This is the day I gave up on Corporate America
It is in turn this very money that empowers others to act like petulant children. These children will turn on you for the small cost of a bowl of pasta. Suddenly the lady at the take-out-counter is berating you and your entire life choice because she is about you pay you $6.99 for a to-go bowl of “holier than though”. I’ve seen it happen so many times it makes me sick. It wasn’t two weeks ago when I was standing in a grocery store bakery getting a birthday cake. There was one person behind the counter and she was efficiently taking care of three different requests. Out of nowhere I see a man standing next to the “artisian” bread counter. He stood alone unacknowledged for less than two minutes. Then he shouted for all of the bakery to hear “HOW LONG DO I HAVE TO WAIT TO BUY BREAD FROM YOU PEOPLE?” I’m not sure where this well dressed, normal looking man learned about being human, but it certainly wasn’t in any finishing school I’ve ever heard of.
I’ve been a boss before and I’ve been an employee in a service organization. The first thing I did when I became a supervisor is tell my employees that they do not have to tolerate being abused by customers. No ONE needs the money that bad. As a woman who worked in an automotive field for most of my 20’s; I know this more than anyone. I would remind my co-workers that I would be equally as insulted if they were lovingly patient with a customer who walked into my shop and abused me or insulted me; which happened on a daily basis. Ultimately causing me to give up on one of the things I loved. I loved cars – now I despise the industry and everything that goes with it.
It seems that our idea of employment has no hope of getting better. You can look at this article I recently found on Salon.com that talks about how Americans work harder than our most equal Western counterparts. While I don’t have the time, education or vocabulary to address the implications of socialism in the article, I can certainly see the benefits. We enjoy less, we get paid less and we have less to show for it. But that’s not the problem is it? Because on top of it all, we work to provide for our lives and families by sacrificing them. When we are finally in public we are over-worked, stressed out, emotionally stretched; we turn into total jerks. We’re jerks to those fellow humans who are equally over-worked, stressed out and emotionally stretched. Its a vicious circle of epic un-fulfilling proportions.
When I first moved to San Francisco I had a temp job or two before I started working at the restaurant. My first day on the job spent hours going over all of the personality traits of the person I was employed to care for. This seemingly healthy, successful 37 year old man had what we would call a “difficult personality”. If “difficult personality” didn’t get what he wanted he tended to not only retaliate but viciously degrade whomever was around him. Hours of Company money was spent on training me how to deal with him. But that’s OK too? Companies not only reward those high achievers or exemplars of the company with promotions, bonuses and special treatment. They are trained by their organizations to demand more and spend less. So while we’re doing more and more and, getting paid less and less and getting treated worse and worse; they are getting rewarded. Handsomely.
I had a job interview over the phone a year or so ago with an Executive Assistant placement company here in the Bay area. The interviewer who also happened to be the owner of the company asked me a seemingly innocent question. “What are your interests? Your passions you would say?” I answered with my hobbies and my activities that I LOVE. Which was promptly answered with, “it sounds like YOUR not committed to being an Executive Assistant. Most of the people who are in this business THIS IS their life” Where she continued to go on and on and on about how being an Executive Assistant is a dedicated service. I went back to bed after the interview, tended to my cold and thought that this was the last time I’m ever going to deal with another person like this in my entire life. That’s the day I gave up on Corporate America and became a comedian.
Follow up post: You don’t have to work a corporate job to feel discriminated against. Read this from Jezebel about Wal-Mart trying to get a suit dismissed from 1.5 million women.
when she asked why a man in the same job as her was making $23,000 more a year, was told, “Stephanie, that assistant manager has a family and two children to support.” She herself was a single mother with a six-month-old child.
