The Snitch

We have heard many horror stories about companies ruthlessly chopping off their workforce by the thousands. While we are all so caught up sympathizing with the plight of these displaced workers, it is easy to overlook the impact that this recession has on the employees who are left behind to pick up the pieces from where their ex-colleagues left off.

People assume that the ones who are still with jobs are the luckier of the lot. Of course it is a valid assumption to make. Isn’t it better to still have a steady income that will help you tide through this awful downturn?

Not necessarily so.

As reported in Time, employees who are left behind often have to dealing with guilt that it wasn’t them who was laid off, anxiety that they might be next, exhaustion from the extra work they must take on and even envy of those who get to leave such a depressing environment.

Says a market researcher in New York City who recently watched an entire division of her company be cast off,

“It’s depressing. You walk into the office and it’s quiet, the entire atmosphere is different. When someone gets promoted you want to say, ‘That’s great,’ but then you realize they got the job because the two other people in that group got laid off; this person was cheaper. You start feeling evil. People say at least you have a job, you should be grateful. Well, I’m not sure how happy I am. And then I feel selfish about that.”

It seems to me that the economic climate today has spared no one – regardless of whether there is a job or not. Everybody is just as mentally, emotionally and physically drained as the next employee.

So who’s got it worse, really? Having no job at all? Or having too much work all at once from taking over an ex-colleague’s workload?

Via TIME