Different Name for the Same Old Crap

But it isn’t just me. Everyone else is pretty much still doing the same jobs for the same money as they were before, only now with new-and-improved job titles and a pat on the back and a few added responsibilities here and there. 

Here’s why I think that is: somewhere along the way the bosses got together and figured out that if they tricked the hourlies into thinking that we’re more important than we actually are, then we’d be less likely to complain about stuff like not getting raises and having to do more work for the same amount of pay. The best way to do that is to give us titles that make our relatively dull jobs sound glamorous enough so that we’ll “take ownership” of stuff and develop a renewed sense of pride in being barely able to scrape out anything other than a subsistence-level lifestyle. 

You know what? For the most part it works. Like the other day. They had Diego—one of the sanitation engineers—on his hands and knees (when he wasn’t scraping crap off of dirty plates and loading and unloading the dish machine) scrubbing the kitchen floor without gloves or anything, using some kind of blue chemical that said poison on the bottle. The thing is, they used to bring in these guys between midnight and three in the morning to do that stuff, guys who brought their own HAZMAT suits with them and seemed to have a pretty healthy fear of the stuff they sprayed the kitchen with. But someone high up decided they could save some money by not paying those guys any more, so instead they gave ownership of scrubbing the kitchen gunk to the former dishwashers. 

Another way the job title trick thing works is when they add another title on top of the one you already have. They do this by making certain people “trainers” in their departments. This is how it works. If they see an hourlie regularly taking extra initiative on the job, then they give him or her the title of trainer and have them start being responsible for teaching the new hires how the company wants them to perform. The company even holds meetings to teach the trainers what’s expected of them and these meetings usually have corny business seminar names like “train the trainer” and stuff like that. On completion of the train—the trainer meeting/seminar—the trainers are usually given some kind of worthless token to recognize their new status, like a cheesy pin for their uniforms or a desktop-published diploma to hang on their walls. Like anyone would hang anything that stupid to begin with. (“Hey, you wanna come over and check out the cool diploma I got at work?”) I even worked in a place once where the trainers got to wear different uniforms than everyone else, but no one other than the trainers seemed very impressed with that whole thing. 

Another trick is to give the hourlies prestigious recognition that really isn’t. This is usually done with things like employee of the month awards and reserved parking spaces with signs that say stuff like “star of the month” or some crap like that. The thing about the employee of the month award, though, is that everyone eventually ends up winning it, if they stay long enough or don’t get fired first. To me, that pretty much waters down the award. Hell, I’ve worked with people who were special enough to be named employee of the month one week only to get their sorry butts fired the next. But for a while anyway, they got to park in front of a really cool sign. 

That’s another thing. They don’t call it getting fired any more. I’ve seen places “mutually terminate their relationship” with employees as well as “move them closer to a more compatible career path.” I’ve witnessed former co-workers “reintroduced into the labor pool” and seen them “downsized.” I’ve stood by as they decided to “pursue more viable options” and were given the freedom to “look for better opportunities.” I think the bosses figured out that if they softened the process of firing people, then the rest of the hourlies would be more inclined to think of the company as a place where they could share values with like-minded individuals, rather than as the big, impersonal profit- generating machine it actually is. 

But what all this is really about is companies maximizing their profit margins by tricking their lowest-paid employees into doing more work for the same amount of money. You know what? If I allow them to successfully convince me that it’s in my best interest to trade what used to be an annual cost-of-living adjustment (raise) for the prestige of being employee of the month, then I suppose I deserve the repercussions that accompany that decision. Last time I checked, the phone company doesn’t give a crap where I park my car and my landlord couldn’t care less about my job title as long as the rent gets paid on time. 

Now don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing abnormal about acknowledging employees for exceptional performance. In fact, it actually feels pretty good when the general manager periodically tosses you a “job well done” bone. But I’m guessing the general manager is ultimately in the gig for the same reason as you—to get paid. Somewhere along the way, “getting paid” came to mean trading financial reimbursement for a bunch of stuff that not only doesn’t pay the bills, but really is kind of insulting when you stop and think about it. At least for the hourlies, anyway. 

I mean, come on. Every time they call us associates, the powers-that-be are really reminding us of our proper places in the order of things—as status-challenged underlings who should quit whining and be grateful for the tidbits we’re graciously allowed to receive. 

Or maybe not. Maybe the salaries consider the hourlies to be an inferior species and think that they can prove their superiority by coming up with a title they can bestow on us—associates—that will keep us in our place without our really knowing it. Maybe that’s what’s really going on and we’re just too damned numb and/or mesmerized to recognize it. Or maybe we just don’t fucking care. 

So the sanitation engineer still makes the same as when he or she was a dishwasher and the door-person-turned-valet is still working for tips. Different name for the same old crap. 

But I have an idea. Rather than allowing ourselves to be seduced into taking on extra responsibilities so the stockholders can see a better bottom line, we should instead be “taking ownership” of our lifestyles and personal standards of living. The company will continue to act primarily in its best interest as long as its employees give it permission to do so, so why shouldn’t our agenda include demanding that our employer ante-up something other than a “barely-makin’-it” lifestyle for the people who are its true backbone? If it continues to view that as a non-viable option, should it morally be in business in the first place? 

But enough about all that. It’s time for me to get ready for work.