Redundancy blues

It was D-Day at work yesterday - no-one knew where the bombs would fall, or who'd be culled.

The problem with D-Day, of course, is that it's so personal - you're the one being shot - it's you the bullet's going to hit. This is not a movie, it's not a manufactured drama, it's your life.

Plus, unless you're some kind of monster, while you're desperate not to be culled yourself, you really, really don't want your friends to go either. So you're trying to avoid the shrapnel, while looking out of the corner of your eye to make sure your friends are still ok, and hoping whatever moves you've made to protect them will have been enough.

When the hiheidyins call you in and tell you whether you've got the chop or not, your first reaction, on hearing you haven't, is "Thank God!" Which, of course, translated, means "Thank God it's not me." So who is it? And how do you go back into the office without showing your relief, so you don't hurt the person who is the target? He probably doesn't deserve it any more than you do. What do you say to someone whose livelihood's just gone straight down the pan? You certainly can't comfort him because you've still got what he hasn't, which makes you the last person he wants to hear.

Redundancy is horrible; it's divisive, reduces people to their essentials and, with luck, can bring you together. But it needs to be done with whatever humanity can be summoned up. What it shouldn't be is needlessly cruel.