The company I work for are going through a downsizing exercise. That's not about everyone losing weight, it's about people losing jobs, but everything in management speak sounds like it is somehow good for you even when it isn't. So from 6:30am to about 5:30pm I am the bearer of bad news to many of the company's long serving employees. A rotten job by any means but not as rotten as the feeling of being told you are no longer employed. I too have been retrenched, made redundant, let go, downsized, toe cut, head chopped or been the fall out of restructuring collateral damage so I know what it's like. But for some the job was more than a job. And that's where it gets wobbly. A job is something offered by a company that pays you to do something for a short time and a bit longer if all is well. The place of employment is not your home and the people who sit beside you are not your family. The management team are not your parents and they don't really care about you they just don't want to be sued by you. The desk you sit at every day is not yours. So while my day is filled with other people's feelings of loss, shock and why me, like all good things in nature, the green shoots will appear again one day and life will return to normal. Unless of course someone comes along again with a giant pair of secateurs and we all know what that means.
That's awful, Lorna.
ReplyDeleteYou've seen both sides of the picture now and neither of them sound more attractive than having your toenails removed by a angry drunk with a chainsaw. I hope you can somehow lose it all at the office door before you get home... Otherwise there's booze and chocolate.
Thanks Kath, booze and chocolate works for me too.
ReplyDeleteI don't envy you being he barer of bad news and couldn't agree more about misguided loyalties of some workaholics but having been retrenched in June and now being 'tolerated' because I'm too good to let go but not good enough to serve the total Troll Bitch for whom I was intended . . .am being shipped yet to another department and accepting a demotion rather than a month's notice. Humiliating, that's what it is. Life is far from normal 9 months down the track. Never trust anyone in HR ..smiling assasins. The only reason I haven't been 'let go' is that the MD recognises the 'awkward' management style of she who I no longer need obey. So the job search is still on! My my shoots green up soon!
ReplyDeleteBaino, go sow them seeds and shoot out of that place.
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