Wellthatsucks
Got laid off yesterday. This was the box they sent me to send my equipment back.
Maybe it’s better I weren’t there if this is what they thought was a good sized box.
Discussion
They just want the laptop I guess everything else is yours
I’m only sending whatever fits in the box which is my company phone, laptop mouse and charger. Can’t fit the keyboard lmfaoooo
“If it fits, it ships!”
I shipped my pants!
A classic!
I shitted my pants. We're on different levels buddy
As an IT guy, people never ever send in the chargers, it's gotten especially bad since everything has moved to USB C. Doesn't bother me, it's not my money.
If this is all they sent you, keep the chargers and peripherals honestly. If you sent the other stuff in that tiny box, it's going to take up the empty void space in the box that is needed to keep the laptop safe, and will beat the everloving shit out of the top and bottom of the laptop.
Mice/keyboards are often viewed as disposable because they get gross and they’re cheap enough that it’s not worth cleaning
I can never find my work issued chargers when they want the laptop back. Why do they even have those stupid brick chargers for USB C laptops? They’re terrible to try to use. My work even provides us with a dock that charges the laptop so there no use for it anyway, it’s actually just extra junk.
Because time is money. I can't expect every user to have a 100w charger. It takes time to figure out what a user means when create a ticket that just says 'laptop isn't charging' and it removes variables. People will try to use phone chargers and 45 watt chargers to power a 100 watt laptop, and the laptop dies as they're using it.
It’ll all fit. Just need a bigger hammer and some patience. When reduced to dust, all will fit just fine
Phone and laptop is all they're going to really care about. Chargers will be junked and same with mouse and keyboard.
Make them put in writing what they want you to be returning. If it won't fit in the box....
Only put the laptop and phone. They don't need the mouse
Don’t even send the mouse or charger
Keep the mouse, just send the phone, laptop and laptop charger (if it fits).
Mouse is a dinky $10 office mouse. Idgaf about it. I’ve got 4 gaming mice in the house that easily clear it lol.
What others have said. Send back the laptop. When I got laid off I kept the USBC docking station. Might be the only highlight of my time with that company
Fuck this I just read your comment, went and grabbed the sealed box from my mail room, took out the docking station, sealed it back and dropped it off LOL. Thanks for this comment.
I’m glad you did that cuz I got laid off in February and they only cared about the laptop. I didn’t even send back the charging cable. Fuck then they don’t care about us so take everything you can from them
I have that one. It’s great, I wouldn’t give it up to some jerks who laid me off.
Maliciously comply. Jam both monitors and laptop in sideways along with peripherals. Use duct tape to keep everything together, even if it’s hanging out. Send it.
When I shipped stuff back to my old company the box was massive, but no packing supplies such as bubble wrap. I wasn’t going to buy any, so I put everything in and closed it up. Friend of mine that worked there still told me everything was trashed upon receipt. Oops.
At my company, there are literally stacked towers of used laptops. They issue new ones to every employee, and then just see how high they can stack the old ones apparently. I doubt they care that it was trashed, as long as it was returned.
🤣
Unless they supplied the duct tape, that's too much work and materials
Omg I was thinking the same 😂
I work in IT. We only want the laptop back. monitors cost more to ship than to just buy one off amazon and ship directly.
Sucks man. Hopefully you have other opportunities lined up. I know I'm looking elsewhere already.
“we’re gonna need a bigger box”. Obligatory 50th anniversary reference.
Yeah they just want the laptop. Every place I've worked ultimately just lets me keep everything else. It's a shitty consolation price but you take what you can get I guess
My friend who was living with me and worked at the same IT company as me died. A month later a box from our company arrived basically asking him to send his equipment back as though he was still alive and just quit.
I brought the box into the office and showed my manager as I was beyond pissed. The manager just said to ignore their request as we normally just keep all equipment at our office for new employees.
Someone really dropped the ball in HR in our company.
How awful. Can you imagine if a family member received that? Sorry you had to too.
With a hammer, you can make it all fit.
They gave my GF their UPS account number and had the store box it. When he asked how we wanted it shipped, "the most expensive way you can would be preferred". He laughed, not my problem.
Amazon?
Na automotive OEM.
OEM?
Original equipment manufacturer.
Ah gotcha. Good luck finding something else, friend.
