Toyota, with over half a million staff, went sixty years without laying off even one person. That your organisation did so, with such arbitrary abandonment of responsibility, is shameful.

That said, I was made redundant twenty years ago and look back on my employer with fondness. There was no “bottom 10%” — the whole department was closed down in staggered increments.

We were offered counselling, and allowed time off to go to interviews. We spent time helping each other with applications, and could use office stationery and telephones to help us find new jobs.

I’m still friends with my team-mates, two decades later, and I had been there less than a year.

The pandemic has told us many things, but most clearly that the traditional Taylorist school of management is dead. The Great Resignation is giving notice that front line employees are not disposable “resources”.

Our children will look back on morality tales like this with the same bemusement that we regard Victorians sending children up chimneys. It’s not a source of pride.