Likewise, don't attempt to comfort people about their position when you don't actually know how likely they are to get fired.

I knew someone who had done this and the person was fired that day.

I'm sure he believed it, too, or he wouldn't have said it. But he apparently didn't have all the facts. He regrets saying it and told the story a few times while I worked with him.

On the flip side, I worked with someone who was doing poorly in their job (after having done better in the past) and tried to help them keep their job.

The longer it stretched on, the worse they did.

In the end, they lost their job and I found out afterwards that they thought we were attempting to gather enough data to fire them, when in reality there were a few of us that were actively trying to help them keep it, and even management didn't want them gone, they just wanted them to perform adequately again.

I often wonder if I should have been clear about the risk to their job, or if that would just have been seen as a threat instead. At this point, I don't think I'd do anything different.