Decorating for Halloween is an absolute blast. Making your home the spookiest on the block, filling your porches with pumpkins and skeletons and gravestones (oh my!) to make sure trick-or-treaters have a spooktacular time is just plain fun!
Sometimes these decorations go a little too far and wind up in some tone-deaf territory, like what happened at one workplace after it laid off numerous employees.
Now that we’ve reached the end of October, it’s Halloween party time.
Many of those parties will be hosted by workplaces that want to see their employees get in on the holiday spookiness, dressed up in costume and snacking on candy all day.
One workplace, however, did something a lot more…tone-deaf.
A disturbing video shows one office’s somber Halloween decorations that has people across the internet absolutely livid as the level of disrespect being shown is genuinely shocking.
It’s not a good look.
Originally posted to TikTok, though it appears to have been deleted now, it was reuploaded to the WorkReform subreddit where viewers are up in arms about its contents.
The on-screen text at the beginning provides the context.
“My company did [layoffs] and this is how they’re celebrating Halloween.”
It then showed cubicles in an office, most of which had ‘caution’ tape across the entrances, the chairs filled with ghosts donning the names of the employees who used to work there.
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The nametags also said something else.
“Ghost of Employees Past.”
The uploader confirmed that the names are those of former employees with another piece of on-screen text that read, “With the actual names of the people they let go…” followed by an added, “Like wtf?!?!!”
The comments are in shock.
Many hoped it was fake, as it being real would be so shockingly out of touch it would be hard to imagine anyone thinking this was a good idea, especially any sort of boss or manager.
Because then it’d be nothing short of insulting.
“If it’s a management decision, this is the same thing as putting heads on spikes after you conquered a village in old times,” said one user who perfectly illustrated the vibe here.
“[…] this is straight up game of thrones tactics,” said another.
Others hoped it was a protest.
“Would be cooler if it was a disgruntled employee protesting layoffs,” reads one comment.
However, most weren’t on board with that theory. “To me it felt like passive-aggression… ‘Work harder or you’re next.'”
Most just balked at the concept alone.
“Calling this insulting is massively understating the case. It’d be like saying that molten lava is a little bit warm, or that the ocean is slightly damp.”
I sincerely hope those workers who got laid off have a better, way less toxic job now, because this place was surely a nightmare.