Tomorrow is the Saturday after Thanksgiving. My son, who I am seeing for the first time since August, came into town on Wednesday, and is leaving very early Sunday. Tomorrow I will be at work.
Libraries, supermarkets, hospitals, think about all the places that aren't closed for holidays, that are open for business on weekends.
There was a time when, if you had to work on Sunday, you at least got paid time and a half or even double time, but now, we clerks are "lucky to have a job" and told to report for duty at the pleasure of management.
Here at the library we are at least closed on holidays. That is, since a minor protest resulted in the Board approving that we be closed on Memorial Day, just like the rest of the libraries in the country.
We have a generous four days off for Christmas, but excuse me for complaining, we are open on New Year's Eve, which, to my mind, is the actually holiday, New Year's Day just being the sick day afterwards.
And then there are rules prohibiting an employee who deals "with the public" from trying to get away with an extra day off on either side of a holiday. So you wouldn't try to sneak out of town to visit family, or just hang out for an extra day.
Most people who have 9-5 jobs are totally out of touch with the day to day sacrifices people who work with the public have to make, adjustments to their daily lives that mean less special time with family, less time to prepare for, or recuperate from, a hectic holiday. Days off that just add sanity to life, and even quality.
Sundays and holidays are especially ugly. "Family values" crap comes out of one side of the power brokers' mouths while patriotic garbage about making sacrifices and not whining comes diarrhea-like out of the other side.
I too, am a hypocrite, and I realize that most of the time I am going to a restaurant it is a time when other people are reliably not working. I make excuses and do it anyway. We all draw the line somewhere.
But I never NEVER shop on a holiday, not even on President's Day, which we commemorate by having sales, and Labor Day, which used to be about celebrating the work force and now just forces workers to work the holiday in order to make more profit for the corporation. If Wal-Mart, on "Black Friday" (an expression abounding with irony) was offering to pay up the mortgages on the first ten people in line, I would curse their black hearts and not even consider being a part of the line-up. I am very aware that, where I am being served, others are being forced to work, more often than not for not enough pay.
So tomorrow, when I am standing at the desk in the library, if you come in and ask how my Thanksgiving was, which you will, I will say "Fine", but I will be thinking, "My son is home for one more day and I'm checking out your stinking DVD's; and how are YOU?"
Happy Thanksgiving. Really.
I spend most of my time griping, but I want to take a few minutes to name a few things I am thankful for this year.
I am thankful that I leave work at 2:00 instead of 5:30.
I am thankful that, when I am told to do something dumb, I have finally learned that no one will notice if you ignore it.
I am thankful that my break time got cut from 30 minutes to 15 minutes as it does make it easier to maintain my diet.
I am thankful that I have truly learned to act ironically; for instance when I am not included in a decision, or even informed that a decision has been made, I now just say nothing and watch the chaos and incompetence. This needs work, but it is worth the effort.
I am thankful that I still have savings, although I am running through it rapidly, I believe I just might make it to retirement age.
I am thankful that, now that I work part-time, I work in a library so I have tons of books to bring home, and time to read them.
I am thankful that I have found some intelligent friends, and I can once again be sarcastic and occasionally "cuss" in conversation that warrants "cussing".
I am thankful that I have a boss who would rather not ask me to do crummy jobs; he asks people he likes more than me, which once made me feel excluded in a bad way, but now fills me with relief.
I am thankful that I have been excluded from tasks that I once did to the point where I was putting in extra hours, and sometimes experiencing renewed pain in my shoulder.
I am thankful that my work review once again gave me low scores for attitude, and additionally, low scores for initiative. After five years of being angry about this, and continuing to work hard to prove my supervisors wrong, this year I felt relieved, a burden lifted. Fuck 'em.
And I am thankful that I am here and not there, and when I am there it's not the worst job in the world, and when I leave there I don't have to take it with me, even though sometimes I do. I can let this job be as much a part of me as I want. I may not be earning a living, but I have gotten my life back to some extent.
Happy Thanksgiving!
When you have a fairly cohesive group of employees, who have been squeezed financially, with pay and benefit cuts, and have suffered the insult of "increased productivity", what does upper management do to improve morale?
Well, you could give bonuses, but for the real working class, bonuses went out with the air traffic comptroller union. Remember office parties, turkeys for the holidays, those few hours when the office was unofficially closed early so you could get home to your family?
You don't need to punch a time clock to know that that doesn't happen anymore.
And there was a time when an employee, forced to work on a Sunday, would get time-and-a-half, or the hallowed double-time. When business was bad, you lost that too, and when business got better, those extra bucks went to the shareholders or pay increases for management.
These days on Sunday you either get "comp time" or Sunday becomes just another work day, instead of Wednesday, so you can spend your day off alone while your family does their work/school routine, and on Sunday they can sit by the TV while you're at work.
