What's poisonous about it? It's the blunt truth. In stack ranking, you don't have to be the best employee, you just can't be in the bottom 15%. If you get laid off, it means you're in the bottom 15%. There's nothing poisonous about that assertion.

It's like they say about escaping a hungry bear, you don't have the be the fastest runner to survive, you just have to be the second slowest runner.