Dealing with the spreading shame and pain of Declined Dread
‘Declined Tuesday”. You either know exactly what that term means, or you’ve been lucky enough to not find yourself second-guessing life choices while picking up groceries in the days before your wages go through.
Whether you’re paid on Wednesday or Thursday, weekly, fortnightly or monthly, there is at least that one Tuesday where things get a little too tight.
Automated checkouts might speed up the supermarket experience, but if that robotic voice loudly announces “your payment has been declined” then time slows to a crawl, as your fight-or-flight instinct kicks in and your brain starts calculating at almost warp speed.
Could you have walked instead of bussing? Why did you splash out on New Zealand butter instead of getting the cheaper overseas stuff? Who even cooks with butter in a Cost of Living Crisis anyway? You’re not French. You’ve never even been to France. You just occasionally boo their rugby team.
How marvellous it must be to not live with the existential dread of hearing one simplistic, singular word; to only think of “declined” as something to do to invitations or website cookies.
Yet in these times of $3 petrol and $8 blueberries, restructuring departments and voluntary redundancies, downsizing homes and rising rents, the “Declined Dread” is becoming more common.
It might, at first glance, seem like this is a bad thing to be occurring in a 21st century First World nation, and that would be because it is.
If we could have a moment of uncomfortable honesty though, there is a part of society which does see the current communal spread of financial stress as more of an equitable distribution of consequences. The mindset, if you are unfamiliar with it, is that people are getting what they deserve. It is probably easier to understand that mentality if you replace the term “People” with “Public Servants”.
This is not a lamentation for the honest employee of the Ministry of West Wing Re-runs. No-one who does not work in the public service is in danger of dying from over-empathy towards government employees. Public servants, especially after a couple of drinks, would probably be the first to tell you what a waste that would be.
But can we admit that, within the cost-saving narrative of the current wave of redundancies, there is just a smidgen, a dash, a sliver of enacting righteous punishment. The word “vengeance” is both too dramatic and distracting, so perhaps “lite comeuppance” is a more accurate term.
Of course, try telling someone who’s been fired that what they’re feeling is “lite” and they might just put down the box carrying their personal effects for a word.
Since the Government, in its inverted wisdom, has deemed to not be clear on what positions should be removed to save expenses, all sorts of attention-grabbing headlines have been generated.
Suicide prevention services could have been gone. The chief science adviser to the Environment Ministry could be gone (a bold move in a climate crisis). Shortland Street could be gone! It won’t, because nothing can kill Shortland Street, and even if it died it would just come back the next week as its long lost twin.
What perhaps is being lost in all this is who is meant to pick up the work that was being done by the recently released. Presumably their relieved (and still employed) former colleagues, but then how is that supposed to speed anything along? Even a teenager working at McDonald’s can grasp that fewer staff means longer queues, automated tellers or not.
Because if the answers at the end of this path are “consultants” and “outsourcing” then voters might get a rude shock at the costing difference between the public and private sectors.
Conceivably some consultant (internal or otherwise) has informed MPs that no matter what the review recommendations, they absolutely cannot take a pay rise in the midst of mass lay-offs. It does not matter if almost the entire rest of the public service (sorry-not-sorry, chief executives) gets a small bump, or that MPs have not had a raise in six years; it would be migraine-inducing political optics to give themselves money, especially so soon after the the prime minister’s accommodation allowance tomfoolery.
Then again, maybe people just aren’t that interested in the details as much as the results. They wanted government departments to cut their numbers and heads to roll. So what if it’s not the person in the position they were thinking of?
When the dust finally clears, a list of the services lost and projects cancelled could allow the public (and possibly MPs) a clearer view of the holes in bureaucracy that have appeared, both intentional and non-intentional.
As that idea seems a practical one, it will probably require an OIA. Hopefully that won’t be declined.
James Nokise is a regular opinion contributor, a comedian, writer and podcaster.