h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There's a popular email that circulates many companies that has twenty 'You Know When You Work For A Telecoms/IT/Dotcom When...' lines on it. '... you try to get into your house with a swipecard', that kind of thing.

One of the rejoinders is '... you find out you've lost your job from a news broadcast'.

This actually happened to me - I work for Worldcom, and had been on annual leave when the £5 billion accounting fraud was uncovered, effectively sealing the fate of 17,000 UK and European employees.

Imagine my surprise.

Oh dear.
Nearly the same thing- An insurance company I sold policies for on the phone lost their biggest contract to a very large bank. It was their bread and butter contract, everything depended on it.
As I was only there part time, it didnt mean that much to me, college was what mattered, so I was just stifling smiles the whole time when our bosses were telling us as the contract renewal came up;
"Ooh, um...we're not sure what's happening yet, we'll tell you when we do", when friends who worked in the city had already said;
"Oh, dude, bummer about your company Insuranceguys Ltd losing that massive contract with Verybigbank Plc" days earlier.

my dad once heard on a news report that he'd (well, the people in his union at his workplace) gone on strike. it was true, but it was also a bit unexpected.