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Word of the Day: Fall guy
Nobody wants to be the fall guy, so you better be sure you know who your friends are.
The fall guy is the person who gets the blame when something goes wrong, or they are the person blamed for a crime they did not commit.
Most of the time, the person who gets blamed is the one with the least amount of power.
The people in power usually seem able to protect themselves from most of the fallout after something goes wrong.
Have you ever noticed how when a company goes bankrupt, the regular workers lose at least a part of, if not all, of their salary?
The office executives, on the other hand, walk away with a hefty severance package.
You’ll see some low-level public relations officer facing the cameras whenever bad things happen.
This unfortunate person bears the worst of the anger of customers, workers, and shareholders.
While playing the fall guy, the executives are hiding behind closed doors or playing golf somewhere far away, waiting for the nine-days’ wonder to end.
I don’t know why it works that way.
For some reason, there always seems to be someone from the bottom who is left holding the bag.
The saddest part is that everyone knows who the fall guy is.
Shareholders, workers and the media understand the person they are yelling at has no answers.
They continue to give the designated fall guy a hard time because that’s what they are there for.
The fall guy is a shield for the higher-ups because they can convincingly plead innocence because they know nothing.
If the people with the big offices had to answer questions about why everything has gone sideways, they would have to reveal the truth.
That is something they would prefer to avoid doing.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 69.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.