Downsizing as Sport

Back before the cube farm era I worked in a large, open, barn-like room crammed with desks, drawing boards, and a couple hundred a-hole & elbow drones. Our project was for NASA's planned lunar mission, subcontracted to a giant photographic products firm. You'd recognize their name in a second.  Despite being fully staffed, and having no room for additional bodies, there were new hires reporting every Monday morning.  They were there to replace the ones who were summarily discharged the previous Friday by Big Eddie, our feared and fearless leader.  There seemed to be neither rhyme nor reason for the firings. The workload was fairly constant, and it wasn't necessarily the poorest performers who were axed.   

It always went down this way: At 3 pm on Fridays, Big Eddie would stroll down the aisle that divided the room, his fat head oscillating like a desktop fan (something we weren't allowed to have, even though there was no A/C nor windows).  Every so many steps, Big Eddie would stop, fix his gaze upon his intended target, and wiggle his "come with me" finger. The doomed worker would know he had to follow him to a small alcove in the rear of the room, where he and his fellow soon-to-be ex-colleagues would get nothing but a "Need I say more?" from Big Eddie's smirking mouth.  That was the condemneds' cue to get their coats and vacate the premises, pronto.

One Friday, Eddie entered the room for his 3 pm purge, and we saw him give the look and crooked finger to someone we all thought was too well connected to fear being chopped. The guy's face turned ash gray, his jaw dropped as he had visions of starvation, foreclosure and destitution, when all of a sudden, Big Eddie cracked a grin and waved him off. "Just kidding!"  That's when it became obvious that this was just sport for the management.  The turnover harmed rather than helped this job get done correctly and on-time.  But it must have been fun, because they kept doing it. We knew that if we escaped the Friday Reaper, we could count on another week of the fairly high wage we were earning. 

Years later, I saw an ad for Big Eddie's estate auction.  He had died in his recliner, watching TV, surrounded by filth and garbage, piles of empty junk-food bags and beverage cans, and he sat there for weeks until the postman alerted the cops. Eddie's mail was piling up, along with the daily papers.  Though Big Eddie's Cadillac was in the driveway, the mailman's knocks went unanswered.  I went to the auction out of curiosity, just to see how this odd creature lived. The house was a mess. It was clear he had done nothing to maintain it following the death of his mother, who shared the home with him for many years.  I thought the auction lots would consist of things like torture racks, medieval weaponry and human fingers strung on a necklace, but Eddie collected comic books.