Layoff game makes unemployment fun
Are you one of the millions of Americans who got laid off in the last year? Do you have a lot of free time that you don’t know how to use? Play the layoff game!
If you are lucky enough to be at work right now, do not click on this: http://tiltfactor.org/layoff/. It’s addictive.
The sad truth
Unemployment is at a 26-year high. More people are getting laid off every day. And the folks at Tiltfactor Lab decided that everyone should be able to join in the layoff fun, even if they don’t have employees. So they made it into a game.
It works like “Bejeweled” and other puzzle games. If you put three workers of the same type in a row, they get laid off and you save the company money.
Digital personalities
Perhaps when you read news stories about layoffs those people are just numbers. However, that isn’t the case with the layoff game. There are bios of each worker that tell you about their life and personality. It doesn’t say whether the characters have any outstanding payday loans.
Take Val, for instance. He doesn’t have custody of his kids and works three nights a week as a bartender in addition to his full-time job in plastics to pay for child care. But if you lay him off it saves the company millions!
Those without humor need not apply
Be ready for some disturbing facts if you play the layoff game. A ticker scrolls across the bottom of the screen that shares statistics about things such as how much money corporate executives spend on two-day retreats.
I’ll give you a hint. It’s more than I’ll make in the next 20 years. It’s 25 times as much as the student loans I’ll be paying off until I retire. Have fun!
Do the tutorial
So, I tried to play the game without any instruction and it didn’t go well. Laying people off looks easy when you read about huge companies axing tens of thousands of workers, but it’s not something you should do without knowing what you’re getting into.
Oh, look! I saved $740 million playing the layoff game! And I’m just getting started.
That is pretty insensitive. Granted, it is kind of amusing, but insensitive to say the least. It seems a lot of execs get to play the layoff game without thinking of canceling bonuses or maybe taking a bit of a pay cut, but then again that wouldn’t make business sense to punish the people in charge of huge firms that nearly failed…under their leadership.