The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

Words by: Scott Fraser
Image by: Hugo Arias

I’ve suspected this might have been coming for a few months. Redundancies, lay-offs and contracts left to expire. We all know that no job lasts forever. Job security is as elusive as a unicorn that poops candy. What I don’t like (and what I hated as a child) is being told that “this hurts me as much as it hurts you.” I never asked him, but I doubt my dad’s hand was ever as sore as my arse was after a good old fashioned West Indian lickin’ (ask your Jamaican friends what a ‘lickin’ is if you don’t know).
I’m not even that worried about being unemployed. I think what’s bothering me is that when the dust settles from this round of cuts, the big boys will be fine. Even if they’re let go, they’ve already earned a decent pension. No such luck for a lemon-lifer down on his luck.
But the Lemon Life is about making lemonade from life’s lemons. I’m likely to be let go in the New Year, but at least I was able to finally put my education in Classics to use. It happened during a meeting festively scheduled for the day after the office Christmas party. The boss was briefing those of us deemed to be on the chopping block. He made a reference to “the Sword of Damocles” hanging over our heads. “Is that so,” thinks I. When the call for questions came, I could not pass up the chance: “Excuse me sir, I’m glad that you mentioned Damocles. In the Greek myth, the sword was hung above the king’s throne and therefore posed no threat to the people. When Damocles realized that, he understood the terrible burden of leadership. So the moral of the story isn’t that ‘we’re all in this together.’ The moral of the story is, as Shakespeare put it: ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’” My eloquence garnered muffled laughter from the few people in the group who understood what I was talking about, but failed to save me from the chopping block.
Well f*ck it. I didn’t much like my job anyway. Is anybody hiring an experienced, young manager with public relations experience and an above average grasp of Classical literature? No? Well here’s to new beginnings anyway and jeers to bosses who try to salve their consciences by butchering the Classics.

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