I just finished reading the latest in a series of posts by older folk who — much to their surprise and chagrin — were recently and abruptly laid off after what they described as decades of gainful and often exemplary employment. Some were at relatively new businesses which were retrenching, and others were at long-established companies that were seizing on the pandemic to streamline staffs that had grown too large. These things are always an unpleasant surprise, but I’m not sure that all these events came as quite as much of a shock as they’ve been depicted, for two primary reasons.
