Managers who deliver bad news are stressed, too

One personnel manager wakes in despair at 4 a.m., worried about the
employees in her company. Another boss has to remind himself to eat right
and exercise so that he can handle the stress. A third says he has had tears
in his eyes for months. They are the bearers of bad news, the Grim Reapers,
the corporate executioners, the office hatchet men. They are the ones whose
job is to tell employees they have been laid off. And these days, they're
miserable, too. "It takes a huge amount of energy to ensure I don't get
emotional," said Wendy Mahle, the human resources manager at Sunrise-based
Perfumania, which just laid off 95 because it is moving its headquarters to
NY's Long Island. "If I started crying, that wouldn't help anybody."
American employers slashed 651,000 jobs in February, even more than analysts
expected. When the monthly numbers come out, the focus is on the newly
unemployed. Less attention is paid to the stress levels of those delivering
the news. And they want it known they aren't all cold-hearted,
script-reading drones who don't care about the people they're cutting loose.
Marty Flaska of Hoist Liftruck in Bedford Falls, IL, was the kind of company
owner who befriended his employees. For years, he would joke on the factory
floor with the machinists and welders. Now the smile is gone, small talk
rare. His company, which makes forklifts, has gone from 330 employees 6
months ago to 79 now. Flaska's personally given pink slips to each laid-off
employee, often to people whose children he has seen grow from toddlers to
teens. "I had tears in my eyes for months on end. Some of these people have
worked for me for 16 years, 17 years, 18 years," said Flaska.
Bill Holmes, HR chief for the athletic shoe manufacturer Reebok in Canton,
MA, said weeks of preparation precede the day of layoffs. Holmes, 46, said
he tries to be mentally & physically ready by eating & sleeping right &
getting