Of course, but I'm going out on a limb and saying that whoever is the one WITHOUT THE CHOICE in the matter is worse off at that moment.
Yes, but the person giving the notice is rarely one of the people who had anything to do with the decision over who got laid off. The people who make those decisions hand a list to various flunkies, who delegate it to anyone else below them until the poor schlub one level above you gets the instructions to deliver the lay off notice to you.
The choice they have is to do it or possibly lose their job, too.
So, yes, they are better off than you are at the moment but that's no reason to treat them like dirt either.
On a related note, that of being the bearer of bad news:
Personally, I would rather attack a machine gun pillbox than deliver 100 flags to the families of dead soldiers. My odds of living thru the machine gun attack are higher.
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Look, I get it. I've been on both sides of the table and they both suck. But my description of my story includes that the guy who was laying me off, (who barely knew me BTW) said TO MY FACE, as part of the conversation "this is harder for me than it is for you".
The company was probably in the top 20 largest companies in the world at the time and it was dropping people because of fraud. Its actions destroyed the lives of many of its employees. But it was structured well enough that there were written scripts for managers to speak to for each RIF. This guy went off script because he felt his own guilt was more important than my livelihood. That's all there was to it in my case.
At no point did I "treat him like dirt". I simply tortured him by making him say the words. He was looking for me to say "Oh, I'm part of the layoff. okay, what's the severance deal?" Instead, I made him say the words "YOU ARE PART OF THE RIF". Once he was man enough to say it, then I let him off easy and just asked him for the packet of info and said I'd review it at home.
Firing people sucks too, I agree. But no one should ever be surprised that they are being fired...remedial action and improvement plans should have been in place long before. In the case of the OP, there wasn't enough info to know whether or not the employee had been coached sufficiently by the manager. My point is, that no matter how entitled someone is, getting fired is a life changing event that sucks and it sucks hard. Having to tell your family that someone else judged you as not
good enough, for whatever reason, is a real ego-crusher.
I honestly had no negative opinion on the OP's post until seeing others' comments about "what nerve" and "how selfish" or "no self-awareness" irritated me because ...of course you think about yourself. Why wouldn't you?