Wednesday 12 November 2008

Merde on a Mardi

God. Everything right now really is shit.

Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy.

But in some ways it's odd. I was in Westfield London (largest inner-city shopping centre in Europe) earlier this evening and nearly every second person was loaded with shopping.

Where are they getting the money? It must be all on credit.

It's just so awful to think of the people with a family and a home who're resting their heads on their pillows right now, stressed about whether the boss is going to call them in tomorrow morning and make them redundant.

I'm fortunate.

I am single. I am renting where I live. I am pretty-much debt free (I need to tell you about this on November 15th) and I don't have children, the car's gone and...

If I were to lose my job right now I would probably stress for a while but I've been with the same employer for nearly 6 years so would get some redundancy pay at least. Imagine having a mortgage and a young family?

Think about having to tell your young son that the fire engine he wanted for Christmas was going to have to wait because "daddy's er..." Okay, we're getting mawkish. Besides, plastic fire engines aren't that expensive.

This is all depressing and as we plunge into a shitty winter it's just going to get worse.

With me being a fairly new adult, I am still an RV (Recession Virgin) but I expect the following things will happen:

The number of people playing the lottery and gambling will shoot up.
People will spend loads more on cheap booze and drink heavily.
Petty crime will increase.
People will become more stressed, stay in for longer and not go out.
The long-haul travel industry will collapse. Small and niche businesses will collapse. Estate agents will become extinct.
All this will happen minutes after the media industry collapses too due to the advertising market drying up. (Fuck).
Basically unless you're in a job that has a direct influence on increasing profit you'll be sacked.

Oh god it's too much.

I'm going to take some painkillers and open a bottle of South African red.

It's a good bottle of red, mind - Rupert & Rothschild. We're not opening the stuff in the plastic two-litre bottles just yet.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thats why you ve got to love uni! Everyones shit poor, drinks shitty wine/beer and gets all their clothes from topshop. We are invincible! The recession cant hurt us. We, y'know, like so rule.

Anonymous said...

In this sort of environment people buy now and think later - so they don't have time to think about it as the deed is already done. This is especially so when it comes to xmas.

I've already lost a nice laid back job in an estate agents as a result of the housing market going down.

I went out for dinner with a group of friends earlier this week. One had been unfairly sacked and lost her partner last month; anothers grandchild has been born with some serious problems; and anothers partner is terminally ill. It made me feel lucky even with the problems I have.

http://zenhabits.net/2007/09/minimalist-fun-the-100-things-challenge/ I was re-reading this post recently on a blog and was not sure whether I could manage it. Could you manage after being here 6 years with just a suitcase of stuff to start with and an ikea within reach?

Superdrewby said...

yes it is scray when you have a mortagage and you run a small business, but you know what.

A recession happens because people lose confidence, so try and stay confident, work smarter, stay healthy be confident and be positive

chabang said...

But surely your job is safe - people will always need trashy TV magazine shows, if the worst comes to the worst there's always porn.... :-p

MadeInScotland said...

i sense an ennui coming on? Me too. Blame Gordon Brown.

You and I should blog to sustain the economy. I mean it BobbyV.

ahoj