I went shopping for food the other day, and as the cashier rang up my shit I noticed something missing. Usually, as the cashier moves the food down the belt to the back of the station, a bagger stands there, putting everything into bags very carefully because certain items can only be bagged with other certain items.
The cashier must have noticed me noticing this. "We don't have baggers anymore," he said. "I'll take care of it when I'm done ringing you up."
And sure enough he did just that after I ran my LINK card (probably for the last time since they're taking it away from me next month). As he bagged everything he added, "When we have a spare moment they also send me out into the parking lot to get the carts."
I thought that was fucking nuts, but it's par for the course for corporate bullshit. It's something I've noticed throughout all the years of my working life. Corporations will do anything--ANYTHING--to get out of raising workers' wages. At every one of my jobs (except for the one I'm currently working), if someone quit or got fired, rather than hiring someone else to do that job, they will simply assign that work to someone else who already works there, thus adding to their workload. And do they get a pay raise?
What do you fucking think?
The Fox News mantra of "no one wants to work" is absurd. Of course no one wants to work. Almost every corporate job isn't necessary. We're supposed to be hanging out in forests, getting high, sharing art that we made ourselves, etc. A lot of jobs are necessary, and big surprise, they all have unions, hence protection from the corporate overlords.
But that's besides the point. Let's forget that for now. No one wants to work? *buzzer* Wrong. No one wants to work for a pittance. The job I do today, for example, could pay for a house and a car and all the things the American Dream stands for back in the Golden Age. Today? Not so much. Same for any of the telecom jobs I've worked.
No one wants to work? Sure. If you're hired as a cashier, all well and good. But then you have to bag, too? And corral shopping carts? And whatever else this poor bastard is going to have to do next? Are you seeing a pattern, here? It's abuse, is what it is. If corporations are people, and as far as I'm concerned THEY'RE FUCKING NOT, then they'd be in prison for what they've done.
Yesterday I posted a documentary about Noam Chomsky, and he shows in a nice flowchart how the system works. Corporations want more power, more deregulation, more rights than actual people. So they use the wealth that they should be using to give raises to their workers and give it to politicians so they can make laws that make corporations stronger and get them more money. And the cycle continues.
The crazy thing is, that's legal. Everyone knows about Shakespeare's line about lawyers, and maybe back then he was right. Today? I'd change it to lobbyists. Get rid of all those motherfuckers, and when we find out that even though they are legally forbidden from influencing politics they then do so anyway? As far as I'm concerned, that's treason and should be dealt with accordingly.
But that will never happen. We're doomed to ride this empire right into the ground. That's what happens, by the way. All empires fall in the end. America had an OK run. Could have been better. Could have been worse. But it might just collapse in our lifetimes.
And corporate bullshit will be to blame.
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