Back when I was an encyclopedia editor – now you know why I’m always steering the conversation toward coatimundis and diverticulitis – there was a legend about the time our archrival told an employee he was going to be laid off in a month.

Rather than just kill time, he spent his final days going through his employer’s database of carefully edited encyclopedia articles and replacing every “Jesus” reference with “Buddha.”

So, yes, when you have to let an employee go, it’s best to do it quickly.

But there’s quick, and then there’s cruel.

CNNMoney.com’s Jeanne Sahadi wrote a piece on the “worst ways to get fired” and invited readers to blog about their layoff experiences. Their stories make you wonder: Are we recruiting our managers from M.B.A. programs or hiring them straight out of the fourth grade?

“[A co-worker and I] went out for lunch and when we came back his security pass wouldn’t work so I let him through the gate,” wrote one blogger. “We passed the boss’s office on the way to our desks. He went in and said, ‘I need a new pass. Mine’s failed.’ The boss said, ‘Your pass hasn’t failed. You don’t work here,’ and took the card out of his hand.”

Still, it was nice of him not to ruin the guy’s lunch break, wasn’t it?

Some firers take a more proactive approach, but maybe put a little too much drama into their plans:

“My husband’s co-workers all got called to an impromptu gathering at a local restaurant,” another entry begins. “As folks headed into the place, they got held back — they were meeting on the restaurant lawn, not inside. While they all got the layoff news, management was parking SUVs in front of all the office entrances and windows. Former employees had to schedule appointments to reclaim their personal items.”

Nice touch, the SUVs. Quasi-military tactics do make the moment even more memorable, and probably look good on the firing planner’s resume.

“In the late 90’s, I was working at a technology company,” wrote another unhappy camper. “Management told everyone in one of our East Coast sites that there was going to be an offsite meeting. They arranged for two buses to transport the entire team to the location of the meeting. Everyone was assigned a seat on one of the two buses. One bus went to a hotel where they discussed the company’s new organization. The other went to another hotel where HR was waiting with termination packages.”

Still, if you feel a vague unease with your downsizing plan, if you worry that you haven’t done enough to make your ex-employees hate you until the day they die, perhaps you should consider the timing.

“[On] Christmas Day 1988, a senior vice president of the firm I worked for called me on an emergency number and demanded I leave a family celebration for an ’emergency meeting’ in the Chicago area. … I drove four hours to the designated hotel meeting where the vice president informed me that the company I was working for was firing me because they had elected to go with a contract sales firm to cover my territory. As an additional bonus, he explained that I would not be getting any severance pay, nor would the firm pay for the mileage to the meeting to fire me. I then had a four-hour road trip back to an awaiting family that was convinced that I must have received a major promotion or advancement to have been called away. Not a good day.”

Oh, sure, but what about the man who did the firing? Poor guy had to work on Christmas.