In a bizarre turn of events going viral, a company’s HR department mistakenly sent “termination” emails to all of its employees, including senior leadership and the CEO. The incident was revealed after an employee shared it on Reddit.
In a confusion that made waves online, HR mistakenly sent “termination” emails to every single employee — including senior executives and even the CEO. The messy incident came to light after an employee shared the story on Reddit.
In a post titled “HR accidentally sent ‘termination notice’ to everyone — including CEO,” the user explained that the HR team was testing a new external automated system designed to send exit emails to departing employees. But apparently someone forgot to switch the system from test mode to live mode. The result? About 300 employees received an email that opened with the chilling phrase: “Your last day of work effective immediately.”
“Slack has gone nuclear,” the Redditor wrote. “Should I start packing?” one manager responded, and soon after, IT had to step in with a blanket clarification: “No one was fired. Please do not hand in your badge.”
Then the HR team followed up with a frantic Slack message: “Urgent – Don’t panic. The automation tool has just sent a ‘Quit’ test email to everyone. You will not be fired. Please ignore the message.”
One Reddit user summed it up perfectly: “I don’t think anyone is getting actual work done today.”
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As the story spread across social media, users couldn’t help but laugh and speculate. “Any company that feels the need to have a tool like this in the first place is, I imagine, doomed to fail,” one joked. Another added a darkly comedic touch: “Or, hear me out, everyone’s getting fired and the email was programmed to go out, but someone messed up the dates. Plot twist, everyone’s getting kicked out, but not today.”
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Others were more cautious. “Oh, I’ll probably still look for another job. Email test for mass termination doesn’t bode well,” one user warned. Another quipped: “The accounting department should do a cost analysis to see how much this process costs the company. If I received that email, I wouldn’t be working that day.”
But some saw the incident as a bad omen. “Very unprofessional reaction to the incident. I would definitely panic as a real wave of layoffs is likely right around the corner,” one commenter wrote.
(tags for translation) HR sends a termination email