Appreciate it. Tariffs suck lmfao
Are you in the US? If so, could you expand on that? I agree tariffs suck and would like to be able to communicate why with freinds and family lol
Tariffs are putting the entire automotive industry in a chokehold. Companies aren’t “losing money” rather they are trying to prepare for financial challenges ahead when shit starts to hit the fan on higher vehicle prices and tariff costs. So to plan ahead, automotive folks are getting axed left and right. It’s really only a power move to make sure greedy investors are happy.
And no one is buying or prepping because no one knows what the tarriff is going to be tomorrow .
Have them give you their UPS or FedEx number. Bring whatever devices they want back to the appropriate store. Do no more than wrap the electrical cables so that you don't trip carrying them.
Have the shipper wrap, pack and send the items, using your company's shipping number.
I was fired once, and I sent a heavy laser printer back, next day air. They were insistent on me returning all equipment.
I would send what I can fit, starting with cables than keyboards 🤷
Before I got laid off I had to send people stuff like this for recovery.
There is a policy in place, or should be.
Reach out to your HR and what they're expecting in that tiny poorly padded box?
They should be providing you an inventory of items they expect. Do not offer.
they only want the laptop
Yeah we keep the monitor they just want the laptop
when i got laid off they asked for my old macbook pro back and forgot about my Dell Ultrasharp U3423WE, which i am still using. i consider it severance
Kept mine…pulled the RAM. They can eat it.
Edit: The only thing i sent back was my work badge, the laptop, company phone, mouse, and laptop chargers. I actually just emailed HR earlier today telling them that I will drop the package off at FedEx once I receive confirmation that they have shipped me my personal items from my desk back to me since they have failed to do this yet. One of my direct reports texted me saying that they cleaned everyone else's desk except for mine and sent me a photo of it before he left. The other items including the monitors, headset and docking stations will not be sent back unless they specifically ask for it. I don't owe em shit.
I had a company do the same thing. I asked who was going to pack it up and drive to the post office.
That’s work. I get paid for my work.
“We’re going to let you go. Please do a couple of hours of work for free.”
Fuck that. A year later I dumped the stuff off at Goodwill.
Charge them an equipment storage fee until they send a bigger box.
Why? So they can withhold their severance payment?
I never sent my stuff back after being laid off and no one seemed to care whatsoever 🤷♀️so now I have two pretty nice Dell Monitors and a computer I can put a new hard drive into. Yay for free stuff!
You get to keep whatever doesn't fit
They only want the laptop back.
Keep the monitors, the power supply, keyboard, mouse, and everything else.
Insurance doesn't cover the rest.
Buy containers of bb's and fill it so it weighs a ton.
Congrats on your unexpected vacation and free monitors!
Sorry about the loss of paycheck.
I've been in that boat. I hope you find something quickly with a company or at least direct management that value you and your contributions.
If they’re paying for return shipping, make sure you return that company-issued cinder block as well.
Sorry bro. They just want the laptop and charger back. Source: I'm in IT
Enjoy the free peripherals though 👍
I think office equipment should be part of your severance. It all gets recycled anyways. Edit: sans the laptops of course. Did I edit that in time?
This is their way of telling you, "if it doesnt fit in the box, you can have it"
I can totally make all of that fit in that box.
Hammer and tree shredder help though.
Have you tried folding them in half?
I'm sorry that sucks! I hope you find something soon and hopefully it will be better than this job!
I was asked to bring the equipment back in person but when I got there the building was empty and locked. It got more convoluted after that. However, they got their crap back and I made someone sign a receipt.
"If you want your equipment, come and get it. It's on my porch and you should hurry before it rains."
Stick about half of that monitor in and tape that bitch shut. Make sure to put tape on the screen.
I manage IT and only send laptop boxes out. The monitors are consumables so already written off. Don't care about those. I am disappointed they sent you two different monitors though.
My company does the same. Only need to return the laptop.
The laptop has company data on it. That's valuable. The Monitors, Keyboards, mice and cables are covered in your sneeze spray and personal dander. That's gross and toxic to everyone who is not you. Enjoy the "free" peripherals. (Besides, it would cost about the same to ship the accessories back than to buy new ones).
Send them an invoice for packing their shit. Also, charge them for storage fees.
Jam it in there!
Looks like all they want is the keyboard.
Are you getting paid for your time taking apart, packing these things, and taking them to the shipping place?
If so, take your sweet time doing it.
If not, tell them to come pack that shit up themselves.
