It gets worse. A spy tells Cockburn that the laid-off workers were summarily frog-marched out of the media company’s northern Virginia building Thursday by security. Remaining Axios employees chattered on their way up the building elevator post-lunch that they ought to hurry back to their desks “before we get in trouble.”

The big picture: Axios isn’t the first media outlet to lay employees off this year, but they certainly didn’t learn anything from their bedfellows about how to respectfully treat departing staff.