Radio Shack has hit a new low in employee communications and relations firing 400 employees by e-mail. What a fabulous organization.

Employees at RS’s Fort Worth headquarters got the following e-mail message last Tuesday:

"The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated."

Spokeswoman Kay Jackson says however that employees were invited to ask questions regarding the layoffs via a company intranet site – prior to getting the official e-mail. You see Radio Shack drew on all its integrity and compassion by letting people know in advance that layoffs were in the works and that they would get an e-mail notification. If employees had any questions, go to the intranet.

Jackson said the electronic notification was "quicker and allowed more privacy" than using more tradiional methods such as using managers who could open their jaws and emote language. More from the Silicon Valley Reporter…

"It was important to notify people as quickly as possible," she (Jackson) said. "They had 30 minutes to collect their thoughts, make phone calls and say goodbye to employees before they went to meet with senior leaders."

At coffee bar areas on each floor, the company provided boxes and plastic bags for employees to pack their personal belongings.

"Things went very smoothly. Everyone left very graciously and very professionally," Jackson said.

Derrick D'Souza, a management professor at the University of North Texas, said he had never heard of such a large number of terminated employees being notified electronically. He said it could be seen as dehumanizing to employees.

"If I put myself in their shoes, I'd say, 'Didn't they have a few minutes to tell me?'" D'Souza said.

Shares of RadioShack rose 29 cents, or 1.6 percent, to close at $18.21 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Awfully kind of RS to give people 30 minutes – and plastic bags (they’re cheaper then most containers) – to get the hell out.

Why even employ people in communications? You could just automate all employee communications via e-mail engines and intranet postings. In fact, who needs e-mail?!?? That’s just a drain on servers. Just publish the layoff notice on the intranet with all of the names of affected employees. Individuals can search for their own name on the list and also instantly know the hatchet fates of their other fellow employees.

Better yet still, since layoffs are all about arbitrary savings and driving stock prices, just post the layoff notice on the intranet and fire the first 400 people who read the notice ‘cause we all know that if you’re surfing at work you’re not really doing your job – you’re just lazy and hence the firing is now for cause and you get to save all of those pesky buy-out packages!

Gob bless corporate America!

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ON A PERSONAL NOTE: Just got back from my one month vacation/paternity leave. Good thing too because with one of us getting up 4 or 5 times a night with the baby it's not necessarily low-stress keeping up a day job such as mine. But she got a new tooth!

I replaced one deck at the cottage, added to a second deck down at the lake, and managed to sneak in a couple of waterskis. I finished a couple of books (Mao: The Untold Story, and the third in a trilogy on Julius Caesar called Emporer: Death of Kings, and a whack of magazines). Other than that it was mostly parenting and catching snakes, frogs, crickets, etc. with my eldest daughter. Oh yeah, we also had a great visit with our friends the Goodmans from New York who visited for three days.

It was nice to be at the lake, though much cooler this year. It is in fact much warmer here in Vancouver (30 C today) so it's ironic having to come back west to warm-up.

So did I miss anyting interesting?

By the way, a welcome to our new client BC Hydro and a returning client HSBC!