Which is a reasonable concession to make in this economic difficulty.
The idea came to me when I was speaking to my husband about a friend who was commenting on an event at Harvard Law School. "Oh? He still has his post? I thought he'd been made redundant."
Redundant being current American slang for, "You're sacked." Its connotation is kinder than being sacked — it's more of a "This is none of your doing, but we need to take away your pay packets anyway. Hope you don't mind too much."
But, to return to my friend, my husband answered, "No, as far as I know, he's still there." He was a systems administrator and IT specialist, so presumably he has yet to be made "redundant", another interpretation of which is, "We can afford to let go of everyone in your department, as we'll handle this for ourselves from here out. So long!"
Somehow, my mind in turn related this to the television series Futurama.
In Futurama, there is a recurring character named "Scruffy". No one ever seems to know who he is or what he does, and in fact, they cannot identify him from scene to scene. He informs them, each time, in a rather dry voice, that he's "Scruffy. The janitor."
Come on, we've gotta go fix the plasma fusion boiler.
[CUT TO: Basement of Planet Express. The boiler is rocking and steam is hissing from it. FRY and BENDER walk down the steps and find SCRUFFY reading a magazine called Zero-G Juggs.]
Who are you?
Scruffy. The janitor.
(Clearly agitated and annoyed.)
Well, why aren't you fixing the boiler?
(Indifferent to BENDER's agitation)
Schedule conflict.
— "Parasites Lost", aired 21 Jannuary, 2001
It occurs to me that, indeed, we could reach a point at which all "superfluous" administrative and support staff were reduced to, "Scruffy. The janitor."
"Excuse me, but do you know who I'm supposed to see? My pay wasn't deposited into my account this week." "I'm having difficulties with the audio-visual presentation for foreign students that allows for simultaneous translation." "Oh, God, send help! Someone just had a heart attack!"
With the removal of enough support staffers from any institution, we could indeed reach a point at which virtually all complaints were re-directed to, "Scruffy. The janitor."
2 comments:
Are people in the US now using redundant to explain being let go? I never heard that term until I moved to Ireland...and I still think it's an incorrect use of the word. I don't think the jobs are redundant, I think they're being removed all together!
"Redundant" is UK-ese, not American-ese. Apparently it's been co-opted.
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