As to be expected, the current economic meltdown has created a lot of people who grapple with the menace of the credit crunch – not only have they lost their jobs, the prospect of finding any other, not to talk of one commensurate in remunerations is zilch! When Eunice, a personnel director of an insurance company was asked to reduce the workforce by a third, she felt like a real hatchet man.
“One morning”, she alleged, “my boss called me into a meeting. `I’m sorry’, he said, not quite catching my eyes, `the company’s in a bad shape here as you know. We have to let you go’. I drove home in a terrified daze. I’d come to work that morning with an official driver.
“From then on, it became easier to have `lunch’ with a few of my contacts. One or two have now become regulars. Others were one-offs. Some of these men are heavyweights’ in the society and quite good-looking, some are rude, but I’m lucky so far that a lot of them have kept their promises and as soon as most of our debts are cleared, I will stop …”
‘It was as if I’d come from another planet. I withdrew into myself and became disheartened. On my first holiday home, my friends didn’t behave quite the same as I noticed. They believed I was not a bit more superior. Determined not to sink back to the level of a ‘town girl’ I agreed to go on “dates” that were so common on campus, especially the ones organised by worldly-wise girls with their ‘aristo’ money bags.