Getting the sack by email.

[Khandro]

What exactly is the 'insult' that after 22 years of service you get notice that your services are no longer required by email ? Is it better that the information comes on a piece of paper on an envelope? At one time the standard way of learning that your loved one had been killed in action was by telegram, was this considered an 'acceptable' method ? Does it really matter, or am I missing the point?

[ll_billym]

Because it doesn't give that person a chance to respond, ask questions or just look somebody in the eye. Some people in some situations may accept being made redundant/getting the sack as fair enough but some people in other situations may like the chance to give their view about events or find out more about it.

The longer a person has been working somewhere the more they feel like their view matters or or that possibly they should have kept their job over somebody else who did and find out why they didn't, this is why it is insulting to people, because they feel like they have given a lot and not been given any dignity.

Now maybe they deserved to be insulted, maybe they were lazy, theiving, lying little so and so's who were sleeping with the boss for 22 years, who knows, but fact of the matter is insulted they were.

[DaisyNonna]

Yes you are missing the point. If a loved one was killed in action that was a fact. Being given notice should entitle one to ask why.

[ninja100]

Shouldn't really be done by email as may get in the wrong hands and more likely to be 'pinged' anywhere/everywhere. Email is used like the spoken word by many forgetting that it is actually a wriiten record. Data protection people!

[Kathyan]

They were on the Long Service List and, like my husband who has served for nearly 33 years, have done a lot more than 22 years. Would you like to be told be email that you had lost your job after that length of time?

[Khandro]

The point I'm (perhaps badly) making is that the news item is not how they were informed, but rather the fact that they were sacked at all. I think this is being somewhat deflated by by this way of presenting it. But I would also add that emailing is here to stay and is a new way off transmitting information good or bad. If you learned that you had won £1,000 by email, would you complain?

[modeller]

Being sacked by email or by letter is unpleasant and wrong but I doubt the actual sacking came as a surprise . They were on one year contracts after spending 22 years in the service and knew that thereafter it was dependant on the army's manpower requirements.
When I was in the army there were a number of long serving officers and men who played very little active part in the day to day running of the army .If this was a civilian company we wouldn't have had all this emotion .

[Grizelda43]

Getting sacked is bad enough, getting it by E-Mail, only adds insult to injury. These WO's have served the Army well, and deserve better treatment. A face to face encounter with their Personnel Officer would have been better. At least they would then have the opportunity to discuss their future.

[Khandro]

The predominantly salient fact is, that that were SACKED, and this is presented by the media as if the the method was itself the news. I don't think it would matter to me how I was informed. letter, telephone, email or smoke signal. George Orwell noted that during the Spanish civil war, newspapers reported that nuns had been 'raped on refectory tables' as though the information that where the crime was committed, was important and somehow increased its severity.