Much is heard about the “Still Small Voice” of cautionary morality that lingers about human dealings with problems of right and wrong.  I suppose that the still small voice is the lingering influence of Mom when our thoughts and hands edge toward a cookie jar that does not belong to you or me.  On a grand scale that voice is heard when we see supposedly responsible governments doing nothing while genocide and lesser crimes against humanity occur within the family of nations.

Hesitating when you could have raised a hand to say STOP or put that hand in your pocket to pay for someone else’s  costs just to live another day is costly to those of us who usually hear still small voices of conscience.

What this is about is not THAT still small voice.  What I focus on in this essay are the small voices of perfectly wonderful people who are suddenly cut off and are stilled among us because some Board of Directors or some CEO decided to downsize, outsource or just give the job to someone else – for whatever reason.

I used to need to have part-time jobs for my main job as a teacher did not pay enough to cover the style of living that I would like to afford. Other people lived a whole lot more fully and did a great deal more with what they had.  It was not jealousy on my part but I could see the disparity.  I was fired from three part-time jobs I had over the years which I badly needed to buff up my economic buying power.  It was fairly easy to get these jobs and it was proper and just that I was fired for I was not a very good principal of Reform religious schools.  I spent a lot of time on dealing with children and teachers and not enough time wooing the people in power in each of the congregations in which I worked.  I kept my day-time job and that was a good things for I did that well and had protection of tenure and had made a place for myself among the faculty. Still, it is a good practice to CYA.

But, I am thinking about the sacrifice of perfectly good, productive, well loved people simply because the new broom did not think their small voices sang loud enough.  That is a problem of perception. Mine is that their small voices should have continued to be heard.  My position is that unless the job is done so horribly that you cannot ignore it, that person is just as good or bad as the others doing work in your organization.  In some countries cradle to the grave protection is automatic for workers.  I think this is a good thing – nothing is wrong with it as long as you can deal with the deadwood and others who slow everyone else down. That takes entrepreneurial imagination and effort of bosses who would boss us.  Who grades the work of the boss?  This is the same as who judges the judges?  The Still Small Voice tells us these small voices are really good and should continue to be part of us. These voices speak of a cautionary morality missing in big corporate decisions.