Layers of management mean that no one has to look you in the eye and say, "I've decided that you have to work on Christmas Eve," or, "I can't give you that cost of living raise this year." The people that decide whether your actually living wage goes up or down, or whether you can have that holiday with your family, are pretty far up the chain, with lots of rules buffering your immediate supervisor from the effects of his or her financial pronouncements or scheduling decisions.
What cracks me up, then, is the awards that management come up with to motivate employees. The "employee of the month", "quarter", or whatever period of time management can pat itself on the back for acknowledging. Awards come with framed photos in the front of the store, placques, and occasionally a day off or even a gift certificate.
Here's a news flash. When employees are spread too thin between work and family, when incomes don't stretch to cover dental bills AND groceries, when necessary errands can't get run during work/business hours and sleepless nights ensue, I really don't give a damn about your placque.
And when the award is a day off, and you aren't even giving us a living wage, I just want to know why you think it's important to select one employee, to single out a single individual, to say to everyone that works for you, "This person deserves an extra day off... and you don't."
It's really quite the symbol of power when management can say, "You all have to work a bit harder today, because your fellow employee just got an extra day off... and you didn't." It's a symbol of the heavy handed compliment that management is going to give one of us something that everyone but management has to pay for.
And the poor cowed employees who are just happy to have a job just keep working, some of us hoping that next year maybe we'll get that extra day off.
Apparently, even someone who was hired for being controversial has to tow the line with the boss these days.
Keith Olbermann, on MSNBC, was suspended for making political contributions. Not secret contributions, mind you, like those which the Supreme Court has approved for big corporate interests. Contributions that he made openly.
The crime Olbermann committed was that he did not get APPROVAL from MSNBC President, Phil Griffin, prior to making the contribution.
MSNBC claims that the issue is journalistic independence. On Countdown??? I believe the issue should be transparency, and not prior approval. Had Griffin granted approval, would that have made the contributions less likely to affect Olbermann's "journalistic independence"? Would Griffin have approved contributions made to Nazi reenactor Rich Iott?
With all the dirty money that funded the 2010 elections, Olbermann's suspension is the ironic cherry on the icky campaign sundae.
Can we please focus on the important issue here? Let's get the political leaders and the capitalist bosses to make transparency the rule, and not freedom to donate to a person or party.
I would like to congratulate the Piggly Wiggly for coming up with the most hard to collect promotional offer ever.
When I heard that it was a Cuisinart promotion, I figured it was going to be a big one, in the sense of it would be easier in the long run to just go on out and buy a Cuisinart. When the prizes are that big, I pretty much tune out the spiel.
But needing a distraction from the everyday horrors of work and the biennial horror of the elections, I decided I would investigate.
Now, I am an older woman who lives alone, on a limited income, so I don't spend a lot at the Pig. When the cashier asked me if I was collecting coupons, she looked suprised when I said yes. She handed me two teensy-eensy little rectangles with a teensy-eensy little picture of the Pig on each.
"Is there a book or something to put them in?" I asked, wondering why she wouldn't have offered that too. I think she was skeptical, given I had just spent under $30. But she gave me a folded 8 1/2 by 11" "Sticker Saver" to save my two stickers into.
I careful tucked the teensy-eensy little coupons into the folded over "Sticker Saver" and place it carefully in my purse, in a separate compartment.
But when I got home and attempted to retrieve the items, I could only find one of the teensy-eensy coupons. I'll have you know that was worth $10 of groceries. A bit like a gem, tiny but dear.
Nonetheless, I attempted to put the one remaining teensy-eensy coupon into the little spot in the "Sticker Saver". Gone are the days when you can just lick a stamp and slap it on. So with slightly arthritic fingers, I had to find the plastic that was covering the sticky part of the stamp and peel it off. I could hardly believe that it split down the middle, requiring me to find and peel both halves!
Once I had successfully installed the stamp, I checked out the prizes.
Remember the Corning Ware promotion a few years ago? There was a kind of a booby prize for us small shoppers: it was a two-cup measuring cup, which I was fairly happy to get.
The low budget items on the current promotion are the 1 qt. Open Pour Pan, and the 7" Open Non-Stick Skillet.
Don't get excited, though, because they aren't free. With 15 stickers, it'll cost you another $9.99. So, if you're following this carefully, you will note that 15 stickers means you have spent a whole lot more than $150 at the Pig, because if you spend $19.99, you still only get 1 sticker. Even if you spend $20.01 next time (2 stickers), you can't apply that $.01 to the $9.99.
The grand prize, the Blender or Processor, is actually free with 160 stickers. So let me do the math... you would have to spend more than $1,600 to get a "free" Cuisinart. But if you only have 80 stickers, fear not -- you can get it for $44.99.
And here is the best part. For $44.99 you can get a $90.00 Cuisinart from Amazon without having to save all those silly little coupons. OR spend $1,600.
So, smart shoppers, next time you're at the Pig, congratulate them on their Just Try to Collect Your Prize Award. And, while you're there, tell them thanks for discontinuing the AARP double greenbax during these tough times.
