mktg case study #13: mktg magazines GIVE AWAY FREE CRAP (PREFERABLY ADVERTISER-SUPPLIED FREE CRAP). DOESN’T MATTER HOW WORTHLESS OR USELESS IT IS: SA… - Max Barry

He flips to the section on retrenchment. A sacking, the book says, is one of the most harrowing and stressful events you may ever experience—Jones assumes “you” means the person being sacked until he realizes it’s talking about the manager. According to the book, sackings can be highly destabilizing: workers stop thinking about doing their jobs and start thinking about whether they’ll still have them. It then describes a rage of strategies managers can use to harness that fear and uncertainty and jujitsu-throw it into a motivating factor.
What Jones doesn’t find in the book—and he doesn’t notice this at first; he has to flick back and forth—is any mention of the retrenched employees. How they might feel, for example, or what might happen to them afterward. It’s kind of creepy. It’s almost as if once they are sacked, they cease to exist.

Someone tried to tell me the other day that the only habitable place in America is California. But I just don’t understand how you could spend your life restricted to summer outfits.

I learned pretty early in my career as an agent to be friendly to utter jerks; it’s an essential skill.