Show Subject line Im I'm outa auta here Robin Abcarian Los Angeles Times It was not the most eloquent subject line for fora a farewell mail e-mail to workers co-workers So long suckers Im I'm out But Jason worked at Google wh whose se off-center off corporate culture is more forgiving than that of your average down buttoned-down investment bank in rIn In the rest of his goodbye a as s senior sales compliance specialist reminisced about workplace work moments that included putting cake down his pants at a sales conference stealing a boss' boss leather couch and singing Hit Me Baby One More Time in a miniskirt and braids It took me a long time timeto to write it said 34 who left Google to become director nf of ad u. u U operations for the music streaming Web site I didn't want to send out outa a stale good working with you please reach me here e Who Vho wants that That's a good question these days now that thousands of people are finding themselves with pink slips and the need to let colleagues and contacts know they are moving on and perhaps more for seekers important job how they can be reached The farewell mail e-mail suddenly has become commonplace a new art form in the electronic age Yet like so many aspects of the Internet era how t to on how much to reveal on a personal blog the technology has gotten ahead of the etiquette no rules Some farewell mails e-mails like strike a lighthearted even funny tone Some i and short Others are poetic i or poignant expressing surprise or regret at the turn I few and andi of events A very i these arc the ones that get most of the attention use the electronic goodbye to blast the boss i In May Shinyung Oh was let go from the San J Francisco branch of the Paul Hastings law firm six days after losing a baby The year seven-year associate who said she was told her previous A glowing evaluations might have been composed a blistering email email email e- e mail to the partners and fired it off to about 1000 colleagues She accused the firms firm's partners of heartlessness and of blaming her for failing to generate business that should have been i br brought in by each of you If this response seems particularly emotional she wrote to the partners perhaps an associates associate's emotional vulnerability after a recent miscarriage is a factor you should consider the next time you fire or lay someone off It shows startlingly poor f judgment and management j 4 skills and cowardice coward ce i on your parts Within an hour Oh said her mail e-mail was posted on ona a widely read legal affairs blog then made its way into the manstream media medi r Oh has no regrets She is IS f. f also changing professions I am glad I spoke out said Oh 38 who has launched a blog is taking writing classes and is pregnant again Its been really good for me on a personal level It made me reassess my life and that's mats matsa a good thing Will coauthor of Send Why People mail E-mail So Badly and How to Do it Better said the farewell mail e-mail was a reflection of two intersecting trends the universality of mail e-mail and the confessional spirit of the times which have resulted as he put it in inthe inthe inthe the democratization of the process In the pre-computer pre world said Personnel wrote something a memo Xeroxed generally you didn't get to do it They did it But what had be been n nan an HR function is now a personal function That he said leads to a different sort of message When Pasadena based Wescom Credit Union a company with about 1 1000 employees had u 7 c J 7 layoffs lay recently there were no mass mail e-mail farewells because workers dont don't have access to encompassing all-encompassing mail e-mail lists We Ve have very strict standards safeguards that IT has put in place dont don't allow that to happen said Diane Norton Smith Wescom's vice president for human resources I have seen situations where somebody said goodbye and you get the reply all reply all reply all Were gonna miss you and that clogs up the whole system That occasionally happened last summer and fall when the farewells of off laid-off Los Angeles Times staffers hit in successive waves Some of the goodbyes were bittersweet some philosophical Many were entertaining Jaime Cardenas a young sports reporter spliced his note with stanzas from Viva La Vida I used to rule the world Now in the morning I Sweep the streets I used to own ow Perry Pent Crowe an editor for the Guide compared losing his job to toa toa toa a scene from a movie Its sort of like in Superman II when Non rips the light off the top of a police car carand carand carand and hurls it at a boy in the distance and it explodes like a mortar round and a woman cries out He was just a boy professionals naturally are against the parting shot because they fear for fora a persons person's ability to land a anew anew anew new job Its so easy to mail e-mail and that's the risk isn't it said John Challenger of the outplacement company Challenger Gray Christmas Inc Once youve you've put it out there you cant can't get it back Vent to your mom or boyfriend said Alison Doyle a job search expert on You Vou can have all these feelings but you shouldn't necessarily share them And dont don't go on about how terrible this is and I I dont don't know how I am gonna buy the groceries Err on the side of too little information rather than too much Sometimes though an angry goodbye mail e-mail can ean alter the terms of a layoff Y in a good way For 20 years Steve Bass wrote for PC World a magazine with a circulation of He had a popular monthly column a blog and an electronic newsletter called Tips Tweaks In August in a cost- cost cutting measure the magazine said it would pay only for the blog which then could be for the column At the time tune I was devastated said Bass 61 who lives in the Pasadena area and has launched a free mail e-mail newsletter called He mailed e-mailed his readers a farewell revealing his dismay at what he felt had been poor treatment by the magazine I lost a hefty chunk of change Bass wrote Its still a stunner It gets worse Unfortunately the guy I had to deal with didn't know how to negotiate His tactic was to just say no to everything Steve Fox who became PC Worlds World's new editorial director shortly after Bass was sacked said he received about angry e I have to say I was initially perturbed by it Fox said But ultimately its it's about business and having been a freelance writer myself I understood why he was upset He is isa isa isa a talented guy He did not bum burn a bridge with me but butI I would imagine there were other people here who were ticked at what he had done Bass was invited to stay on the masthead as asa asa asa a contributing editor and write occasional features Begin optional trim Richard Bravo a 34 year-old year New Yorker did not take the of glory approach He was managing editor of Daily News Record In November the year old trade publication the oldest title in the Conde Nast stable was combined with its sister publication Women's Wear Daily He had reason to be miffed He was three days short of his third anniversary so his severance credited him for only two years Bravo sent his goodbye to people from both of his life spheres pretty much everyone I knew on ona ona ona a personal level or a work level who I thought might have some sort of need to get in touch with me He was straightforward and brief I apologize for the mass mail e-mail but today's issue of willbe will willbe willbe be the last We folded last week and are now on forced vacation to put it nicely If you need to get in touch with me please use this info I think my biggest concern was not to m make ke keit it sound melodramatic Bravo said There is nothing worse than those emails emails emails e- e mails nothing worse than mass mails e-mails period So you can never make a mass mail e-mail classy but I wanted to make it as close to being classy as one could His mail e-mail lead to a number of freelance assignments Bravo said so it definitely succeeded on that front J |