Partly as a bit of fun, but mostly as an opportunity to vent...
Employee: "So what's my motivation for getting up at 5am to be on site for 7am?"
What I wanted to say: "Keeping your f-ing job? The fact that we pay you a salary far in excess of what your meagre skillset, dubious intelligence and questionable competence deserves?"
What I actually said: "Your professional pride in the delivery of an excellent service that our clients appreciate."
Most of the comments on this thread so far refer to perceptions of 'performance'. In these cases, HR would not obstruct what managers feel is in the best interests of their teams or the business as a whole. But we know from these forums that sometimes those who work in HR are put in questionable (i.e. unethical) situations. That's when decisions need to be made.
Things I have wanted to say:
'Please leave. Leave now.' and 'If you don't like it so much, why are you here'?
Also: 'If you could earn so much more at XXXLtd, why don't you go there'?
Like David, I have been required to be the acceptable face of a hard to accept decision. One example from way back in my career: we wrote to all staff to say we wanted to withdraw the system of automatic annual pay increments but guaranteed that if they agreed to this they would get a pay rise next year of no less that the RPI. And the next year we couldn't afford the pay increase. And it was me who had to tell them. There was a lesson to all concerned on using the words "we guarantee".
