I am sick and tired of being so reactive to events. When you’re reactive, you tend to see nothing but numbers. And you know what happens? You forget those numbers are people. Thankfully I had already left work when I started to feel agitated, or I’d have screamed.
Not one of them could possibly name everyone we have let go. I can. I see their names every day. I know which ones went quietly into the night, which ones finally erupted from the stresses of our corporate culture, which ones shed tears.
As the weeks went by I began to see their names when I closed my eyes. I could even remember the week they were told. The clinical manner in which the news was delivered. The way they ended up being just names on lists. Ghosts on paper.
They have families. They have children. They have mortgages. They have fucking bills to pay. Some have come out here looking for a new life. Now they fear that life.
The manner in which we’ve moved from one extreme to the other makes my blood boil. From the beginning we should have walked the middle line, never wavering, standing our ground even in an employees market. Instead of hindsight, we say, just this once. ‘Just this once’ turned into twice, three times. Then you can’t stop, after all, we’ve set the precedent, we must continue with it.
Then, when it all comes crashing down, we don’t think. We do. We say thanks and goodbye. We forget that they are people. We’ve bloody well forgotten what got us into this mess in the first place.
The line is there for a goddamned reason.
