Belephant in the room

Posted on 10 May 2009

Posted by Bel. The time is 9:15pm here in Wellington, NZ.

It has been an awkward week at the office. Literally one person has spoken to me directly about the fact that I've been told my department is being laid off. There has been lots of breezy "Good morning!!"s as people hurried past on seemingly urgent tasks, making not a lot of eye contact.

I don't blame them really, I mean, unemployment's like swine flu: the new plague. Unpleasant to dwell on and infectious by association. We've all heard about people being made redundant - maybe there's even someone in your family, you know, without a job - but who really wants to hang out in the corner of the office that has had the X metaphorically slashed across it?

2 thoughts on “Belephant in the room”

  1. Just so's you know, I mention it to people at work who are going. Especially the ones in the situation of having their whole department go. Because, you know, not mentioning it would be weird.

  2. Yeah, it is weird. It creates this whole conspiritorial atmosphere.
    But on the other hand, I think that everyone else is now on eggshells too - realising that this kind of bombshell could come at any time.

    Man, it's kind of horrible that you're in a workplace where you have experience at dealing with these situations!

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