who either a) wait until December to announce the layoffs (or the downsizing, or the rightsizing, or whatever they call it); or b) don’t wait until after the holidays to make the announcement.