The other day I was thinking about my last employer. We were all hard working professionals who worked with a number of clients.
One day we were all called into a meeting and the senior dudes announced that there was a new plan - the clients were going to be divided up and the big clients would be worked on by people they considered the "A team" while the others would be worked on by the "B team". At the time, someone asked whether they expected this to demotivate people explicitly told they were "B list" and I think they were fobbed off (everyone there was good at their jobs).
I don't think it ever actually went ahead (like quite a lot of the new ideas presented). Presumably the combination of completely shuffling people around and at least 50% of the staff getting cross at being described as "B list" ended up being more of a problem than expected.
Now that I am properly middle aged I think it's an outrageous way to treat people but at the time I didn't think so much of it.
What about you?