How deep is that Slough of Despond, anyway?.

Leaving a semi-public job after nearly 30 years turns out to be a very public process.
My Former Employer was scooped on my departure by other local media (which is not to say I regard the event as newsworthy except in a personal way). If the Reno News & Review and Channel 8 hadn't noted an exodus of experience from the F.E., I think it would have brushed it off with a brief on Page 9 and hoped it would pass unnoticed.
But that's not the story. The story is that as soon as word got out, people began talking to me about it. Nearly every one of them, once they got past the pro forma "Lucky bastard" or "I'm so sorry," wanted to speculate on how the trend of hacking back the workforce was affecting them. Based on what I've heard over the last couple of weeks, hardly anybody feels secure in his or her job anymore, and almost no one assumes impregnability from "market forces" or whatever euphemism is in fashion these days for laying off workers until the job can't quite be done the way it should.
I'm not generally a big Office Morale guy. You get paid for work because it's something you wouldn't do voluntarily. It's nice if you don't hate going in every day, but if there weren't somewhere you'd rather be, they'd call it "play" and charge you for it.
No good can come, though, of keeping your employees on the edge of either collapse or rebellion all the time.
In the last three weeks, I've seen that everywhere: supermarkets, television stations, a hospital and notably in state offices, where initial skepticism over Gov. Jim Gibbons has turned to outright loathing.
If I'd thought about it, I would have expected it among people 50 and older. I can't even criticize it much, from a business standpoint. My F.E. can hire two young reporters for what it was paying me, and they'll do three times the work with half the detectable bitching.
The work may not be of exactly the same quality. Increasingly, though, across society, that doesn't matter. A generation of Americans has become inured to crappy service and declining standards; most people won't even notice. And most of those who do won't bother to complain, because who wants 15 minutes of a recorded voice saying, "Your call is very important to us "?
Baby Boomers all over town, and presumably all over society, are becoming aware of that. Many of those lucky enough to be able to get out are doing it. Many of the rest are hunkering down and trying to ride it out, counting the days until the kids get out of college.
What surprised me was the number of younger people caught in the same noose. Up there a few lines I mentioned "detectable" bitching. You don't hear much of that from young workers because they know they're a supervisor's whim away from unemployment.
Many of their smiles are forced, though. They've seen how big-B Business works these days--they've never known anything else--and they've lost faith in the American Dream. They're hired cheaply, put on part-time so they don't qualify for benefits, get plugged into undersized staffs where they're expected to do too much work with minimal training.
It's all fun and games when they're fresh out of school, with a little apartment and a halfway cool car. As they pass through their 20s and begin to realize they aren't immortal, though, they look to the future, and what they see is bleak. There's little indication they'll have even the basics their parents take for granted: a home, security, affordable care when they're sick. Hard work no longer guarantees success, because the minute the shareholders start to whine, you'll be on the street anyway. Might as well do just enough to get by, spend three hours a day on YouTube and keep an eye out for the next crappy job. We're going to regret this someday.