At a former employer I (voluntarily) left. I ended up spending a good couple hours driving my 7-year old laptop which I rarely used to a FedEx dropoff and I'm sure it was promptly recycles. But I wanted make sure all the loose ends were tied up.
on the opposite side, I had some nearby management literally come to my house 30 minutes after my layoff to collect my equipement. I didn't even have time to process the layoff; I had to disconnect my entire setup, lug it downstairs, and have it ready to lug into someone's truck faster than I could order a pizza.
That's just petty and one would think nearby management would have better things to do. Whether or not people "should" a lot of folks have their personal and work stuff pretty intermixed and need time to disentangle and may not even have a personal laptop. I guess there could be an element of not wanting to give ex-employees time to copy off work info but still (and, if they're that worried, they should be able to just do a remote wipe)... I've always tried to make a point of keeping an off-work copy of anything I want to keep and isn't confidential.
