Work lets try to like it...

So long and thanks for the use of that chair (signed Bert).

The company I work for just cut back the staff numbers by 10.
Mostly forced redundancies, one resignation just before the event and some "change role and we'll re-employ" events.
What has surprised me more than anything is the attitude from some of those who did not loose their job.
"I'm not happy about this at all, it will mean I can't take my holidays when I want and if they need someone to visit a supplier site I will have to do it!"
A few days before (when first announced) I was trying to do the responsible I.T. bit and make sure nobody "deleted anything in anger" while trying not to get too involved in the tears that marked our local introduction to the global financial bullshit realignment.
I kept my job and am grateful for it, if they had asked me to take a pay cut I probably would have done so if the alternative was job hunting in a recession or gathering berries and firewood.

One staff member had resigned a short time before the event.
His departure in some way crystallised my feelings about what happens if people concentrate solely on the interests of themselves and how low moral can mask other issues.
This engineer (lets call him Bert) reputedly claiming to other staff that he was not happy, not paid enough, and as a result had done little for the last year (despite being probably the highest paid engineer).
I knew he sat in the corner, moaned about a fair range of subjects. did more than the usual level of web browsing and as he reported to a manager I assumed he was being "managed".
If he did actually do nothing in the year or so he was with us then he's obviously further up the evolutionary ladder than me, I do more hours for far less pay and worry about the welfare and future of my work and work colleges.

Following his lead and maybe taking it a little further I have decided "the world should pay me a kings ransom for a few minutes work a day, allow me to take holidays whenever I like, in no way ever impinge on my social life and obviously pay the same when I stop working (at maybe 50) until the day I die".

I used to spend hours in woodland, and when watching animals in their surroundings the one thing that struck me every time was the constant interaction, limits and balances that make up this blue-planet Eco-System.
Humans as the "Highest Animal" (!) have moved (we believe) beyond those "Basic" balances and seem to now believe "what we desire is what we deserve".
The economy is dependant on growth, we are therefore taught to expect "more" all the time and in return should have to expend "less" time and energy to get it.

As a by product of global financial situation it only works for a while, there are limited growth motors and if each individual expects to expend less effort each year for greater luxury, travel and possessions then a "big balancing of the scales" is due.
As (comparatively) fat arsed westerners we are not far more valuable souls than those dying of hunger in the third world, we are just in the fat-arsed area right now. If the world moves on and the growth motors are suddenly based around arid lands and sunlight it may be that we are left shouting at the powers that be that we are now too lazy to move and demand someone carries us to the new land of plenty but maybe they just don't need us and our mindsets there, so sorry.

Most of the people who lost their job were excellent, hard grafting and an asset to the company so no reflection on them (last in first out is hard on good people) but just maybe the rest of us can now smell the (still free) coffee, work closer together talk a bit more and in doing so make the Berts of this world stand out as someone ever present at the meal table but never in the fields. When there is less on the table he who grabs the biggest slice becomes easier to spot.
This recession is going to be a bigger shock to those who were born into the land of plenty as no amount of tantrums or threats of legal redress will turn it round we have to work through it.

Europe in some respects is maybe at a disadvantage in that with our strict employment laws some crises will be hidden until beyond repair.
Someone cleverer than me can reflect on the differing affects of American type "just sack them now" to European "due process and appeal" but I do wonder if I wasn't in line for a fair bit of redundancy pay or was living in the states that I would not be writing this from the unemployment line.
Maybe, just maybe, the restrictive process of getting rid of staff will mean less knee jerk sackings and complete company dissolutions than in the US but it is something else I have to be grateful for this week in good old blighty.