Let Go

All and all this week turned out to be one of the kind that leave a fellow more than a little wrung out and tired. You see, this week my cube-mate was "let go". It was a strange affair, in this era of contract employment and "right to work" legislation making just about every job into a short-term contract, it's hard to know exactly how to feel when a coworker suddenly isn't one any longer. There was the prerequisite expressions of dismay and sorry, the well-wishing and assurances that the future holds something better, and then the awkward parting on his last day followed by an even more awkward emptiness. After the depressing reality settled in, though, I started to think about the way we talk about something that's an all too common event.

We think of one word to describe when a worker is deprived of their job, fired. To be straight forward, fired isn't an amicable parting of the ways or the result of downsizing, it's being ushered into a side office for the equivalent of a gangland whacking. Don't say goodbye, there's no notice, there won't be cake in the cafeteria and a card on your desk, just get off company property before your boss calls security. According to the Word Detective website, the term "fired" was first used to describe the loss of a job in the 1880s and is linked to the discharge of a cannon. Imagine a circus performer being shot out of a cannon, and replace the clown outfit with a business suit and you get what our 19th century relatives were thinking.

Where there is a need humanity will invent a term, and it's probably obvious that not all partings between employee and employer fall into the perp-walk out the door variety. There are times when, due to the ambivalent currents of economics and business, a worker joins the ranks of the unemployed and that parting of the ways can't accurately be described as firing. In 1871 the term "let go" came into use to describe just such a situation. Let go describes downsizing, the expiration of contracts, and any number of unfortunate circumstances.

It's not much, but hiding behind the shield of etymology blunts the pangs of parting a bit. Those of us who are left behind are gifted with an appreciation of the uncertainty of fortune, one day everything is ticking along per plan and the next everything is upside down.