Dirty little secret: They were laid off

Embarrassment is next challenge

The neighbor, a jovial suit-and-tie presence at the school bus stop in the mornings, disappeared for a while last fall. Nobody saw him for weeks. Finally he began to venture out -- at afternoon pickup, in jeans and a T-shirt. A senior manager of a technology department, he had been laid off. Neighbors didn't know what to say to him.

Across the soccer fields of leafy suburbia, conversations are stilted these days; the bravado has a tinny ring, the gallows humor is more prevalent, the deft change of topic more abrupt. As classes let out at a city private school, a normally chatty top-of-the-heap woman, whose banker husband was recently escorted out of his office building, rushes in, sweeps up her child and dashes off, avoiding glances.

As the economy blasts away at white-collar workers as well as blue-collar ones, the newly jobless are learning an ungainly new language: How to spin their situation to other parents on the Saturday morning sidelines. How to convey nonchalance during uncomfortable pauses in the golf-club locker rooms. How to fend off inquisitive family members at barbecues.

For so many, the loneliness is palpable. "I stopped getting together with colleagues from the office," said a Manhattan man who had worked for nearly two decades in sales and trading for a large investment bank. He was laid off in January.

U.S. companies have shed 240,000 jobs in the first three months of the year, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Business-page headlines announce layoffs by the thousands at major American corporations: 2,000 at AOL, 5,000 at Morgan Stanley, 4,000 at Merrill Lynch.

Just the right spin

Despite the pervasiveness of the cuts, many people are uncomfortable talking about their layoff.

In general, middle-aged professionals seem more anxious and demoralized than younger ones; men tend to be more buttoned-up than women.

When Janette La Vigne, an insurance company executive from Clinton Township, N.J., was laid off, she immediately told fellow lacrosse moms. The women were empathetic, particularly those whose husbands had been through layoffs, said La Vigne.

"But the guys are speechless," she said. "They don't know how to handle it. Their body language says, 'Eww, I'm so glad I'm not you right now.' "

Breaking the news to parents who grew up under the shadow of the Great Depression is an art unto itself. Last summer, when Diane Gelman, a single mother, was laid off as a financial analyst at a Manhattan bank, she called her mother, masked her own shock and front-loaded the spin with optimism.

"I've been unhappy for so long at my job, Mom," she recalled saying. "And now they're offering me money to leave!" She has since found a position.

A dirty word

Those on the sidelines are also uncomfortable, fumbling for a protocol, an etiquette to support their struggling neighbors, while also respecting their dignity.

Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown, explained the inarticulateness of the well-intentioned. "People feel caught between two conflicting concerns," said Tannen. "You're caught between the need to show you care and the fear of offending because you're reminding them of something painful."

Although layoffs are dismayingly common, the term has a lingering stigma. The slang for being laid off is inherently dehumanizing, said Anne Baber, co-author of "How to Fireproof Your Career," which is based on interviews with hundreds of laid-off employees.

Among the coarser expressions: Canned. Getting rid of dead wood. Pruning. Fumigating. Cleaning house. Made redundant. Axed. Sacked. Bagged.