So, I am a bit 'buzzed' tonight, but I am going to take advantage of my impaired self editing mechanism and say some shit.
Excess and Idle. This was a title of a report I used to run for the material control manager at Grinnell Supply Sales, where I worked for 4 plus years from 1992 until March of 1997. Back then, we actually used to manufacture pipe, valves, and fittings at plants in the United States! Forged Steel fittings from Anvil (in Texas at the time), Steel pipe and pipe nipples from Henderson TN, Cast Iron fittings from Statesboro GA, Malleable Iron fittings and Gruvlok (grooved fittings) from our plant in Columbia SC, Sprinkler heads from our plant in Lubbock TX, and on and on. Butterfly valves from I think our Statesboro GA plant.
All this started to fail in the late 90's. I think most of these plants have long since been shut down. All production has been moved overseas, mostly to China.
So, back to the 'Excess and Idle" report. It detailed inventory that was not moving at all, or that was moving slowly that we had too much on hand of. It was something to watch and try to 'wittle away' at; to monitor demand from other branches and make sure they knew we had said items on hand and would gladly ship them, instead of ordering new ones from the plants. A sensible report. It was a sensible company, well developed software for the industry, very organized, very efficient operation. It had been owned by ITT for years, then got bought by Tyco International. I worked myself out of a job, fine tuned the automated receiving system, which took 8 hours of work and turned it into about a 1/2 hour. No need for an inventory control clerk anymore! So, I was laid off. Oh well.
Back to Excess and Idle. We have ---- for all practical purposes in this economy, excess and idle PEOPLE! They are not really excess and idle, but our capitalist system labels them as such and treats them as such. It is ... amoral, wrong, an offense against humanity. But, it makes sense when the only measure you use is PROFIT! Profit can be good, but it cannot be the end all be all of all things. Okay, it can; but you will not end up with a society that is healthy if PROFIT is the primary motivator. if PROFIT is GOD, other things will quickly turn to crap. That's where we're at people. We have to re-work our priorities, or else face living in an increasingly hellish world. I don't want, and WILL NOT TOLERATE, living in a world such as the one we are currently making. I would like to think most of you out there would agree with me.
Humans are NEVER excess and idle.
The below is a comment from a frequent poster on CommonDreams.org who goes by the handle Elizabeth Tjader. Read it, and consider it. It is one point of view from a typical woman in the USA:
I'm sorry about your circumstances DaDoRunRun. I'm sure there are many adults, aside from you and me, who know exactly what we're describing. What makes it even harder for me to swallow is when the person doing the hiring is twenty-five or thirty and condescending about interview.
I know this would never fly but I have it in my head that just being alive on Earth for fifty years qualifies those of us that age and over for at least thirty bucks an hour with a lifetime of benefits. (Maybe I'm not getting hired because prospective employers think I'm delusional when I mention that:-)
The last retail job I tried was in one of my community's supposedly most exclusive dress shops. The owner is a multi-millionaire who drives to work every morning in her brand new Porsche Boxstar (this is a ranching community, mind you. Talk about pretentious). She offered me the job starting out at $9.00 bucks an hour. (I almost threw the phone across the room I was so offended. Then I figured I might as well give it a try because it might lead to something better. The old "show up" motto).
The entire store is stocked with cheaply made, but incredibly expensive clothes, and some popular "Bling" made by "Brighton"; all of it produced in China. There were thousands of these ridiculous charms for charm bracelets. It was maddening. Then there were matching necklaces, earrings, bracelets and purses where I was told to basically force the issue on the client explaining "there are matching pieces to create an ensemble look. Would you like to see them?" (I wanted to vomit.)
I HATED IT! And at $9.00 an hour, standing on my feet all day with a bad knee, no benefits, feigning interest in whether the shoddy bracelet had a shoddy earring to match the shoddy purse; I finally quit. I absolutely could not stomach it, not to mention the lousy check. Though I honestly gave it a good try because I need to work. A big mistake.
In the end the more important reason for quitting, and my bottom line, is that kind of superficial job completely conflicts with my ideals about a healthy earth. What about the "live simply so others might simply live" paradigm? If anything, I was more inclined to suggest that none of us needed anything, including the cheap bracelet with the cheap matching earrings and purse, and that giving the money to charity was better. You can imagine how that went over with the owner?
My best to you DaDoRunRun as you continue plying the job market. I wish all of us in this same boat good fortune and a job that feeds our souls as well as our bank accounts. (And those characteristics sure as hell aren't found in retail during the Christmas season:-) Ugh!
Peace!
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