14 people on how they accidentally found out they were getting fired.

It's a cruel fact of life, but for most of us, we have to get up each day and go to work. 

Once you begin your journey through the workforce, you ultimately start learning a lot about yourself and develop an understanding about the types of people you get along with. This path can be fulfilling, devastating, depressing, fun, disappointing, challenging, boring and interesting in any given moment. 

Ultimately, one of the downsides of getting a job is the niggling sense of security. Or... lack thereof. As we've learned over the past few years, with layoffs, redundancies and job losses, your place in a company can turn on a dime. 

But there's a right way and a wrong way to go about letting employees go from their job – these people learned that the hard way.

Here are 14 people who accidentally found out they were getting fired.

Watch: Kerri Anne Kennerley, on finding out she was fired. Post continues below.

1. The HR lady did me a solid.

"We were at the coffee machine and she was fuming about something, so I asked what was up. She looked at me, sighed and said, 'You might want to start looking for a new job. Your manager is not your friend.' That's when I realised I wasn't being paranoid and my manager really was trying to push me out. A week later, I was sacked."

2. Someone else's name was on the door to "my" office.

"I went on a one-week vacation. Returned on Sunday afternoon and stopped in at the office to check messages etc. Someone else's name was on the door to 'my' office."

3. A slide showed that I was leaving the company.

"My company's main office sent an area VP to present a briefing on the company's path forward. One of the slides showed that I was leaving the company."

4. The manager left an email on his screen. 

"The manager left an email on his screen and went to a meeting. I had to log him out of a system to clear and restart it and saw the email."

5. The secretary told me.

"My boss' secretary caught me before I went into our office one day and told me that I was going to be laid off the following week."

6. I got a tip-off.

"I got a call from my counterpart at corporate. He had gotten laid off and he called me before they could escort him out to tell me we were getting laid off in three months. I confronted my boss and she turned ashen white, but in the end she was honest with me."

7. I was cc'd on an email.

"I was cc'd on a message discussing my termination paperwork. It was not for any performance issues, but was a dispute between my contracting company and our client. The client wanted to eliminate my position and fill it internally to save some money."

8. There was an ad out for my job.

"I was just at my desk working when a woman from another department came over to ask if she could apply for the job I had been doing for two years. Turns out the position had appeared in the 'Help Wanted' ads that morning."

9. My bio was absent.

"One time at a private equity firm where I worked, I was at the copier and noticed a printed pitch deck for our upcoming fund. PE firms generally raise funds with a 10-year lifespan, often managing multiple funds of different 'vintages'. Perusing the deck, I noticed that my bio was absent. I was fired about nine months later."

10. My name was replaced on the schedule.

"Went to the office and looked at the schedule, and my name was erased and a new name was written that took up all my spots. Nobody said anything to me for 20 minutes and just awkwardly looked at me."

11. I had a gut feeling... and I was right.

"I had a sick feeling in my stomach so I searched for my job on the same platform I found it and it was listed."

12. Her notebook popped open.

"We were having a staff meeting and a senior colleague sat next to me. She put a notebook on the table and it popped open. The first thing I saw was: 'Alan to go end of January.'"

13. I overheard a conversation.

"A workmate overheard a conversation where a director said to an employee that they didn't need to worry too much about what I thought as I wasn't going to be with the company for long."

14. I found a file with my name on it.

"I was IT support, HR called about a desktop problem. I remoted in, saw a file with my name on it on her desktop so of course I went in over the network and grabbed the file. Turns out it was my walking papers."

Feature Image: AMC.

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