re·dun·dant1. Exceeding what is necessary or natural; superfluous.
2. Needlessly wordy or repetitive in expression: a student paper filled with redundant phrases.
3. Of or relating to linguistic redundancy.
4. Chiefly British Dismissed or laid off from work, as for being no longer needed.
According to The Great Betty, unless one has chosen the recession-proof occupation of nursing you are in grave danger of being made redundant. Sacked, laid-off, fired, let go--none of these phrases make any personal comment. It's just something that happens to you. Now, 'being made redundant' cuts a little more thoroughly (as only polite phrases can) into your worth as a human being.
We don't need you. We have another of you. You are redundant.
In the early days of The Marriage van Voorhees, my Mijnheer was 'let-go'. Bad enough as it was to be sacked, it was worse that the standard operating procedure for this very large multi-national corporation was that every employee leaving the company involuntarily should pack his cubicle under the eagle eye of company security and then be escorted to the door--lest computer bugs should be uploaded in a fit of revenge or micro-processing secrets should be smuggled to rival firm Slugworth's.
And executing the back-up plan of marriage to a Dutch millionairess would have been awkward--what with me...and the 6-month-old. New employment was secured soon but it's his own fault for being made redundant in the first place. He chose to be a code monkey when he ought to have been a male nurse.
According to The Great Betty, unless one has chosen the recession-proof occupation of nursing you are in grave danger of being made redundant. Sacked, laid-off, fired, let go--none of these phrases make any personal comment. It's just something that happens to you. Now, 'being made redundant' cuts a little more thoroughly (as only polite phrases can) into your worth as a human being.
We don't need you. We have another of you. You are redundant.
In the early days of The Marriage van Voorhees, my Mijnheer was 'let-go'. Bad enough as it was to be sacked, it was worse that the standard operating procedure for this very large multi-national corporation was that every employee leaving the company involuntarily should pack his cubicle under the eagle eye of company security and then be escorted to the door--lest computer bugs should be uploaded in a fit of revenge or micro-processing secrets should be smuggled to rival firm Slugworth's.
And executing the back-up plan of marriage to a Dutch millionairess would have been awkward--what with me...and the 6-month-old. New employment was secured soon but it's his own fault for being made redundant in the first place. He chose to be a code monkey when he ought to have been a male nurse.
I wouldn't let your RDD read this one. I remember when that happened. I read him "Oh the Places You'll Go."
ReplyDeleteOh boy, I get this all the time and not from just from Betty.
ReplyDeleteMy parents are both nurses and whenever I've whined about how hard it is to find a decent job, I hear, "They always need more nurses."
I'm a SAHM at the moment, but I have a feeling that I will hear that speech again and again and again. . .
(Betty) Jill
I find myself doing it too. Our next-door neighbor is a super-heroine ER nurse and I'm constantly sending the 7-year-old over to absorb an interest.
ReplyDelete