Does upper mgmt feel we are morons/what is happening?

Finn - you are right this isn't a situation for me where I need to leave or am so unhappy as to leave.

But sometimes you do have to stay - if you have to support a family for instance. So the work environment is horrible and you hate working there and you leave. Now you have no money or health insurance to care for your children - that is what I mean by not being logical. I would stay in a horrible situation (until I could find something else) if it meant that my family needs me to financially support them. Honestly, because I was unhappy at work, I would not want the result of me leaving meaning we would all need to live in a homeless shelter.

ACtually this is the second wave.

They are giving out severance. Also, the day the notified them - they said they could stay to the end of the week (not that any of them did) - in either case, they were paid through the end of the month. Then severance depending on length of service.

What you describe remains a personal choice, and, quite frankly, a noble one.

Someone hates their job but endures for the benefit of their family - Without a doubt admirable, and yet still an expression of choice (Which afterall, is what makes it admirable).

The choices we all face range from mindlessly easy to excrutiatingly difficult, but choices they remain.

Sometimes it is easier to accept one's fate as being the result of not having a choice, but this is a fiction. We always have a choice.

People who understand that they always have a choice, gain power over their lives in a very important way.

Always having choices doesn't mean that you will always have a life of pleasure, but it can mean that you will always have essential contentment.