26 June 2013
Blue-collar new norm America: Dadio's handy manual to break workers' spirit - Intro - book version
This entry was posted on 6/26/2013 1:31 AM and is filed under Broken spirit.
A phrase you will never hear as a blue-collar worker: "We are strapped for operating funds, so we can't give you much, but, we will try to make life bearable here; we're in this together. Please don't give up."
Na, you'll most likely rarely hear that kind of message from the boss, you minimum wage toilers. I've lived it for 45 years. Wish I had a "happy talk" report to give you fair readers after all those miserable years, but...., nope!!
You're most likely used to the inspirational speakers and their shticks selling you, "perennial optimism." And it's your fault if you don't present as a, "good patient." Good patient as in someone with a happy demeanor even as they die of cancer. In the context of a job, the whole work rubric grumbles around you, wages, benefits, nepitism, the economy, et cetera, but you merrily toil on.
In almost 50 years of working in America and then some, I've never heard any thing even close to the opening paragraph. Instead, business owners, government agency management, upper management, lower management, and society in general come up with a compendium of totally-unnecessary work place hell rubrics.
One of my own favorite sayings in said blue-collar hell is, "This just isn't necessary." Half the crap and drama at blue-collar jobs are nonsense and unnecessary.
I am an employer's worst nightmare. I have actually owned a business. I've worked for an institution of 30,000 employees. I've worked for a mom and pop business with nine employees. I've been with companies in the throes of bankruptcy. Many of the companies I've worked for so long ago have vanished; owners and managers..., long dead. I have four college degrees and 50 years of work experience. Rarely called in sick in those 50 years; even despite all the challenges of an aging body. I can fix equipment that should have been relegated to the junk heap years ago. I've endured the stresses of several war zones as a soldier and later as a journalist; and, I've worked in the schizophrenic world of the American health care system. I've seen workers at their worst and their best.
You'd think I'd be an asset to any company or entity. Nope. I might as well be an ape on a tire swing.
I am a nightmare for the neo new norm work place because..., I've seen another world. I can see problems long before they happen. I can read managers and supervisor's petty games long before they are implemented. I've seen it all before; sadly, I've seen the same behaviors over and over.
These types of work places nowadays don't not want people that have seen how the greater system has worked and know how it works now. Guys that fall into that category are just a nuisance.
A few years ago, I bought into the go-to-college-as-an-old-guy-and-reinvent-yourself sales pitch. After four degrees, and working in Southern Wisconsin, I might as well be an ape on a tire swing. This in addition to nearly 50 years of constant working..., often for low wages, and little reward or benefit. But none-the-less, I have accumulated a mass of work and management experience. Reality: companies don't hire old people. But, the higher education pimps still want their pound of flesh after you graduate. Pay up underemployed sucker. Colleges are after all, businesses that only marginally have their customers' best interests in mind. Their job is to sell..., college degrees.
So unless you want to live in your car with your cat, you go to work in some low paying jobs not yet sent to China.
Human Resources departments once designed to protect workers and companies have for the most part collapsed in the "Great Recession." It is the wild west. Employees are on their own. Managers hired only because they are relatives or just plain no threat to upper management, make up rules as they go.
The end result? Employees just trying to get by and play the game as best they can are chewed up and spit out like a hillbilly chomping on persimmon seeds.
I've seen it all. If you are an employer and want to make your employees grovel and languish, just keep on 'a read'n....,
Note: This blog "Blue-collar new norm America: Dadio's handy manual to break workers' spirit" - book version Category is a work in progress. These original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Broken Spirit Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
"New Norm" economy: No day to celebrate - Jobs of Bob - book version
18 June 2013
"New Norm" economy: No day to celebrate - Jobs of Bob - book version
This entry was posted on 6/18/2013 1:30 AM and is filed under Jobs of Bob - book version, Jobs of Bob.
Penned in 2008
I never in my whole life gave Labor Day much thought. It has always been a day off - or not, depending on where I was working. It sometimes seemed like someone else's holiday.
