No kidding! a few years ago, JR preached to us that Astellas won't take a "wait by the phone approach" to downsize employees. Instead, Astellas uses a cowardly passive-aggressive bullying approach that allows for continued discrimination and preferential treatment of employees on the BFF list. This helps make Astellas look like a shiny terd on the outside by keeping the company out of the news headlines, but has killed the culture and level of trust in the organization. Annointed "special" employees keep their jobs while being completely disfunctional and incompetent. Dedicated, productive employees are then forced out for challenging upper management drones on outdated and useless job requirements. A downward spriral that's hard to fix without cutting off the head of the snake!