"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).