I don't know why this year after so many in my life, I have been pondering a bit about "Labor Day." It dawned on me a while ago that I had been working 40 years. I started in 1968. The lion's share of the jobs in those 40 years have been blue-collar. Oddly, I have never taken unemployment. I have not called in sick in over 10 years.
To those that have never been blue-collar, or perhaps those that climbed their way out of it to a white-collar job, or yet even those that used to be blue-collar and are now retired and have long forgotten its unpleasant nuances, it is tempting to romanticize that working stiff lifestyle. "Fools," I say.
Forty years of back-breaking jobs with the temperamental, schizophrenic, lunatic bosses that often come with them, takes its toll on one's body and mind - your very spirit. The current work culture that is the culmination of a half century of changing and evolving work trends, I coin as, "the shitty work schedule culture."
These types of new norm jobs barely pay minimum wage. They offer no benefits; they give no performance review; they never give pay increases; They have no sick or vacation time; they try to con workers into doing more with less; and, they schedule work hours all over the map of a 168 hour week. It is after all the not so new work world of 24-hour, seven days a week service-work businesses.
There are 168 hours in a week and these type of jobs wreck each and every one of them. They make it hard to do family events. It is impossible to work a second job if needed. You can have no life. And, all for a job that probably provides you with 32 hours of work a week.
Gone is the work culture of weekends off. There is a whole generation that does not know there was a time that one did not work on weekends. Perhaps it was just a flash in the historical labor pan anyway. I doubt if the farm culture that dominated the Mid-West one-hundred years ago realized any weekends off.
I am writing a book about all the jobs I have had. Jobs of Bob. It is cathartic. If nothing else, I enjoy remembering some of the ridiculous experiences I had while being worked to death for 40 years. After all, who really cares nowadays if someone has been worked to death? Society, and its collective voice of apology and sanctimony will just say, "....should have planned better mister!"
Now after 40 years, I just can't get that damn horse from Orwell's Animal Farm out of my head. His name is Boxer, and he is a gullible but good natured bumpkin. He was the backbone of the farm operation; and he always deferred to the authority and "rightness" of the leadership..., in this case the pigs who have overthrown the men. The pigs promise a new workers' paradise. "I will work harder and faster," Boxer keeps saying. He believed hard work and loyalty could fix any problem. Once finally worked to death, Boxer finally collapses. The pigs who have become in charge of the new animal-ruled farm send his body to the rendering service to be slaughtered and turned into products; they use the money they get for Boxer's body to buy whisky. The pigs tell the other animals they sent old Boxer to the veterinarian.
Blue-collar workers with even a modicum of sensibility and thoughtfulness should never read Animal Farm.
At least a couple of my grade school chums have already died of old age in their 50s. An old age hastened by being worked to death for nothing more that work's sake.
....got a college degree a while ago to try to escape from blue-collar. Now companies say I am over qualified, or they whine that I will probably leave the entry level job soon to find a better job with my degree. That's an oxymoron considering they will give the job to a 22 year old who will do just exactly that - move on as soon as possible. What these companies I have been trying to get jobs with really mean is, "Oh, man, you are old. Too old. Go away."
Overqualified and over educated is code for, "You are a threat to the rubes that run this place. Too much experience is code for, "You are too old; get lost old man."
It lends one to suspect society is schizophrenic. I used to get told, "Man if you only had a bit of college we would hire you." Now, I get told, "Wow, you have too many qualifications." Well, ok, perhaps I will just not work then, and next time you can say, "To bad your credit sucks; we would have hired you if your credit was better."
No, Labor Day is not always a day to celebrate. Labor Day is sometimes a day to fear. Run for your overworked, underpaid lives - run while you still can, before the pigs sell your dead carcase and drink whiskey on your grave.
Note: This blog "Jobs of Bob" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Jobs of Bob Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
"New Norm" economy: No day to celebrate - Jobs of Bob - book version
This entry was posted on 6/18/2013 1:30 AM and is filed under Jobs of Bob - book version, Jobs of Bob.
Penned in 2008
I never in my whole life gave Labor Day much thought. It has always been a day off - or not, depending on where I was working. It sometimes seemed like someone else's holiday.
