Well, the government has finally admitted we are in recession. Great stuff. Thanks very much, Mr Brown, for admitting what's been fairly damned obvious for quite some time now. With business after business collapsing, the housing market grinding to a halt and unemployment beginning to soar, I'm amazed that it's taken them so long.
When Woolworths collapsed, I was pretty close to bereft. I spent five very happy years working for the company and was sad when it became inevitable for me to leave there, as my career goals lay on another path. It was just so incredibly sad to see the shelves stripped bare, people scrabbling like vultures to get their hands on the final pieces of meat from the bones, and the staff with their forebearing smiles and adherence to customer care even in the face of redundancy. I had nothing but admiration for them. I still feel sad when I pass the empty store, standing there as though it had never meant anything to anyone.
But there is a small, guilt-ridden part of me that is so grateful that I left when I did. My life could so easily have taken a different turn, had I decided to pursue the management route, but I didn't, and I'm glad that I made the decision I did. I suppose that I was viewing the situation from what I believed was a secure platform of employment in an industry that was relatively recession proof. Unfortunately, that has turned out not to be the case, and now that guilt-tinged relief I felt at seeing Woolworths' doors closing, knowing that it could so easily have affected me on more than an emotional level, seems to be an indulgence that I could not afford.
Because my chosen field, it turns out, isn't so recession proof after all. Ten per cent of the workforce is to be made redundant, as of the end of February. Whilst the survivalistic business of self preservation begins to leak through in the form of much hand-wringing and fervent self-reassurance that my particular part of the business is profitable and therefore safe, I am also struck, rather unpleasantly, with the idea that this is something of a cosmic karma. To be in fear for your job is, quite simply, one of the worst feelings imaginable. It's not just the prospect of having no money to pay bills and all the consequences that go with that; it's also the fear of losing the friends you've made, of starting again, of having no purpose to existence, being unable to find anything else, wondering what the hell you're going to do when the baliffs start hammering at the door. Of course there are worse things that could happen - severe illness, the loss of a loved one...and I'm not totally unaware that I'm probably in a better position than most, not having to worry about losing my home. But it is the emotional impact of losing everything I've worked so hard for that I fear more than anything else.
These are very troubling times. Every day, it seems, more and more businesses are announcing restructuring, redundancies and closures. I don't even think that this is something that we can ever hope to recover from because society is changing. The way we work, shop, socialise and live are changing. The High Street is dying. Out-of-town developments and the internet seem to be the only monsters that will survive what is beginning to look like an extinction of a society; a way of life. Something else entirely has been born, and I'm not quite sure what it will become.
A friend of mine, when told that redundancies were going to be made, had a rather different outlook on the situation. He told me a story of the horse that escaped from its owner's barn. The farmer grieved for his loss and judged it to be a negative event, until the horse returned with a friend it had picked up on the way. The farmer, overjoyed that he now had two horses, tasked his son with training the new one. But his son was thrown and suffered a broken leg, and the farmer cursed his misfortune. Undoubtedly he judged this too to be a negative event, until a war broke out and all young boys were expected to serve in the army - except for his son, who was excused because of his injury. This ultimately saved his life.
The lesson is in accepting what it meant to be and believing wholeheartedly in the adage that whenever God closes a door, somewhere He opens a window. I sincerely hope that my friend is right and that what seems, right now, to be the end of an era will ultimately prove to be the birth of a better one. I suppose it all comes down to a matter of faith.
