Yet Another Week From Hell Diary Entry

Today I ripped someone’s guts out and shat upon them as they sat festering in the scorching noonday’s sun. I took someone’s concept of reality and shattered it into a thousand pieces and then spread those pieces out around the globe knowing they will never find them all again. Today I looked a man in the eyes and told him that he was no longer a part of the company of which we both once worked. This was my first firing ever and it felt worse than I ever imagined anything could. I mean to see a grown man cry and beg for his life and there being nothing you can do other than try some half-assed pathetic and slightly transparent attempt to empathize with this man is impossible.

How can I honestly empathize with him when, come tomorrow, I will still be employed and he will not be? How can I honestly empathize with someone who is about to get their last pay check with no prospects on the horizon? The answer is I can’t, but there I was, going through the motions, pretending like I knew how he felt; the depths of the fear and worry that is now his life is something I could never know.

I told him I would do anything I could for him as if there is anything I could do for him. If I couldn’t save his job, how can I get him a new one? He called me on it and said that what he needed was to work. That just felt so peaches. I told him that he still had vacation time left, so he had another paycheck still coming, but that was no help. It is sort of like telling someone that, after this next swallow of water you are going to dehydrate for a while. It makes it kind of hard to really enjoy that last glass.

Now I know in the grand scheme of things that it is for the best. Nobody likes having an operation to have something removed either, but, when leaving it in will cause more damage, you have to take the discomfortable path and remove it. Ask any pre-op patient if the pain is really worth the surgery they are about to have and almost all would say that the pain is not all that bad. They would probably say that the preparation for the operation was more painful than the thing being treated. This does not mean that the operation should be avoided. I realize that letting this person go today is going allow this company to survive where as it was questionable if it could with them. There is no doubt about that, but that does not make the operation any easier to endure.

The week from Hell AKA the Fortnight from Hell is rapidly becoming the Month from Hell and it officially now has a body count. Call me the serial killer because today I gave someone the “axe.” I only prey…I mean pray that he was this killer’s last victim because I really did not enjoy the taste of raw employee flesh.