OPINION:One chief executive walks the plank as the recession bites. In time we will all have to make adjustments, writes Quentin Fottrell
IT'S HARD not to feel for Maurice Pratt, who will step down as head of C&C. His apparent act of self-sacrifice didn't evoke the same emotion in me as, say, the death of Little Nell, but of all the chief executives to walk the plank and get dunked in a vat of his own unsold cider, Pratt wasn't the one I would pick. (Not right away, anyway.)
His resignation even failed to steal attention from the banking heads who have battened down the hatches since the bailout-that-isn't-a-bailout. If I were sitting on the top floor of a bank, overlooking the craneless Dublin skyline, I'd be writing Pratt a "Good Luck" note for good karma.
In times of recession, the chief executive is usually safe. If only because we have become so accustomed to their face and who knows better how to clean up the mess than those who helped create it. Pratt said: "I have to be accountable and take responsibility." Good for him. There are many businesses in a far worse state than C&C where the chairman smiles smugly from the cover of the annual report, assuring shareholders it's merely a "perfect storm" of changing tastes, adverse currency translation and an economic slowdown.
Pratt took a more literal approach. He blamed the actual weather.
Some tips for the new chief executive: don't put all - or most of - your apples into one basket and, if it's raining during the summer, probably best not to run advertisements with smiling and laughing cider-drinkers quenching their thirst in the sunshine; when we're sitting in a darkened cinema on a rainy afternoon, we get the feeling that the people in the ad are laughing at us, not with us, especially if we're not laughing.
Also, tips for the outgoing chief executive: take a long holiday somewhere sunny; you are free now and, more than most who may face the chop, you've been generously rewarded for your service.
Like Róisín Sorahan, who wrote in Saturday's Irish Times about giving up work and going travelling in search of herself, one of the most popular stories on irishtimes.com in recent days, I dream about renting out my gaff and taking off, but I couldn't leave my vintage teardrop coffee table and good little soldier helmet lampshades behind.
M&Ms, those embedded in "Multinationals & Mortgages", can be like the woman who walks into doors. You cook, you clean, you wash, you scrub, and sooner or later burn out. Most of us work in a pork pie factory of one kind or another.As an intern in a newspaper 15 years ago, I watched a middle-aged man weep at his desk. He said: "I just can't take it anymore." I would have given my two front teeth for what he had. (Like Rowlf at the piano in the opening credits of The Muppets, if an editor looked my way, I'd type faster.)
Similarly, an acquaintance lost his job during the first dot.com blow-out and became a taxi driver. He kept his underground car park key and sat in his taxi at lunchtime contemplating life in the dark. He needed time to decompress from the rat race. Strangely, his old building was still the one place he felt safe.
No-one is safe. A survey released yesterday from Peninsula Business Services (Ireland) says eight in 10 employees are afraid of losing their job. We who were brought up in harder times were taught to fear job loss, to keep our heads down and believe that a job in the civil service or "the bank" (how wrong they were) was a job for life for those who didn't want to spend their working lives dodging the golden bullet.
But what's worse: a job with golden handcuffs or the constant threat of a golden bullet whizzing in our direction? Even in these turbulent times, I would happily take the bullet over the "job for life" any day.Job loss is painful, like a break-up. It's hard not to take it personally. But we need to readjust to a healthier pace of life. I know several people these last 10 years who simply woke up one morning and could not get out of bed.
Studies say stress is the second most common work-related health problem in Ireland . . . after back pain. And back pain itself is thought to be connected to work-related stress. We are sick when we have a job and we will be sick if we don't. Today's budget and economic storm will either wash over us or rip through us. There's little point in anguishing about it now.
A friend was made redundant this month from an American financial services multinational. He nearly took a career break last year. It would have been an expensive break. He was blessed enough to be on a good salary and generous package, so now has a lump sum the equivalent of 30 months net salary.
Fortunate as he is, I advised him to do a Swiss Family Robinson and take his young family to an island in the West Indies for six months. He can afford to be sanguine about his redundancy. For now, at least. "I walked past my old office building," he told me, "and I didn't feel a thing."