Indeed, it's exactly what you'd expect if more people quit buying stuff.

Customer support? Clearly the first to be cut if there are fewer customers to support, and in any case considered completely expendable and optional. Internal support roles? Also extremely expendable from your average management's perspective.

Maybe I just don’t know how the business works. Many of the support calls that I make are for things or services that I’ve had for a while, not just purchased. So I expected that to be more of a trailing indicator rather than the first area hit.

In hard times, why wouldn't it be viewed as a cost center as much as anything else?