Guess it's time to get out the hammer!
Only ship what fits 🤣
I can make all of that fit with a a welders hammer and some angst.
Sounds like my last contract... After accusing me of having 26 laptops, 10 iPads and 5 phones. They sent a single laptop box to return all of that. I packed up what I had (which wasn't close) and emptied my shredder in the box for packing material
May not be the same company but I got the same box after they decided my position needed to return to office after I had been working from home for over 8 years (way before the pandemic). I even sent them an email saying all my stuff won't fit. They never responded so I repurposed it for my gaming set up. I tried, lol.
Just get an angle grinder and cut it into smaller pieces you can jam in there.
But really, ask for an itemized list and then request more boxes if the equipment doesn't fit in the original.
Guess they didn’t want it back in working order. Their problem not yours
Send back the laptop. That’s it. Send the rest back if they ask.
As others have said, companies generally only want the laptop back. Peripherals (monitors, cables, mice, keyboards, etc) don’t need to be sent back unless they explicitly tell you to.
Most severance agreements stipulate that you return the equipment (ie laptop) so best to get that done sooner than later.
Looks perfect for ant farm
Keep it for your next job! Hopefully you will get exactly when you want it too!
My company only expects the computer back not the monitors or cables. We ship a paper with info one what needs to be returned. I'd check if they included one, if not, I am sure someone in IT would be willing to inform you.
-Source is me, I work in IT at a primarily remote company.
Here is the business math.
They drop shipped the monitors and other peripherals so they basically only paid for the monitor
To re-use they have to send you boxes (which they have to purchase), and pay shipping for the return. Pay some one to go through and test it then repack it then pay to ship it to another person. The employee time and 2 way shipping greatly exceeds the cost of the monitor.
So yes most places just want the laptop and charger back because that will get reused or kept as an emergency loaner. Everything else is more expensive to to reuse compared to just drop shipping new.
I had this happen. They threaten legal action if I don’t spend time of out of my live packing the laptop and driving it to the nearest ups and finding a box and packing tape to ship it back. I saw some paralegal email and I laughed. If I ever hear from their lawyers I’ll have them contact my lawyers. They took 2 weeks to do my final paycheck even though California law states otherwise.
Damn, they're about to get a free box or two out of you.
When i quit my remote job they told me to take all the equipment to UPS and let UPS worry about packing it
Everybody is getting laid off these days
I own a franchised business and I have - I shit you not - about 15 extra monitors floating around. Every time corporate replaces a PC, they send us two monitors. They never want the old ones back. I also have no less than 20 extra keyboards.
They only want laptop
You can have a $4k monitor and a $250 laptop, they just want the laptop.
Fit everything in the box no matter how much force it takes.
Review your employment contract. Make them collect it, don't go out of your way for them.
You'd easily be able to take a shit in that one.
Clarify if you’re paid for packing time.
Hey come pick it up
i'll buy the monitors lol
at least they gave it back.. right ?
What kind of company? IT? Bank? Shipping/recieving?
Only send back what fits couple pencils a few pens
Yeah they don’t care about the monitors, just the laptop
Buy a $80 laptop on ebay and send that back.
When I hot laid off, I sent back everything I could think of of the company’s that I had in my possession. Oh, don’t need the monitors? I’m sending them back just in case. I knew everything I sent back added to the shipping charges they had to pay.
A KRNG member on my Reddit feed?! I only use this for work related topics. LOL 😭
They can come get that shit.
Why return it
Have they met you 🤔? Maybe they don’t actually know what you have, did they send an inventory sheet, or do you just fit what you can in the box and keep the rest?!? Really getting mixed signals here
When I left my company, they only wanted the laptop and monitors back Mouse, KB, headsets, port replicator were mine to keep.
Send back what fits. If they ask about the rest, tell them it didn’t fit. If they want it they’ll send another box.
At my place they only ask for the laptop and if you somehow get to the office with all your peripherals we used to sent you back with all your stuff
Make it fit.
Crush everything to powder. It should fit.
At least there's no foreign transaction fees on international purchases*.
Last time I got laid off they sent a giant cube box and I had to fill it with roughly 100 lbs of dev units, they let me keep the laptop though so that was nice.
Same. Was laid off last month. Printers and monitors not wanted. Laptop and dock and my POS peripherals.
Put the mouse in and send that back.
