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4.01.2004
Light Bulb Moments Saturday morning, six A.M. I wake up, curse the cold air hovering around my blankets looking for a crack to seep through and resign myself to crawling out of bed to attend a "meeting" at work. A nice hot shower does wonders for my soul. I think the warm water entices my inner being to rise to the surface after a long night spent prone and cold. As I sat in the meeting I realized that part of my deep and bitter resentment of the Bush administration stems from its similarities to corporate management, and retail management in particular. I know the Bushies because I also work for the Bushies! Realizations like this occur for a reason. A series of events converge to create an observation. Here's the backstory and series of events that led to this particular realization: Saturday morning the second layer of management comes to the store. This would be the District staff. We play a game outside that involves Jello and running around. We go back inside and our little training video is prefaced with "I'm not sure if you guys have heard any rumors but we have to remember that change is important for growth, we want this company to be here for years to come". Then in one of those "moments" a question was asked: "How many of you see yourselves working here in five years?", a couple of hands raise, and again, "How many of you see yourselves working here in one year?", still only a smattering of hands. Bing - a little bulb goes on in my head. Caught offguard we catch a glimpse of the stratification of the company. An unintentional sociological experiment reveals that there is a very thin layer of people that actual align themselves with the long term goals of the company, everyone else doesn't give a rats ass, they are there for the paycheck. The video rolls and we are treated to testimonials from other employees expressing their concerns about the change but ultimately seeing the wisdom of the new way. Not just once... but repeatedly. Change is good, Change is good, Change is good. Something smells fishy... We've already seen that most people are unconcerned about the long term viability of the company but that is what's being sold to us in the video? The other shoe drops: "Ladies and gentlemen may I introduce your new management team" One by one members of the current management team are called up to the front. Once done I couldn't help but notice that quite a few people were left sitting. They had cut deep into the full time staff and had pushed out the General Manager (who I actually liked!). This of course was done "for the customer". The rationale was that this would free up labor to put on the floor to assist customers. Which didn't make a whole lot of sense since most of the positions that they eliminated were ones that already spent the vast majority of their time working with customers. Of course those demoted would not see a pay cut, but its easy to see that once that person was "turned over" the new hire would be brought in at lower pay. It seemed like a pretty straight forward cost cutting move, but why couldn't they just come out an say so? It seemed pretty obvious to me once you looked at what had taken place. They had eliminated a slew of full time quasi-managerial jobs to make them full time lower pay jobs, eventually shooting to make them part-time low pay, no benefits jobs, which are the majority of positions they have already. So why shroud it in talk about customer service and company viability. Straight up it was about pushing company profits, and in a capitalistic society that's not a crime, its pretty much the goal of all business. But, it worked like a charm. Later as we broke into smaller groups I was subjected to not one but two small speeches about the need to be more focused on the customer and how we needed to change to stay viable. Yet again, a small but representative sample of opinions taken afterwards by yours truly discovered that most people still didn't care about either of these two goals but were rather more concerned about how they had been shafted. The "talking points" did give people that were still loyal to the company something other to say than "we needed to boost profits so we cut some salaries". So they dutifully ran with what they were given. Which only proves to me that you give a hungry dog a bone and he'll chew on it no matter how bad it is. Providing a story other than an unpalatable truth is always preferable. It need only be remotely plausible to gain the support of those that see something to gain by its acceptance. So why did this make me think of Bush? This little episode was a microcosm of the Iraq war in a ways: there, a real and even rational reason was pretty evident and even outlined by the PNAC; invade Iraq, establish another foothold in the Middle East, put ourselves in prime position to dictate access to oil, eliminate a supporter of the Palestinians and get rid of a thorn in our side, Saddam. So why go through all the trouble of billing it as some extention of the war on terror? Why sell it as a humanitarian mission, or bringing democracy to Iraq? Why all the hullabaloo about WMD's? In both cases it was seen as preferable that the truth be buried beneath a fabricated version of the real story. And those people that were aligned with the interests involved were willing to go along even when a cursory examination of the evidence revealed that the cover story was thin at best. It also shows a complete and utter lack of faith that had the real motivations been presented that people would have been accepting. So it occurred to me that businessmen running the country might show the same amount of contempt for the citizens that most businesses show for their employees. Of course we were treated to copious amounts of praise for how we had made the company so successful. We should "pat ourselves on the back" a perennial cost free way of congratulations. I couldn't help but chuckle at the contrast between the verbal praise we were receiving while at the same time many were getting their demotions. Talk is cheap, actions are were we see the real motivations... | |
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