Monday, January 02, 2006
The American Dream
We’ve all heard about sweatshops. You know what’s worse than sweatshops? Places where people get paid to not work. A lot of people are selfish good-for-nothings who, once they get an office job, adopt the attitude that they don’t have to work and that they can’t be fired. The sad thing is, the fuckers are right, because in this socialist, politically-correct, let-any-useless-pile-of-excrement-keep-their-job environment, we’ve got lots of worthless scum getting paid for doing nothing.
Millions of people spend large portions of their “work” day reading the newspaper, surfing the Web, gossipping, etc. Some men download porn, which gives new meaning to the expression “hard at work”. It’s as though they’re daring the boss to confront them, like a game of corporate chicken. They are drains on company resources who should be fired so that their salaries can be used to give the productive employees raises, but of course that would be too rational, too sensible.
Some people don’t deliberately waste time; they’re just stupid. This brings up the question of how these dullards ever got hired in the first place. Do companies have to hire just any random, dysfunctional retard that can manage to stumble in through the door? Well, I think I know how this happens: The Personnel Department is told to fill X number of vacancies. Mabel Moron comes in to apply for a job. Alan Apathy interviews her and, because she’s a protein-based life form, he hires her immediately. He doesn’t care that her IQ is lower than the number of kids she has, because she will be working in some other office, hence she will be someone else’s problem. So he gets credit for filling a vacant position when he should actually be fired for wreaking this burden on his company.
What’s absurd is that a lot of these low producers carry the title “professional”. It used to be that only learned vocations like doctor, lawyer and accountant were considered professional. Nowadays everyone is considered a “professional”: exterminators, car salesmen, secretaries, mechanics. Now, I understand that one doesn’t need a degree or lots of schooling in order to be good at something; years of on-the-job training can make a high school dropout a better lawyer than someone who just got out of law school. But can we stop trying to dignify every menial job that requires one to operate a keyboard or a telephone?
It is no mystery why Japan, China, India and other nations are surpassing us in productivity: they’re hungry, and we’re not. We live in self-contented apathy, feeling safe and secure because we’re surrounded by luxury. People overseas gladly work in sweat shops because it’s better than cleaning toilets or not working at all. Sweat shops seem unpleasant to us because we’re spoiled by air-conditioned offices and health plans, but to people who live without such comforts, what we call a “sweat shop” they call “the office”. They are not suffering as badly as you might think because they don’t know what they’re missing. Meanwhile they are twice as productive as we are, and provide their goods and services at a fraction of the cost that inefficient American businesses charge. Of course, the asshole CEOs' huge, undeserved salaries don't help.
Maybe we could increase productivity by improving the work environment. Management “experts” tell us that a happy environment is a productive environment, but they won’t let us be happy. I mean, how many offices outside of Congress allow sex, gambling or liquor?
The single greatest work motivator is avoidance of pain. Look at the billions of slaves throughout history who have eagerly rowed ships, plowed fields, and picked up excrement in order to avoid being whipped. Slavemasters have thus gotten people to do lots of work that no one would willingly have performed, and they did it without bonuses or cash awards or stock options. I say that in order to increase productivity we need to threaten all the lazy, stupid lemmings that populate the “work” force.
Millions of people spend large portions of their “work” day reading the newspaper, surfing the Web, gossipping, etc. Some men download porn, which gives new meaning to the expression “hard at work”. It’s as though they’re daring the boss to confront them, like a game of corporate chicken. They are drains on company resources who should be fired so that their salaries can be used to give the productive employees raises, but of course that would be too rational, too sensible.
Some people don’t deliberately waste time; they’re just stupid. This brings up the question of how these dullards ever got hired in the first place. Do companies have to hire just any random, dysfunctional retard that can manage to stumble in through the door? Well, I think I know how this happens: The Personnel Department is told to fill X number of vacancies. Mabel Moron comes in to apply for a job. Alan Apathy interviews her and, because she’s a protein-based life form, he hires her immediately. He doesn’t care that her IQ is lower than the number of kids she has, because she will be working in some other office, hence she will be someone else’s problem. So he gets credit for filling a vacant position when he should actually be fired for wreaking this burden on his company.
What’s absurd is that a lot of these low producers carry the title “professional”. It used to be that only learned vocations like doctor, lawyer and accountant were considered professional. Nowadays everyone is considered a “professional”: exterminators, car salesmen, secretaries, mechanics. Now, I understand that one doesn’t need a degree or lots of schooling in order to be good at something; years of on-the-job training can make a high school dropout a better lawyer than someone who just got out of law school. But can we stop trying to dignify every menial job that requires one to operate a keyboard or a telephone?
It is no mystery why Japan, China, India and other nations are surpassing us in productivity: they’re hungry, and we’re not. We live in self-contented apathy, feeling safe and secure because we’re surrounded by luxury. People overseas gladly work in sweat shops because it’s better than cleaning toilets or not working at all. Sweat shops seem unpleasant to us because we’re spoiled by air-conditioned offices and health plans, but to people who live without such comforts, what we call a “sweat shop” they call “the office”. They are not suffering as badly as you might think because they don’t know what they’re missing. Meanwhile they are twice as productive as we are, and provide their goods and services at a fraction of the cost that inefficient American businesses charge. Of course, the asshole CEOs' huge, undeserved salaries don't help.
Maybe we could increase productivity by improving the work environment. Management “experts” tell us that a happy environment is a productive environment, but they won’t let us be happy. I mean, how many offices outside of Congress allow sex, gambling or liquor?
The single greatest work motivator is avoidance of pain. Look at the billions of slaves throughout history who have eagerly rowed ships, plowed fields, and picked up excrement in order to avoid being whipped. Slavemasters have thus gotten people to do lots of work that no one would willingly have performed, and they did it without bonuses or cash awards or stock options. I say that in order to increase productivity we need to threaten all the lazy, stupid lemmings that populate the “work” force.
# posted by xxanger @ 6:02 PM 
