I've been on both sides of the desk

As a boss, I have let people go. I did not do it lightly. In fact, it wounded me. I remember the details of each lay off very well.

•  Dick. 1998. He was an old-school Madison Avenue kinda ad guy and used to disappear and go "for walks" (or to Starbucks or a bar) to help him come up with ideas. "Sorbet for the brain," he called it. That meant he wasn't around when spontaneous meetings were called. Also, it meant he was billing time when I couldn't vouch for the fact he'd been working, which is dicey. Dick had been on probation for three months and simply refused to comply with what I'd asked of him. He was only 48 at the time, but he had a stubborn dinosaur's mindset and I was worried his attitude would make it hard for him to get a good paying job anywhere else. He gave me no choice but to fire him.

•  Tony. 2001. He was a very young art director. When upper management told me I had to let one of my team for financial reasons, he was the obvious choice. His work, while good, needed a lot of revision from me and retouching from the studio. Not unexpected from someone as junior as he was, as he was still learning. But his work took more of my time to supervise and attention from the studio, and with a leaner staff I simply couldn't afford that. I felt terrible because he was engaged and I knew losing his job would be extra difficult for a young man planning a wedding. This was a lay-off, not a firing, and I made sure he got severance and references.

•  Natalie. 2002. She's the art director I chose to keep over Tony just months before, so when management came to me and told me I had to cut even more staff, I was heartsick. It wasn't fair. She had really stepped up, doing a job-and-a-half for a single job's pay. She told me I felt worse about the lay-off than she did, as she was a transplant from Indiana and was thinking about moving back home anyway. She ran down to the gift store in our office building and gave me this figurine on her way out the door. Yes, she bought me a present on the day I canned her. It's called "The Angel of Kindness" and it still sits in my bedroom. 

•  Lisa. 2002. This one hurt the most. Lisa had just had Lasik surgery and it didn't go well. The surgeon screwed up and she would need a second procedure. It was between surgery #1 and surgery #2 that I was told I had to let her go, too! I protested this one madly, but (and I'll never forget this) an agency vice president told me letting Lisa go was part of my job, one of my responsibilities and (direct quote), "why you get the big bucks." Like Natalie, Lisa was less upset than I'd anticipated. She was so concerned and stressed over her vision that she actually welcomed the time off -- with severance and COBRA, of course -- while she went through her medical travails. Inspired by Natalie, she sent me flowers to thank me for fighting for her. I was enormously touched.

The next time I was told I had to lay off someone from my now skeleton staff, I let myself go. I was that bruised. I freelanced for two years before I returned to the agency world and when I finally did, I took a cut in pay in exchange for the promise that I would never, ever have to fire anyone ever again.

All of this brings me to DOGE. I understand that government is overstaffed. I appreciate that cuts need to be made. What appalls me is the delight Elon Musk and Donald Trump are taking in this. Everyone who gets let go is a human being. With housing costs and utility bills. And if these firings are really being done because of fraud, where are the indictments? This is Trump's DOJ. If there was even a whiff of lawlessness, they have the ability to act on it. Why aren't they?

Because with Trump, Musk and MAGA, the cruelty is the point. Taking a chainsaw to people's lives gets cheers and thumbs up. It's about a lust for power and a joy in exercising it, not about justice or "government efficiency."

 So many of the voters applauding this bullying behavior claim to be Bible thumping Christians. As the kids say, SMH.