As hundreds, and even thousands, receive their pink slip' along with their check each week, you have to wonder what toll this takes on the bearer of the bad news. Is it easy to tell someone who has worked for you for years and has been an exemplary employee that he no longer has a job? Or maybe it's just a young man who has only been working a few months, but has three children and a wife to feed.
There's the couple who just bought a new house, new car; or just had the new baby. Or the elderly lady who is working to support her sick husband. A different story for each new case.
We realize the terrible anxiety pressing down on the person losing their job with no prospects for the near future; but have we ever considered the emotional baggage of the person who has to do the letting go' or more bluntly-the firing. It's easy to think, "why worry about that person; they still have their job. He's just
the Hatchet Man." But if you stop and think about it, you have to know that that person could be going through as much pain as the person that is losing his job. Even the
boss has to deal with a staggering amount of stress when he/she faces the situation of relieving someone of their livelihood.
Sleepless nights, eating disorders, emotional anxiety and physical trauma can be just as devastating to the
hatchet man as to anyone else working for the company. We hear or read the news about the depressed people who have lost their jobs and unable to deal with the situation, take the lives of their children and themselves. But do we hear about the supervisor or CEO who shot himself for reasons unknown? He didn't lose his job so what would make him do something so irrational-must have been just a kook or dopehead? Could it possibly be because he/she couldn't deal with the stress of their job-the job to cut other's jobs?
I'm sure there are the few who sit back in their high-backed, real-leather, padded desk chairs smug in the knowledge that their job is secure and the failing economy can't touch them. But there are those who really do care. Having worked in management several years ago (when times weren't quite so bad), I know first hand just how stressful management positions can be-especially when production goes into a slump and the need to cut jobs becomes a reality. The manager has to deal with slipping production, slack quality, employee strife and complacency-which all determines whether or not the manager keeps his own job. Then comes the downturn in statewide, nation-wide, then worldwide economy and the grim reaper is eye-balling everybody's jobs from the plumber down the street to the CEO in the penthouse office.
It may be tough this time around, but I think we all have to be optimistic. We have been through this before-not the first time and won't be the last. And I know we all realize that this time is looking worse every day. But there will be jobs out there-just may not be jobs that we want to do, but desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say.
You may have to take that job washing cars or greeting Walmart shoppers or flipping those McDonald burgers until things take a turn for the better. And I have faith that that will happen-maybe not as soon as we would hope, but I truly believe better times are coming.
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