Retiring employee accidentally discovers management's plans to lay off 50% of their workforce, decides to let coworkers know: ‘It was a good time to retire’

When someone decides to move on and leave their workplace, they find themselves letting go of a certain loyalty they had developed for the workplace, the job, and even their coworkers.

Spending 8 hours every day for years at a workplace, being paid to care for the business's success and your coworkers' well-being, naturally leads to an actual concern for the job and the people in it. So even when you decide to leave that workplace, for whatever reason, it might be difficult to let go of those feelings. These feelings increase when the reason someone leaves their workplace is due to their retirement; they don't leave because they got tired or annoyed with the work, but it was simply time to stop working altogether.

The employee in the story below announced that they are retiring from their workplace early this year. They gave notice and let all their coworkers know that it's time for them to leave. Still, we imagine this retiring employee still feels a sense of loyalty to the people they work with, even if they are saying goodbye to them soon. 

While the employee was getting ready to leave the company, they received an email from the head of the company about an upcoming project, and attached to the email was something the employee was definitely not supposed to receive: A document from the head of the company to a contractor, confirming that they are going to fire over 50% of their workforce.

Since the employee still cares about their coworkers, they couldn't really ignore this alarming piece of information that has fallen into their lap. Knowing that many of the people in the company will not have a job soon was not something the employee could keep to themselves, even if they will be retired by that time and won't really be affected by these layoffs.