HR sends ‘termination notice’ to entire office, including CEO — internet in splits

In a bizarre workplace mishap that has left the internet in splits, an employee revealed that their company’s HR department accidentally sent a “termination notice” to every staff member — including the CEO.

The incident came to light after a Reddit user posted about it on the platform’s popular thread r/Wellthatsucks. According to the post, the HR team was testing a new offboarding automation tool designed to send exit emails to departing employees. However, someone reportedly forgot to switch it from “test mode” to “live mode”.

The result? Around 300 employees — top management included — received an email that began with: “Your last working day is effective immediately.”

Within minutes, chaos broke out across internal communication channels. “Slack went nuclear,” the employee wrote, adding that one manager even asked, “Should I start packing?”

Eventually, the IT department had to step in to control the panic, sending out an urgent message in all caps: “NO ONE IS FIRED. PLEASE DO NOT TURN IN YOUR BADGES.”

The post quickly went viral, garnering over 40,000 upvotes and hundreds of amused comments. Many users shared their own experiences with workplace blunders, while others found humour in the HR team’s predicament.

A user wrote, “That one guy who just thumbs it up was like, “damn well ok, guess I’m fired.”

Another user wrote, “Honestly, I’ve worked some jobs where my energy was like “If you’re actually stupid enough to fire me, then I don’t want to work for you anyway”. I’ve had some jobs where I would have just thumbs upped this message and then started packing my shit.”

One user summed up the mood perfectly: “Any company that needs a mass termination tool is doomed to fail.”

“Yeah– this is incredibly destabilizing. They’re testing out software to automate layoffs,” echoed the fourth.

“Nobody is fired, I repeat, nobody is fired. Except you, Bob, come see me in my office,” the fifth user joked.