Nice Note from Yahoo! Video Team About the Missing “Lay Me Off” Video

Not a lot of the online video sites pay much attention to the blogosphere (yes I’m talking about YouTube especially) so it’s nice to get a note like the one below. The backdrop is that I produced a video called “Lay Me Off” (aka “Fireable Offense”) that features myself trying to get laid off. Folks in my company found it funny, and it got 700K visits. Unfortunately the HR folks were not amused. Naturally it had nothing to do with the company for which I work, and was pure fun and fiction. But they were understandably concerned that a) people may think it’s based on real events at my company, and b) that I shot it in our building.

For the record, I was “Lee Harvey Oswald” on this. Acted alone. The actors had no idea it would get that kind of exposure, or they’d have never agreed to be in it. And mind you the video took less time than it’s taken me to write this post.

Starting a new job on Monday and I actually did resign the day we shot the video. I’ll be laying off the “workplace” videos for a while as I’m taking no chances with my future employer.

So I had to yank it. And clean out all of the posts about it. I even dumped a gallon of Clorox on the blog to ensure that no germs were left. Broke my lil’ heart, and it’s even more depressing that I’m getting notes from people asking to see it again.

Here’s the note from Yahoo:

Dear Kevin,

We noticed you have removed your video Lay Me Off from Yahoo! Video. This is somewhat surprising since you seemed pleased with your Yahoo! Video experience and wrote a very complimentary blog post on it, which is also missing.

We at Yahoo! Video are continuously looking for ways to improve our service. Customer satisfaction with our product is extremely important to us. Please let us know if you were displeased with your Yahoo! Video experience in any way.

Thank you,
The Yahoo! Video Team