Of all the media phrases that sicken me
one of the worst is 'They lost their job'.
It is used to describe the diminished remunerative choices
of an employee who is no longer in their previous
gainful employment, to suggest it was their choice
to give up on the money and withdraw their labour.
When clearly it wasn't. They no more 'lost their job',
than struggled against how their work took from them
all sense of play-until brittle and bitter, they snapped.
Just like the child who dislikes being pushed into school sport
enough to mislay their kit, because that is the only way
they can express their dislike of the hierarchies sport
and school imposes on them. Much to the annoyance
of their parents who are as competitive
as they are inattentive, driven and materialistic.
Much less did the job lose the employee.
A job is the intellectual property of an employer,
a role, and it is neither 'lost' or 'found' but it is withdrawn,
reshaped and redistributed from one individual to another
by it's owner, though some jobs will dissapear
when new technologies commit them to dustbin of history.
None of this will be commented on in a market place
where the height of honesty is the rareness
with which a successful person admits
that 'markets can fail' close enough
to a market actually failing,
and like the good Samaritan,
be moved to fix what has been broken.
The self employed can use the phrase
'I lost my job' to accurately describe
the process-it was their job to lose,
but they are as adults we should object
most vehemently to the phrase being put
in the third person when used to describe them.
*the act of representing an abstraction (e.g. 'The market place') as a physical thing.
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