Pretty much nobody likes meetings, especially when most of them could have been emails, as the saying goes. In fact, meetings have become so useless in the eyes of most employees that many executives claim they “waste” nearly 23 hours a week jumping from calls and Zoom meetings to in-person team conferences.
But at one intern’s workplace, their colleagues took their dislike of meetings to a new level — one that enraged their CEO and resulted in him firing most of the staff.
A CEO fired 99 out of 110 employees for skipping a meeting.
In their post, the Redditor wrote that just one hour into their new internship position, a pretty astonishing turn of events occurred: “The entire team got fired.”
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That’s a bit of an overstatement — 11 employees out of a workforce of 110 were allowed to keep their jobs when they showed up to a scheduled all-staff meeting like they were supposed to. The other 99 fell prey to the boss’s obvious rage at everyone’s lack of attendance.
The CEO sent an angry message telling the staff to ‘get the (eff) out of my business right now.’
The Redditor’s post hasn’t been verified, but if it’s real, it’s pretty astonishing. They included in their post a screenshot of the boss’s message to the staff, in which he absolutely did not mince words.
“Dear Team, this is Baldvin, the CEO,” the message read. “For those of you who did not show up to the meeting this morning, consider this your official notice: you’re all fired.” The boss added that the decision was a result of his staff refusing to uphold their end of the employment agreement.
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“You failed to show up to the meetings you were supposed to attend and work for. I will cancel all agreements between us,” he went on to say before telling the staff to return all of their belongings, sign out of their accounts and remove themselves from the company Slack channel.
He closed with a tersely worded goodbye. “I gave you an opportunity to make your life better, to work hard, and to grow. Yet, you have shown me that you don’t take this seriously,” he wrote, noting that the 11 people who did show up to the meeting “get to stay,” but “the rest of you are terminated,” he wrote. “Get the (eff) out of my business right now.”
An intern at the company said not everyone was notified about the meeting.
If this all sounds fishy to you, you’re not alone. As one Redditor put it, “If 8 of 110 people don’t show up to a mandatory meeting, then maybe they’re slacking… If 99 of 110 people don’t show up to a mandatory meeting, there was probably an issue with the meeting invite.”
The intern confirmed this was the case, at least for them. They added in a comment that they “received no notice of a meeting” and that they did not even have access to the Slack workspace, where they would have received an automated notification.
Many assumed this was likely the case for everyone or that some other error had occurred — like marking the meeting as “optional” or the CEO’s email notification looked suspicious in some way.
It really doesn’t make sense that 99 out of 110 people would just skip a meeting, especially since, most of the time, online meetings can just be logged into as background noise while you keep doing your work.
And while the boss’s frustration is understandable, is this really the way to handle it? Others pointed out that telling people to log out and give their belongings back is not how getting fired ever works for a reason — this guy is setting himself up for a lot of drama, and it certainly doesn’t suggest a CEO who’s particularly good at details.
Sure, every office has slackers, but when 90% of the people you manage don’t show up, your first consideration should be whether there was some kind of confusion or miscommunication instead of logging onto Slack half-cocked and dressing everyone down.
Frankly, the people who got fired are probably better off in the long run.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
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