A cute cartoon duck can be the bearer of bad news. Stripe is laying off 300 people, or about 3.5% of its global workforce — and in emails to some terminated employees, the company accidentally sent an image of a yellow cartoon duck,

But that wasn't the case at Stripe, a payments software company that laid off 300 employees on Monday. Some employees in the various roles affected (product, operations, engineering) were notified by an illustration of a cartoon duck,