Without the cord or dongle
This happened to me too so they told me to keep the Avid keyboard and just send the laptop, charger, and work ID badge. SCORE!!!
Most places I've worked only care about the laptop. The peripherals are considered disposable, while the laptop is an asset (and what contains the company data).
Free monitors for me I guess but I don’t rlly need them lol
https://preview.redd.it/b94owau0owbf1.jpeg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8cf494ffd92a1b523d174dedd1c4eb05f835c383
Send to me
You gotta send OP a box.
I knew there'd be a catch.
Here you can have mine
☐
You really gonna send him another small box?
Obviously
As is tradition.
A good sized box.
Found the stock trader
I used to trade naked options but now I trade cash secured puts and covered calls. 😁
Those are words
I had chatgpt translate “I used to be a degenerate gambler, now I just play blackjack”
HAHA 🤣
Okay, so I’ve been an console gamer my whole life. I’ve only played stuff like Roller Coaster Tycoon and that space pinball game on a pc.
Do you honestly use all four of those monitors? I’m genuinely curious.
Game on monitor 1, game guide on 2, Netflix on 3, and discord on 4.
No, I meant are there any games that would benefit from multiple monitors? I couldn’t imagine having to turn my head to see everything.
Racing and flight sims.
I imagine that would be a sweet set up for a first person mech game.
There haven't been any good ones in the last decade that I'm aware of. Especially ones that would use the features.
I remember seeing ads in GamePro for a game called Steel Battalion, I think. It had a giant controller that was a console with control sticks, buttons, and a bunch of other shit. 12 year old me was like “fuck yeah that looks awesome!”
I wanted that shit so bad when I was a kid
That thing looked so fucking sick. A whole startup sequence just to get moving. And if you didn't flip up the cover and hit the eject button in time it wiped your save.
I still have that game + the controller in the og box. I was never good at the game but the controller was fantastic for MechWarrior 4.
Reactor Online Weapons Online All Systems Nominal
Mechwarrior as well. Nothing beats a joystick, throttle, rudder pedal, and multi-monitor setup for some Mechwarrior 5
EVE
Spreadsheets
In
Spaaaaaaaaaaaace!
Multiple instances of WoW, you can have a banker on one and play a couple other characters at once.
So if you need to use abilities of character 1 to heal 2 you can quickly swap over to cast it.
So you’re controlling multiple characters in the same party? PC gamers are fucking wild.
Yeah, well one is used as a bank to transfer and hold items. If I'm trying to level up as a different classes it's easy to just have one on autofollow around the one I'm actively playing. Plus it lets you get all the loot, materials, and lets you level up multiple jobs at once. Realistic I'm only swapping between the two running around while the third is passive
When I used to play Final Fantasy XI we'd run multiple characters at once, we used a third party program to do it effectively for the most part though
Doing it manually is pretty difficult
Technically, and I used to do this, you can run WoW partial screen (windowed) and just do all four on one screen, and then still have room for Wiki/Guide and other stuff. WoW is really lightweight on FPS/GPUs
I like big toons and I cannot lie
You could do this with Diablo 2 as well. Sandboxie and Etalbot for the win. I used to run full parties of chaos/baal runs.
If you configured the bot, (I did) you could have your bot running keys, then set up baal while you ran meph and Andy.
I only did that when all my friends quit playing though.
Stardew Valley. Its still the same concept as game on monitor 1 and guide on monitor 2, but having 10 stardew wiki tabs open is not uncommon and practically part of the experience. Kind of the same with Warframe in some sense.
No way man, the subway surfers attention span shit is actually real lol.
Is it needed? No absolutely not, is it super productive? Yes. For my side hustle which includes but not limited to content production, day trading when disposable income allows and extensive video editing and rendering.
And anyone who has rendered video knows most of it is waiting and monitoring while you do other tasks hence the extra screen real estate
Bingo
I didn’t even consider you using it for your job. I was thinking of it from a gaming perspective. Do you use multiple monitors when playing games?
Middle monitor gaming. Top monitor: inventory management (I play a lot of loot shooters). Right monitor: discord. Left monitor: internet browser or whatever project I’m multitasking on.
Triple screens for sim racing and the 4th top screen for map or leaderboard data
With a couple more you’ll have that Swordfish movie pod built!
My last job sent me a box big enough for the laptop. I kept the docking station and monitor. Still have it 2 years later, nobody ever asked for it.