I don't know why this year after so many in my life, I have been pondering a bit about "Labor Day." It dawned on me a while ago that I had been working 40 years. I started in 1968. The lion's share of the jobs in those 40 years have been blue-collar. Oddly, I have never taken unemployment. I have not called in sick in over 10 years.
To those that have never been blue-collar, or perhaps those that climbed their way out of it to a white-collar job, or yet even those that used to be blue-collar and are now retired and have long forgotten its unpleasant nuances, it is tempting to romanticize that working stiff lifestyle. "Fools," I say.
Forty years of back-breaking jobs with the temperamental, schizophrenic, lunatic bosses that often come with them, takes its toll on one's body and mind - your very spirit. The current work culture that is the culmination of a half century of changing and evolving work trends, I coin as, "the shitty work schedule culture."
These types of new norm jobs barely pay minimum wage. They offer no benefits; they give no performance review; they never give pay increases; They have no sick or vacation time; they try to con workers into doing more with less; and, they schedule work hours all over the map of a 168 hour week. It is after all the not so new work world of 24-hour, seven days a week service-work businesses.
There are 168 hours in a week and these type of jobs wreck each and every one of them. They make it hard to do family events. It is impossible to work a second job if needed. You can have no life. And, all for a job that probably provides you with 32 hours of work a week.
Gone is the work culture of weekends off. There is a whole generation that does not know there was a time that one did not work on weekends. Perhaps it was just a flash in the historical labor pan anyway. I doubt if the farm culture that dominated the Mid-West one-hundred years ago realized any weekends off.
I am writing a book about all the jobs I have had. Jobs of Bob. It is cathartic. If nothing else, I enjoy remembering some of the ridiculous experiences I had while being worked to death for 40 years. After all, who really cares nowadays if someone has been worked to death? Society, and its collective voice of apology and sanctimony will just say, "....should have planned better mister!"
Now after 40 years, I just can't get that damn horse from Orwell's Animal Farm out of my head. His name is Boxer, and he is a gullible but good natured bumpkin. He was the backbone of the farm operation; and he always deferred to the authority and "rightness" of the leadership..., in this case the pigs who have overthrown the men. The pigs promise a new workers' paradise. "I will work harder and faster," Boxer keeps saying. He believed hard work and loyalty could fix any problem. Once finally worked to death, Boxer finally collapses. The pigs who have become in charge of the new animal-ruled farm send his body to the rendering service to be slaughtered and turned into products; they use the money they get for Boxer's body to buy whisky. The pigs tell the other animals they sent old Boxer to the veterinarian.
Blue-collar workers with even a modicum of sensibility and thoughtfulness should never read Animal Farm.
At least a couple of my grade school chums have already died of old age in their 50s. An old age hastened by being worked to death for nothing more that work's sake.
....got a college degree a while ago to try to escape from blue-collar. Now companies say I am over qualified, or they whine that I will probably leave the entry level job soon to find a better job with my degree. That's an oxymoron considering they will give the job to a 22 year old who will do just exactly that - move on as soon as possible. What these companies I have been trying to get jobs with really mean is, "Oh, man, you are old. Too old. Go away."
Overqualified and over educated is code for, "You are a threat to the rubes that run this place. Too much experience is code for, "You are too old; get lost old man."
It lends one to suspect society is schizophrenic. I used to get told, "Man if you only had a bit of college we would hire you." Now, I get told, "Wow, you have too many qualifications." Well, ok, perhaps I will just not work then, and next time you can say, "To bad your credit sucks; we would have hired you if your credit was better."
No, Labor Day is not always a day to celebrate. Labor Day is sometimes a day to fear. Run for your overworked, underpaid lives - run while you still can, before the pigs sell your dead carcase and drink whiskey on your grave.
Note: This blog "Jobs of Bob" - book version Category is a work in progress. The original vignettes are being edited for book form. Go to the Cooldadiomedia Web site and the Jobs of Bob Page for an ordered chronology of the book vignettes (chapters).
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