He wasn’t fired for poor performance, but for the office building he worked from: Employee shocked by boss’s bizarre layoff

Layoffs are usually linked to company losses, restructuring or an employee’s performance. But one worker on Reddit says his former boss lost his job for a reason that had little to do with his work, and more with the office building he reported to. The worker shared the incident on Reddit, explaining that his boss had been laid off after the company decided that employees in his department could no longer work from certain offices. What made the decision particularly strange, according to the post, was that the boss was not a remote employee and was working from a company office that already had many other employees.

Employee says boss was one of his best managers

The Reddit user made it clear that his post was not meant as an attack on his former boss. In fact, he described the manager as someone who supported him, valued his ideas and pushed for better compensation for him.

“He had my back all the time, he genuinely valued my input, and he pushed for the kind of monetary compensation for me that allowed me to make significant life decisions,” the employee wrote.


The worker said the manager had been working from the same office for close to a decade. He also pointed out that the job itself did not require employees to physically work from that particular location.

The company, however, suddenly decided that some buildings were no longer acceptable for employees from their department.

‘There’s literally no benefit or pitfall’

The employee said he expected people to assume there was another reason behind the layoff, but rejected that explanation.

According to him, everyone affected by the layoffs had been given the same reason, even though they were working from different buildings. He therefore did not believe his former boss had done something that specifically led to him being removed.

In a follow-up comment, the Reddit user explained why the building rule made even less sense to him.

“What's really bizarre is that our department works in buildings all over the country,” he wrote. “There's literally no benefit or pitfall to my building as opposed to my former boss's building. It's bizarre.”

He later clarified that the decision was not really about remote work versus office work. Employees from the department were spread across different states, and managers were not necessarily located in the same states as their teams.

Reddit users question the company’s decision

The post quickly attracted comments from people questioning the logic behind such workplace decisions. Some users suggested that companies can become overly focused on controlling where and how employees work, while others speculated that office politics could have played a role.

One commenter suggested that the stated reason might not have been the real reason for the layoff, particularly because the manager had been supportive of his team. The original poster, however, said there was no evidence that his boss was due for any special long-service milestone either.

For the employee who shared the story, the episode was less about one unusual layoff and more about how quickly circumstances can change inside a large company.

“This is just another reminder that, at the end of the day, you're just an employee ID and companies don't feel like they owe you anything, no matter how useful you might be,” he wrote.