Welcome Back, You're Fired

Management solicited volunteers to spend time in Malaysia training people to do the same work in identical jobs that we did here. Many of their first choice employees for overseas assignments suspected that by training the Malay, they would be speeding up the process of job losses Stateside. To their credit, many who were given this opportunity turned it down because in their view it would be a betrayal. Supervisors were then forced to send over whomever they could get, usually second or third string choices. People who weren't top notch in their game.

With the first round of layoffs, vindictive supervisors struck back at employees who refused to go to Malaysia by getting rid of them.

Those who did volunteer to work in Penang for months at a time frequently received a harsh homecoming. After successfully training the Malay, some employees upon their first day returning to work Stateside were called into a meeting with their boss and handed a severance package. Thanks for a job well done over there, now get the hell out! Ruthless business. Going to Malaysia gave these people a sense of being important, a false illusion of being indispensable, needed. What they failed to consider was as soon as their knowledge had been given and the Malay were up to speed there was no reason to keep these individuals around anymore. Like a deer caught in headlights they never saw that one until it was far too late.