emotional toll of working with "dead man walking" coworkers

I certainly felt the stress at a former job when I got a 30 day notice that an entire office was being canned. Like 600-700 employees in an entire campus. I had to be informed because they were selling the building right afterwards, and it was a call center, so we had to turn off all these phone trunks literally the day of. First, I had to sign a bunch of bullshit paperwork with threat of legal action should I tell anyone what I knew was coming. Then I had to handle the technical end, which meant that I had to work around all the IT and help desks with some illusions that I would fix something or work on something. Basically lie like hell to people I knew were about to lose their jobs, and these were people I liked. And the company was stupid about it, too. Like I had to act like "everything's fine" when: * The real estate company gave potential buyers tours of the campus. They were supposed to tell them to keep quiet and stay with the group, but many didn't. The let themselves into the data center, the server room, and other places, and just started asking random employees about various leaks and broken things. "Is the cabling going to be left?" Shit like that. * Two weeks early, AT&T showed up to turn off a bunch of their stuff. That was awkward. I had to lie that they misunderstood a work order. * Two weeks early, suddenly a lot of managers just vanished. These were the people that were being kept, and flown to our main offices. They were not allowed to talk to anyone as part of the deal, so one day, a direct report would show up to their manager's office, and see it completely empty and moved out. This was only a handful of exec, but of course, everyone started to panic. * All these moving boxes showed up a week before the date, plus some demolition equipment. At one point, "someone overheard me tell an employee about the layoffs," and I was dragged into an HR meeting with legal and told I'd probably go to jail by management (which, some 28 years later, I realize was probably a bullshit scare tactic). Thankfully, it turned out to be a misunderstanding, and the guy who "overheard me" recanted what he'd said. The day of, which was a Monday, people were met by some armed guards and told to show up at a large ballroom in a nearby hotel. Here they had their badge confiscated, some got severance packages, and were told they were let go. A lot of people had already figured it out, but people asked, "what about the stuff at out desks?" Funny thing? That demolition crew (which were mostly bearcats) had already started sweeping/scooping the pod farms into one huge pile on the lower floor. So some people had to get their things from this huge pile in the middle of the former call center floor. The whole thing was a goddamn mess, and I feel like if I end up in Hell, this will be one of the things brought up as to why. I \*still\* feel fucking guilty about lying to a lot of good people who didn't deserve this. Damn corporate America, and damn me, too.