Or, How To Get Cornholed In Business Without Really Trying

A certain Fortune 500 tobacco company, located in Winston-Salem (you do the math on that one...), which recently shit-canned my wife under the guise of "corporate restructuring" (read: downsizing) so they can funnel more resources to redecorating top executive lavatories, has again reared its decidedly weasel-like head:

She got a call today informing her that the panel which evaluates employee performance, and thus decides what rate of bonus everybody receives at the end of the fiscal year, deemed her past year's job performance as "Fails To Achieve" (the lowest possible rung on the ladder), thus pooching her out of any bonus whatsoever.

Admittedly, in the interest of full disclosure, they have provided her with a more-than-decent severance package, as well as continued her health care program for several months after she left her job, but it seems to me that this maneuver is typical of how the corporation weasels its way out of paying its former employees any more than they absolutely have to.

Why should they? some will ask.  A corporation's first responsibility is to its shareholders, profit margins are its primary concern. Employee well-being ranks somewhere below toilet-tank water efficiency.

I am sure - though I have no way of backing this up with inside information or anything as pedestrian and objective as statistics - that most (if not all) of those downsized were deemed substandard in their work performance for the 2007 calender year. Thus not only does the corporation justify its downsizing, it rationalizes withholding any further outlay of capital on folks that got the axe.

Somebody must have their eye on a marble-and-gold-encrusted bidet...