Look over your shoulder. Check out your pals in the economic lifeboat you're in: the boss, your cubiclemate, the executives way above your pay scale, your workers.

Who's your friend?

Whom would you toss out if push came to shove?

Who would give you the heave-ho?

Welcome to Survivor: Recession Island. You, dear worker and manager, are the stars of this reality show, and the only way to win is to watch your back - or else.

Things sure didn't feel this way just a few years ago. But an economic guillotine has been killing off hundreds of thousands of jobs a month with little regard for those losing their heads. Last week's latest unemployment numbers saw the jobless rate hit 9.5 percent.

With each drop of the blade, a workplace myth is being minced to bits, too: The notion that we workers are all in this together, that we are all family, that we are moral mates in this mess.

In more prosperous times, when there was plenty of wealth sloshing around in savings accounts, the stock market, and pay stubs, people could more readily swallow the notion that workplace ties were as thick as family blood.

When no one had to fire or be fired for the sake of saving money, workers who were loyal, efficient, and competent expected that all would be well. Managers of those workers would slap them on the back and expect great things in return.

Good will, hard work, and trust turned manager-worker relationships into what seemed like real friendships.

But look no further than the contentious mood inside the Spectrum a week and a half ago, where unionized Acme Markets workers rejected a take-it-or-leave-it management contract, as local evidence of how much things have changed.

Workers were "furious" at management, the union leader said before a near-unanimous rejection.

As companies in this recession scrape to fix flawed business models, pay bills, or satisfy investors, managers who used to be buddies become bearers of pink slips - rather than being pink-slipped themselves.

So do the owners of family-run businesses who cry as they pull longtime employees into their offices to say they've been fired - in the name of keeping the business going.

Unions, too, are increasingly facing negotiated contract terms that favor retaining strong benefits for one block of incumbent workers at the expense of newer hires.

And workers accustomed to the expectation of job security and a particular lifestyle are outraged that anything could or should change in their lives - as though somehow they are meant to be immune to the vagaries that afflict all other aspects of life.

Is the myth dead? Is there room for morality in this workplace mix? If so, who is moral and who isn't? And does such a debate even matter if, as now, a once-overheated economy has turned into an all-out, dog-eat-dog scrap for survival?

Two words making the rounds a lot these days are sacrifice and greed.

Sacrifice, it seems, is used as a coping mechanism for pragmatists: Don't spend on expensive coffee, eat home more often, hold on to that used car longer, and put away the dream that retirement will buy you a house on the Jersey Shore.

Sacrifice is also being used by people in power as a way of winning support for tossing people off the lifeboat: Managers at struggling companies say sacrifice is necessary for survival; the president of the United States says sacrifice is necessary for the common good in these uncommonly awful times.

Greed, however, seems the preferred verbal ammunition of those being shoved into the ocean.

Lost money in your 401(k) just as you were kicked off your pension plan? Blame it on "greed." Watching management cut your benefits while bigwigs receive bonuses and shareholders collect dividends? "Greed."

Both words are biblical, but as in any morality tale, they are being used to justify positions that, in a different economy, would have seemed immoral and unacceptable.

And these days, morality is in the eye of the beholder.

Contact staff writer Maria Panaritis at 215-854-2431 or mpanaritis@phillynews.com.