Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

Yesterday I came home to find the garden in my front yard decimated.

My ex and two young sons (all live together in a twisted Brady Bunch kind of way) had their own version of work week, which turned my Adam’s Family style garden into Wisteria Lane, sans the desperate housewives; only a desperate divorcée.

I’m flummoxed over their rationale when confronted with the cognitive decision to prune or not to prune, just like I don’t understand an employer’s decision to prune employees from the payroll besides the global reason of budget shortfall.

If there’s any logic to the madness, it’s not in the logicality of mathematics.

Do you prune a plant because it’s past its prime? Probably. But do you save its seeds to plant for next season? Probably not.

I believe many employers prune employees past their prime (translation: dead wood). But younger employees can be as unproductive as older ones.

Unfortunately, the wisdom that can be gleaned from an older worker is often passed over for a youngin’ with a tight tush and cleavage.

Yes, cleavage. I’ve seen a lot of it on the Metro on my way to a temp job. On a rush-hour train, I thought I was sitting next to the St. Pauli Girl, with her Bavarian blouse and a pink bra peeking out from behind the ruffles. Her girls had to add up to something more than a 36D. Yeah, I got it! Why hire one girl when you can get three for the price of one.

While modern-day office wear baffles me, some of the other pruning decisions my ex and sons made baffle me as well.

Did they cut to the ground some of my most beautiful plants because they were in the way, too scruffy, or did they become prune happy like employers get trigger happy when they shoot out the pink slips?

Whatever the reasoning, it’s too late to save the plants. They permanently severed their roots that supplied nutrients to keep them alive—just like us employees who have been severed from our jobs.