Hold onto them for a month or two and see if they ask for it back. They want the laptop and maybe the docking station monitors, keyboards, mice, and webcams are pretty cheap.
So honestly the cost to send monitors back safely often exceed the cost to order them brand new from a distributor......
Unless the monitor is a 240 hz, 5k, 1 ms, 32 inch beast. There's usually very little incentive to retrieve it.
So yes free monitors. For me when I got laid off, they only really cared about the laptop. Not the charger, mouse, hub, or headset. The laptop and only the laptop
Sick goon cave, bro.
time for some easy fb marketplace sells. put both for like $50 and accept a $40 offer if no one bites. $40 beats no dollars
Monitors? It’s not much of a consolation.
I feel for you OP. The fear and rage of getting laid off is distressing.
2nd time it’s happened, probably not the last. Have folks in the industry trying to help me into another role which is good but I’m considering leaving the automotive industry altogether given the current administration with automotive tariffs. We’ll see what happens in the coming months. I’ve got severance, unemployment and a stacked emergency savings to keep me going.
Add them to the top and make em upside down T
You just haven't realized that you need them yet. Give it time. Do you have room for storage? Companies don't get monitors back
Ask them for an itemized list of what they want you to send back - possibly profit
That’s too much effort. They clearly need the laptop back, so return that and nothing else. If they need anything else, they’ll definitely let you know.
I worked as a contractor and when my contract was ending they renewed it, but they still sent boxes to return everything, my manager told me to just ignore that. 3 months after they sent me an email to my personal account that I didn't return the stuff (2 monitors, and 2 laptops)so I had to clarify that I was still employed. By the time my contract actually ended they sent the boxes to a wrong address, sent a message to my manager about this, then they sent a box to the correct address but only for one laptop, the after reaching to my manager again they sent another box for the other laptop, had to reach out again because I still had the monitors, never heard from them again, I still have the monitors. Any chance they can still reach out ? It's been 2 years
Who knows? I mean, the answer is technically yes, they can reach out at any time. Are they likely to? Sounds like the chucklefucks don't know how to manage their inventory, so I'm gonna say no.
That's how my last company was. Peripherals are to be "recycled locally".
Had one woman who just absolutely didn't understand what recycle meant. Had to basically spell it out that keeping them and reusing them yourself counts as recycling.
I'm an IT manager for a full remote company. We send people 34" conference monitors, and we don't give a fuck about getting them back.
But, we also let people know when they leave/are let go that we only want the laptop back. It seems really dumb not to communicate those expectations.
Yup every company I have worked for only wants the laptop. I have kept all the other equipment and usually just tell the next employer I don’t need any other equipment except the laptop. I don’t want or need a ton of monitors.
We have seen monitors damaged in shipping far more often than not. We don't chase them anymore. Enjoy the free monitors.
Correct. I've worked in IT support before and we only carr about the laptop and the charger. Everything else is the employee's to keep.
They said I could keep mine but they were old as fuck, like VGA connector old. Decided to start fresh with my own monitor purchased in the current decade.
When covid hit they told us to schedule to go into the office and get whatever we could fit in our car. There was no sign out procedure or anything. Now I have two super wide screens and a fancy ass ergonomic chair.
That's what we do.
The monitors are cheap. $90-$100 each. But they cost like $30 to ship, and they're fragile so they tend to get broken if they're not packed correctly (and even in original packaging they get destroyed in shipping a lot)
And even if we do pay to ship them back, we've got to put time into unpacking and making sure they're not broken/nasty (nothing says "welcome to the team" like "here's 1 broken monitor and 1 monitor with dead bugs falling out of it.")
And then we pay $30 to ship it out to the next guy. So we're like $70 into a used $90 monitor... And that's not accounting for any losses.
But going new every time costs a known $120 (cost+shipping) and if they're destroyed it's the supplier's problem to replace it and pay to ship another one, not ours.
Bingo. Juice ain't worth the squeeze. Recover devices that may contain data and write off the rest.
This is the correct answer, and quite honestly lots of times we don’t even get the laptops back.
When covid hit they told us to schedule to go into the office and get whatever we could fit in our car. There was no sign out procedure or anything. Now I have two super wide screens and a fancy ass ergonomic chair.
We called those consumables. Anything with an asset tag needed to come back but they didnt try all that hard unless it was a laptop with sensitive data on it.