Dinners of the damned

You hear a lot these days about layoffs and what they are doing to workplaces. Low morale, heavier workload on those left behind, survivor's guilt.

I can relate to the lowered morale and the heavier workload, but survivor's guilt? Sorry, can't go there. I've worked past midnight and every weekend and pretty much every holiday for too many years and am simply too exhausted by my schedule (and the fact that I haven't had a week off in nearly a year) to feel survivor's guilt.

Don't get me wrong -- I am very grateful to have a job at all in this economy, and I intend to do my best at that job as long as it is there for me. I have no choice -- our household depends on two incomes. But reading all these articles about post-layoff workplace issues has me wondering if those who write them have any clue what they're talking about.

Take the office refrigerator. Please.

No one ever seems to write about this, which is why I'm convinced that the layoff stories I read in newspapers are written by free-lancers who never actually set foot in a newsroom.

I've never been unfortunate enough to actually be at the office as co-workers are being told that their services will no longer be needed (one of the few good things about working nights is avoiding these scenes, which generally happen during "regular" hours). So I don't know exactly what people do in those minutes between the time they are informed of their layoff and the time they leave the building.

But I can tell you what they DON'T do -- they don't take their food out of the refrigerator.

The results are predictable, and when I read a Chicago Tribune article a couple of weeks ago about an office refrigerator whose fumes actually resulted in several people being hospitalized, it didn't take much for me to imagine how the situation had developed.

It's been more than two months since the last round of layoffs at my workplace -- and it was a huge round. So you know where this is going.

Yes, the food is still there, festering. No one wants to touch what one of my fellow night-shift workers refers to as the "Dinners of the Damned." And who can blame them? I'm certainly not volunteering for the task. And whoever was disgusted enough to post the aforementioned Chicago Tribune article in the kitchen area of our newsroom apparently didn't volunteer, either.

I haven't given a lot of thought to what I would do if I were laid off. It's unlikely I'd have what it takes to launch into one of those philosophical speeches that movies are made of, or to make a dramatic exit that is forever enshrined in newsroom lore.

I admire those who do make a memorable exit, though. Like one former co-worker who, on layoff day, got "the call" to please come up to the publisher's office. Sure, she said, I'll be right up. Rumor has it that she immediately headed there, where her supervisor and other bureaucratic types were waiting. But instead of taking a left and going up the stairs at the end of the hall, she took a right -- straight down the stairs, out to the parking lot and off into the sunset. (On behalf of beleaguered worker bees everywhere, here's to you, G.B.!)

I hope the layoff scenes are over. But if I should get the ax, you can bet I won't take long to pack my stuff. I won't scream, cry, throw a fit or launch into a soapbox rant about the disintegrating morals of corporate America. I'll probably just quietly fade away.

And I'll take my dinner with me.