Gannett welcomed its employees back from the holidays in the worst way possible

When employees at Gannett, the newspaper publisher that owns USA Today, returned to work after the New Year holiday this week, some of them were greeted by emails that implied they had been fired.

The mistakenly sent emails noted that their recipients—who had neither quit nor been fired—would “be leaving the company in the near future” and requested they fill out exit surveys.

Media blogger Jim Romanesko tweeted a screenshot of an email by Gannett’s head of human resources, David Harmon, in which Harmon tells employees to “disregard” the emails.

He did not apologize for the error.

Gannett did not immediately respond to a request for comment.