parrot job

Questions for you:

Do you wish to get yelled at? Are you eager to work for a crooked employer whose standards of integrity are a couple of notches below yours? Is it fun for you to defend flawed products? Will it be entertaining for you to upset people all day, every day? Do you enjoy feeling sorry, for yourself and for those who yell at you? Can boredom provide you with a better sense of fulfillment and meaning than happiness?

If you answered one or more questions with 'Yes,' you should demand from your favored politicians to bring all outsourced slave jobs back into the U.S.. You don't deserve better than to get what you ask for. Perhaps I should explain myself ...

Yesterday I talked to a few extremely friendly Kodak employees who are populating a yell center in India, about a brand new camera that never worked. Koduck's consumer friendly customer policy states that they will try to repair the garbage we buy from them. If their bungleware can't be repaired, they will generously send us a refurbished model, out of the goodness of their hearts. In other words, they never really owe their customers a new camera. With the help of an army of nice and underpaid folks in India, Koduck gets away with giving us crap for scrap, while charging the full retail price.

Everyone I talked to--and their supervisors--appeared to understand my perspective. They would be pissed off as well if they had to accept a used, refurbished item after paying for a new one. All of them expressed how sorry they were and apologized profusely for the messed up company they work for.

As resource for their answers, they seemed to access approximately a hundred vaguely related phrases. The same phrases were randomly repeated in an endless loop. I could still be talking to them and hear the same things, and they would continue to be friendly. Marvelous! One day, all those outsourced jobs will be re-outsourced (outside our species) from India to a special breed of parrots.

I said all this to say: for all of you who still believe in Tom Peters' long debunked excellence myth, some companies outsource their dirtiest jobs because not enough Americans care to guard corporate garbage heaps anymore. Especially not when you get compensated only with an excellent kick in the pants.

Neither do U.S. citizens stand in line to work on gorgeous 140 degree Fahrenheit summer days in Arizona to trim palm trees while breathing dust and cutting up their hands. More or less legal Mexicans are sort of reverse outsourcerers, and they are not here because they are criminals but because there is an economic vacuum they are willing to fill.

The question is not 'How can your job be protected from unChristian Indians or illegal Mexicans?' The real questions: why are you such a masochist that you are willing to mobilize the world to continue your own misery? Why are you too lazy to find something that does not insult your intelligence? You make sure your husband goes to jail if he beats you, but you demand to be abused and exploited on a sorry job for life?

If you feel your job is somehow threatened by your employer who ogles the outsourcing option or who might replace you with a damn immigrant, your job is not obsolete:

You are.

You sure you are taking the proper medication?

It's not about outsourcing or the threat of illegal immigration, and those who fear it or fight it have something wrong with their heads. Are we all going bananas? Mindless journalists pretend to bemoan the loss of jobs. Mindless politicians proudly brag about the creation of jobs. Mindless readers and voters worry about or hope for jobs.

The thought that creeps through my warped mind is that NOT one of the people who decry outsourced jobs would actually want to have one if they were immediately returned and delivered to their doorstep. NOT one of those dillweeds who'd love to call the governmental pest control on all Mexicans would be eager to take over an immigrant's crappy job. The cry for jobs sounds to me like a hypocrite's last yelp.

Jobs.

Media, politicians, and unions freely use the term as if it had a value per se. More is good and less is naturally bad. We want more jobs! Why? Not all jobs are created equal. Government jobs, for example, are not productive. I guess that's why the government is the largest employer in the country. People feel good about not being productive. Making money is evil, while taking money from those who make it is morally superior. Come again?

Anyway, non-governmental jobs are not all productive, but outside the government you can find employees who do create value with their work. You can also find jobs that destroy more value than the most productive job can generate. Ask your banker, how. It's rather idiotic to assume that an unspecified glob of jobs is homogeneous and worth being prayed to and for.

Interesting that job security exists in reverse proportion of a job's productivity. The more profitable you are for your boss, the easier you may find yourself sacked. Um, let's not even go into the corporate fairytale of performance and its deeper lack of meaning.

If 'a job' stands for one and the same thing by definition, what might that be? I have thought long and hard about that issue for the last three minutes, and the common denominators I came up with are mainly two:

Jobs suck and secondly, those who occupy a job feel underpaid.

Jobs suck: 87% of Americans openly admit hating their jobs. Consider the number of weasels who won't tell and you get dangerously close to 99%. Now, most jobs may not be awful as such. The reprehensible elements are added by a loud, gray, or otherwise unpleasant environment, back stabbing colleagues, mind numbing policies, head banging decisions, commuting, unreasonable customers and yes, blood boiling boredom. And, let's not forget daily stress over seeing one's life slip away. Precious minutes we could use for fun and profit ... even for meaningful things.

Low pay: How many people do you personally know who have complained to you about excessive compensation?

Jobs are voluntarily pursued by people who don't see another option. Similarly, senate majority leader Harry Reid believes America has a voluntary tax system, but I must warn you before you try out Option B. In general, jobs are chosen by those who aren't aware of a different choice, and the dividing line between employment and slavery is damn thin.

Sure, employees may choose where they want to live--unless their company suggests they move--they don't get raped (at least not sexually) or flagellated, and a bunch of human rights apply—including the Right to Work. But, plenty of employees are being told EXACTLY what to say and what not to utter, what to do and what not to do under any circumstances. The major difference between slavery and the world of jobs is (insufficient) monetary compensation.

Today, individuals voluntarily sell themselves into partial and temporary slavery for a wage or a salary. Jobs are the contemporary equivalent of slavery.

And I am having a hell of a difficult time comprehending why more slaves than "owners" move mountains to protect current forms of slavery, and calls for the abolishment of employment would be considered the devil's work.

I am afraid, freedom, individuality, and creativity aren't valued highly by us and by the school teachers' union, as long as we can have a job.

Historically, everything that works has been built on a flawed past, on trial and error. Evolution happens to operate that way. America is a nation of bunglers, of people who are willing to try and fail repeatedly. The alternative to covet a secure job is not to be scared of making mistakes and of making mistakes frequently. Hardly anything is as productive as the willingness to make mistakes and yes, the freedom to even repeat the same mistakes until we get it right.

Scary? Of course it is. But your mistakes can never be as scary and disastrous as mistakes your governments and your employers are making for you and with you.

Egbert Sukop


P.S.: Go in peace and buy my damn book 'How to Better Hate Your Job.'

P.P.S.: Now!