We hear these words over and over don’t we? They have become so much a part of this 21st Century culture that we hardly even flinch.
They are sterile words, meaningless words, that is, unless you’re part of the Recession Package of today. I’ve promised to tell you a few stories that I have encountered – so here goes the first one.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a résumé for a mechanical engineer working in manufacturing in Indianapolis, Indiana. Reason – Layoff.
As she described what had happened to her it made me cringe. The lady is African American and although that really doesn’t make a difference to the story; it does. She earned her degree in 1985 – not only a mechanical engineering degree, but another B.S. in Applied Math – graduating cum laude.
I think for any women this would have been an accomplishment. I asked her why she happened to enter that discipline – one that is usually for men (at least in 1985 it was). She told me that her home economics teacher was the impetus. Saying to her home-ec teacher that she wanted to be a teacher like her, the teacher answered that she had more smarts and needed to go into higher education with even higher goals. She did just that and graduated with high honors.
Then she entered manufacturing – a hard row to hoe for a women in a man’s field, let alone a black woman in a white man’s field. But she did just that and you know what? She was and is well liked and received.
She grows on you, this woman. You can feel her steadiness and character. No wonder they liked her.
Now about the layoff part: for the past year her manufacturing company has let people go. As theydid so they have asked her to take on more and more assignments – same pay scale – that of course – didn’t change.
Also, they asked all employees to bring a box or backpack to work in case they got fired that day. No, they didn’t use the word, “fire. ” That is too emotional; they use the more sterile words that are politically correct in this recession – you know layoff, downsize, reengineer. Something that doesn’t carry emotions.
But think about it. How would you like to go to work every day – take on the workload of three people and all the time your empty box is sitting there waiting for your belongings to be plopped in quickly while you vanish from the work force.
That my readers is the real hurt behind the sterile words of this recession; the real demeaning of our colleagues who work hard, overcome obstacles everyday, and earned their way with a cum laude, overcoming racial issues, overcoming gender issues, but not able to overcome the empty box issue. Mary Ann
