This being the Top 10 Issue and all, and Creative Loafing having recently made an announcement about staff changes (aka layoffs), it seemed only right to do a list of the Top 10 Reasons Layoffs Suck.
A few came to mind right away. For instance: Friends of the laid-off making pompous online comments about the Death of Journalism, implying that the remaining staffers are hacks. And just as bad: Enemies of the laid-off acting like assholes, leaving comments that boil down to “good riddance.”
Also, and maybe I’m projecting on this one, I assume it’s annoying when managers (like myself) get weepier than the staffers being let go. Uncomfortable for everybody and not a little ironic, considering the managers still have jobs.
And there’s the fun of making statements about the situation for public consumption. Management and remaining staffers try to convince themselves and the world that really, the layoffs don’t suck, that they’re necessary for the survival of the company, that we’ll all come out of this happier and healthier and financially peachy. But no matter who says it, the reasoning winds up sounding like so much corporatespeak bullshit (even if it’s not).
Case in point: The statement on CL’s Daily Loaf blog linked to above.
I wrote that statement, so I know it was true, and heartfelt, even though it may read as overly careful, even clinical.
But really, the only thing to say when a company goes through something like this is that we’ve lost some good people. And those good people, whatever relationship we might forge with them in the future, will soon stop working here full time.
Good people — Alex, Anthony, Wade, Melanie, Elke, Ken, Gabe — have lost good jobs.
And that sucks.
