Hate And Discontent For Fun And Profit

What a wonderful vacation! Not that I could afford to go anywhere this year, unless Mt. Airy counts. Those who have the means go to Europe so they can be "ugly Americans", and the rest of us go to Mt. Airy. "Harold and I just got back from our third trip to Barcelona this year. Did you enjoy the sights and sounds of Floyd's City Barber Shop, Rob?" Sleeping in was nice. I think the neighbor upstairs, who clomped around in his clodhopper boots at 6:30 every morning, did his best to lend a certain ambiance to that time of the year I work hard for. I don't care what anyone else tells you; sleeping with earplugs in makes ears very, very sore.

Because I'm a part time employee, my vacations are unpaid. I'd like to express my gratitude to the Grand Imperial Board of Field Marshall Directors for that decree. God Knows we part timers NEVER work our butts off while the full time folk spend half the day sitting around, complaining about "how bad things are" and taking two cigarette breaks every hour. With no health insurance (ol' Barack is sure to love this), no vacations, and no sick days, we lowly part-timers easily carry forty percent of the total workload -that's two of us out of nine employees, Vern. My favorite thing about returning to work, of course, is being met by Mr. I-Don't-Have-to-Work-Because-I'm-A-Chain-Smoking-Assistant-Manager with "Hey Rob, when you get a chance, could you move the Blue Ridge Mountains an inch to the west?" Seriously, it's grating to be summoned to the front of the building to load two small boxes of tile into Myrtle's awaiting suv by an assistant manager who could easily have done it himself were it not for yet another impending nicotine fit. I thought the "Do As I Say" style of management went out with powdered wigs and harpsichords. How do I succinctly express my joy over being called away from doing my share of work to do his so that he gets half again as much pay per hour as I do, with full benefits, ad adsurdem?

Then there are The Ladies. Every business has to endure The Ladies. They're the ones who hang around in the break room, spooning 367 helpings of sugar into their coffee and giving dirty looks to the lowly hard workers of the company who DARE enter into their ersatz domain; their eyes close into slits so narrow one would imagine them to work best at night looking for the litter box and chasing mice around the office. You work routinely in hundred degree temperatures in the summer and forty degrees (and colder) in the winter; they bask in seventy two degrees of air conditioned paradise in the summer and go home early when their heater stops and the temperatures in their offices plummet to an arctic sixty-seven degrees. The Ladies constantly huddle in the executive breakroom, insulting anyone not in their immediate Circle of Righteousness and shivering at the mere prospect of another traumatic winter afternoon of having to wear a sweater.

Am I whining? Yep. But I'm whining while laughing, which is still legal until Nancy Pelosi makes another appearance with an oversize gavel and rules it otherwise. What I don't like is the intentional lack of respect for the people at the bottom of an organization who do most of the hard work for little pay and no benefits. I'd expect that in a for-profit business, but this is a nonprofit "Christian" organization with the mission of helping those in need. Ironic, no? I think it's that hypocrisy to which I object the most. I'm looking for some other job, but so far there are no takers. Apparently, the unemployment rate in this region is even higher than normal.

I'll chalk that up to "change we can believe in".