Nov 30, 2007

It’s another grey Christmas

If you work in advertising, you know for a fact that December is probably the worst month in existence. You have to suck on lame company parties, ingest hellacious amounts of eggnog and there’s that wonderful tendency of layoffs to really get people in the Christmas spirit. Trust me, I’ve been on the short end of the “downsize stick” and it’s not a good experience to put it blandly. This year I was spared the axe but who knows what will happen next year. For those of you who have never gone through this, below is a short review of what goes on before you finally get let go; scratch that, before you finally get fired. “Let go” is a euphemism for corporate slugs to utilize and not feel so bad about what’s happened. People get fired and therefore become unemployed.

If anything is clear is that once the proverbial beans of higher ups are threatened they respond in kind by taking different types of measures to secure their own wealth, which in all honesty, they’re entitled to do. Some places do the unthinkable before cutting personnel or so they claim and other places don’t give a second thought about canning your ass. What seems to be consistent though is that I’ve seen lots of places can many people that seem to be less deserving of a forceful company exit than others. I see sludge piles of mediocrity keep their jobs because of ass kissing, conniving trickery or sheer lack of logic. I’m sure there’s someone who’ll read this that’ll probably be tempted to say that if someone gets canned they probably had it coming. By all means do not leave a comment because this is my personal take on this and if anyone is obnoxiously objective it’s me.

The thing is that when people get laid off, it’s normally done with corporate panache that really makes me question the whole basis of a capitalist society within a bullshit industry that sells tools to generate desire for objects and services you could honestly live without. Trust me, I can see the point of an employer not giving two weeks notice to someone they’re going to fire because the logical reaction would be to either suck at your job, sabotage the company or another array of options that aren’t out of the realm of possibilities. That doesn’t mean that I have to like when a friend of mine gets told he’s “being let go” two hours before the end of the day and I’ve actually seen people get fired right before they leave for the day. That’s because it is a corporate thought process that bothers me since I’m obviously an expendable peon within the ranks. I’m just another grunt that turns into cannon fodder when the going gets tough economically and if push comes to shove, trust me it’s a thousand times more likely you’ll get fired than you’ll get any type of backup from your higher ups. To add to my obvious disapproval of said understandable practice, they do it in December. I’m not going to look for an excuse as to why people shouldn’t be laid off in any of the twelve months in a year, but I think Christmas canning is rather in poor taste especially when you then get the bullshit speech about us being a team and really being like a family. Ummm… I don’t think so unless you’re from the Menendez/Dommer clans. That without going into the detail about a Christmas party even when people have gotten fired and the sludge piles mentioned above just being as jolly as Santa after downing an X and screwing a reindeer.

I don’t know, maybe I need power to become an insensitive prick that fires people without giving a second thought to it, but for now, I’ll mind very much so and offer my thanks, my praise and my respect for a co-worker that always thought I was a cool cat and the feeling is mutual my friend.

Cheers
Joker

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

And you read this and realize, yes Virginia, evil does exist.

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