I seem to remember one story from the dot-com bubble of one company firing staff by disabling their key cards while they were out to lunch - a security guard came out and dumped their personal belongings in boxes.
I heard a similar scummy kind of thing (cant remember name.. it was like Adtran or some other communications equipment corp) they used a fire drill to get the building vacated, then disabled access cards.
Boggles my mind that this seems like an acceptable strategy.
