Have you ever worked at a company that has laid off employees, been one of the “lucky ones” in the non-laid-off group, and heard a supervisor say something like this?

I know several people for whom today, because of a layoff, is their final day of employment at a major American company, and this kind of “Be sensitive …” advice came to mind.

Because this particular company has a lot of employees and therefore falls under the WARN Act, the company notified the laid-off employees sixty calendar days ago that today would be their final day of employment there.

The direct implication of “Be sensitive to those being laid off today.” is that those being laid off will be in a worse situation than if they had not been laid off.

The indirect implication of “Be sensitive to those being laid off today.” is that the listener will be in a better situation than those being laid off.

I am sure that at least some of those laid off will be in a worse situation, at least initially.

And anyone who is laid off suffers, at least initially, from another “L” word: loss.

But I believe that the long-term prospect for many is a different “L” word: liberation. After they work through the pain of the loss, many people review their strengths, begin to see new opportunities, and feel liberated.

And the ones who were not laid off, the ones who must now handle the additional tasks previously handled by those where laid off, are effectively told by their supervisors that they are the “lucky ones”.

You have to wonder who is “lucky” and who is not.

One more comment: I prefer “fired” to “laid off”. No matter whether I am laid off or fired, it means that I was not serving my company as well for my pay as someone who was not laid off or fired was serving my company for his or her pay.

So a “layoff” is effectively a firing.

Companies use the “layoff” euphemism to conceal the fact that they are firing employees.

The word “layoff” implies that a company later will “lay on” those laid-off employees — as if the company will start to pay them again after some period. Not!

If you believe, as I do, that a layoff leads to loss but can then lead to liberation, then you have to be optimistic for, and not just “sensitive to”, anyone being laid off.

P.S. If you are now at a company that has laid off other employees but not you, then you might want to review whether your job is still the right fit for you. For this exercise, I recommend a book titled No More Mondays, by Dan Miller.

The provocative subtitle of the book is “Fire Yourself — and Other Revolutionary Ways to Discover Your True Calling at Work”.

Read this book, and you either will renew your career in your current job or will find yourself looking for another job or self-employment.

And you truly will be a “lucky one”, too.

I often hear this phrase.

Problem:
The phrase draws attention to the perpetrator instead of to the victims.

Explanation:
Sorry about two blog posts in a row related to suicides, but I feel very compelled to write about this second topic.

To me, the phrase “suicide bomber” is a euphemism.

For the sake of better communication, it is best to avoid euphemisms.

The noun “euphemism” means the substitution of a vague or mild expression for one that people consider to be blunt or offensive.

The blunt meaning of “suicide bomber” is “a person who committed suicide by killing himself/herself with a bomb with the intent to kill other people — usually as many other people as possible — in the explosion”.

The problem that I have with the phrase “suicide bomber” is that it plays on the natural sympathy of readers and listeners who see or hear the word “suicide” instead of the natural antipathy of readers and listeners who see or hear the word “bomber”.

People see or read “suicide bomber” and focus on the word “suicide” as much as or more than they focus on the word “bomber”.

Unconsciously, their brains tend to say to them

• “Oh, poor guy! He committed suicide! I wonder what was wrong with him or his condition.”

instead of

• “That bastard! He bombed that market and killed a bunch of people! I am glad that he is dead.”

I truly believe that terrorist organizations have promoted the phrase “suicide bomber” as a marketing technique.

The phrase “suicide bomber” draws attention to a terrorist organization’s people and its goals.

If you tack on “homicide” to this phrase to get “suicide/homicide bomber”, then you reveal that the person not only killed himself or herself but also intentionally killed others.

But I prefer to take this to the next step by using “homicide bomber” — so as to draw attention away from the terrorist and his/her organization or cause and toward the victims.

The result is that the reader or listener then focuses on the crime and its victims instead of on the “poor, suicidal criminal”.

Sure, “suicide bomber” tells you that the bomber killed himself or herself intentionally during the bombing, and “homicide bomber” does not tell you whether the bomber used a roadside bomb or died, too, but the word “homicide” definitely tells you that the bomber killed others.

Being curious, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “suicide bomber” — 2,160,000 matches
• “homicide bomber” — 32,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used “suicide bomber” versus “homicide bomber” by a ratio of 66.7-to-1, which depresses me but must dazzle the marketing geniuses in terrorist organizations.

Solution:
“homicide bomber”