So perhaps I'll just ask the peanut gallery a few questions: How do you know when you're being paid a fair wage for the work you do? If you got laid off, how would you know that your expectations in terms of wages were not outrageous? How do you reconcile this stuff with your self esteem?
And while we're at it, if you're an organization, where are the outer edges of your responsibility to your laid off employees? Do you supply references? Severence? When new positions do open up at your company, do you go first to your laid off pool to offer them or are they so morale tainted that's a bad idea? What if the new positions aren't exactly like the old ones? Do you offer them different jobs with less salary? What stays the same?
I have highly specialized, formerly very well paid friends staring at themselves in the mirror wondering if their self image of what they have to offer the world is completely out of sync with what they thought they had. There are no takers. And I look at Reed and I look at myself and I wonder how long we'd be looking if we were laid off right now. I like to think I know how my organization values me. But then I wonder if my organization is an honest one. And then I sleep less well at night because I'm not sure I believe that there's any such thing as an honest organization.
Anyhow. There's no closure here. And as I'm still employed, for me the question is academic. It's everyone else I'm worried about.
Posted by karen at September 12, 2002 12:00 AM