Nonsense of Security

There's no shortage of discouraging economic news lately, and you don't even have to be a pessimist realist like me to see that. Talk of a bulimic stock market along with debt as bloated as a road-kill carcass under a hot summer sun bombards us from all sides. It does not whisper the gospel of doom and despair but rather shrieks and shouts it from every street corner, wearing placards bearing the same, terrifying slogans and urging the repentance of frugality and savings—for which the best time has, of course, long passed.

Corporate, too, is not without such prophecy. Under a cozy blanket of catch phrases and customer-supportive rhetoric, cushioned from the same very hard times by a pillow-top of managerial status, it very recently made some "difficult" choices that resulted in a number of my coworkers being escorted out of the building. I was not, at this time, one of those who "left", but I know from experience that one layoff is rarely "enough", and it doesn't much matter how good you are—when a layoff is scheduled and you aren't at or near the top, the odds of survival tip out of your favor like the very longest slide in "Shutes and Ladders".

How is it, at such times, that anyone in a position of relative security (i.e., management) expects anyone who is not (e.g., me) to believe the empty words that pour out? Words about how much we are valued, how good we are, how great is the work that we do? Work which will now, necessarily, increase, because the "opportunities" afforded to our more unfortunate—at this time—brethren are in no way going to negate the hard work that they did, for which they were summarily dismissed and led straight out of the hallowed Corporate halls.

Most of us are not fool enough to think that there's any such thing as "job security" in this day and age, and particularly in this economy. Certainly, health-care workers and funeral-service providers have some marginally improved level of job security—you know, perhaps it's time I considered a career change—but we are, none of us worker-bees, "safe". And yet, it doesn't appear to me that big business has any notion that once their end of the deal is dissolved, the opposite is true ... they still seem surprised when they hear that worker loyalty to their employers is on the downswing. They still expect us to go right back to work even before our coworkers—who were just as good of employees as those of us left behind, but came up with a short straw due to the projects they worked on, or the people they worked for, or the sites they worked at—have collected their personal belongings from their boxy, allotted work spaces.

To quote one of my former coworkers (with a bonus profanity that's all my own), "Are you fucking kidding me?"

And yet, in the dark economic forest in which we are being hurried down the road more traveled, what else are we to do? We can look for something else, losing whatever feeble benefit longevity can provide us with the business-conjured Powers That Be. We can sluff off, painting a neon "ME NEXT!" sign over our heads, because even in handed-down decisions, any manager worth the title is going to step up and defend a hard worker over a lazy employee. What is left, really, other than plod on the track our Corporate leaders have defined for us—and share with us in a sudden rush of pink slips followed by leisurely speeches about the importance of staying the course (oh, THE IRONY)—and do our best as they urge upon us?

At least, I guess, I do not labor under the nonsense of security, and I never will again—it's just a job, with no paper flowers of pretend safety stuck onto it. It is tenuous and it is temporary, and while I certainly will continue to do my best, I simply cannot give it myself. Because I see right through the vacuous, upper-level rhetoric to the fear beyond ... we must all do our best to protect our own interests; that's why management has and will continue to eat its own. And that is why I am now keeping a bag large enough to contain all of my personal items in the bottom drawer of my Corporate-loaned desk—it is in my best interest to prepare for the next layoff in as much of a little way as I can.

They may be able to "let go" whoever they please, at whatever times they deem "necessary" and suffer no remorse beyond bemoaning "economic circumstances". But, if I'm going to be one of the "released resources", I will damn well not have to be escorted out only to have come back at some slightly-later time to collect my Little-Girl-drawn art, tea, bubble gum, and walking shoes.

It's a cold comfort, true. But perhaps that's all there is in these cold times.