OBITER DICTA
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..show us here the mettle of your pasture;
let us swear that you are worth your breeding…
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“When you work you are a flute through whose heart
the whispering of the hours turns to music.”
– Kahlil Gibran
“How many dollars, how many sales,
how many liars, how many tales?
How many insults must you take in
this one life?
Don’t talk to me about work.”
– Lou Reed
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I’ve had a lotta dumb jobs for brief periods of time. Life has this weird part that sometimes makes necessary any number of bizarre indignities.
But you know that, I’m sure.
Doing what has to be done is something I’ve never been afraid of. But I am simply incapable of ignoring all the satellites. It’s a fault of mine, I guess, but it’s one of those things people who love me have to decide to live with.
Jobs are a trippy deal. Most everyone who does one is pretty sure they are getting fucked on some level, and most likely that is so. Can’t let that matter too much, if one can help it. But some folks just think too much.
Just like I never trust a movie that has a Burger King promotional tie-in (or any other product for that matter), I don’t trust any company that makes people wear a uniform. This doesn’t extend to doctors and nurses, and a few other things, because the ‘uniform’ has a purpose. But there ain’t a reason in the world places like T Mobile or Food Lion should require ugly and uncomfortable clothes for their employees.
I think most people wouldn’t think twice about it if a store employee had a smock-type dealie or apron to identify who works there. Personally, I think a name tag is fine.
Do you really care if an employee is wearing jeans, as long as you can tell they work there?
I’m betting the answer is no. At 1800flowers, we got a memo one day that said every one must answer calls thusly: “Thank you for calling Flowers dot com, America’s florist of choice for 30 years. How can I help you today?”
This kind of shit sucks the humanity out of interaction. It makes an employee sound like an automaton, and for me does not inspire confidence in the people I’m dealing with- in fact, it does just the opposite.
I am far more inclined to imagine the person on the phone might relate to the inevitable subtle oddity of whatever prompted my call if they say “This is Mike”, instead of “Thank you for calling the Inevitable Subtle Oddities division, where we pretend to care about answering all of your questions after you listen to us read a script that tells you we really aren’t able to say anything we haven’t been instructed to, nor are we able to address the one-of-a-kind problem you are apparently facing since you felt the need to call. How can we help you?”
Once, at Flowers, I tried to humorously point out to a customer who didn’t get how it worked that I didn’t really go in a back room and put her arrangement together, I was simply a go-between. I was amazed when they called me in and played back my conversation with her to point out the things I can’t say.
If you don’t know it, let me explain to you that calling 1800Flowers is pretty much making a phone call to get out of making a phone call. They thank you for your order, then call
your local florist.
It can be financially advantageous occasionally if you order an advertised item, but if you’re trying to get some flowers for a funeral and know what you want, or even need a suggestion, it is a redundant excercise that only adds a step to the list of things you’d rather not be doing.
I’m confident your local florist can suggest an appropriate selection a little better than I could, since I don’t know a chigger-bush from a tater plant.
That they answered the phone doesn’t mean they know flowers any more than a white coat means I can cut a mean rib-eye.
When I applied at Food Lion, the manager seemed quite impressed with my decades of experience in most aspects of retail. He said “You are way over qualified for this.” I agreed, and said that wasn’t an issue for me, ’cause I am the breeze. He then asked me if I knew anything about meat.
When I said no, he decided to put me in the meat department. A red apron works unconcious miracles, I suppose.
I was talking to Wendy the other day about going to Cobb’s Grocery after school, as a kid. A bald fat guy in a bloody apron would cut a thick slice of bologna from a big tube of it, and make me a sandwich. Didn’t think about it then, but now I know finding one that good would take some effort.
It used to be that when you went to a shop of some kind, the employees were pretty much the real deal. Now, these are “specialty” shops, in the older sections of town. Unless you live in Berkeley, which is the older section of town. What we think of as groovy, unusual furniture or record or book or clothing stores used to just be the store.
Welcome to 2011. The old days, meaning life as people my age and older know it, are long gone. I don’t think it’s about Obama or El Nino or the Book of Revelations. I think it’s about the sheer number of people on the planet.
The world, and people, are disposable. And we did it to ourselves.
I have a passable number of talents in a couple of areas, and can be very good at things. It means nothing. The right place at the right time can put a college graduate out of the running if a pinhead like me is more convenient. I’m betting, especially in a southern state, there are hundreds of people who can slice up a dead cow like a mass-murdering Picasso, and need a job. Instead, a smart ass guitar player with 30 years of entertainment industry experience is fetching your fatback, and the cat with the talent for smoking and slicing a carcass to perfection is in his living room trying to figure out how to apply on line, because paper applications just add to the office chaos. How can we expect a manager to take time out of his endless day to find the right person for the job?
Fact is, most managers would sleep better if they knew their employees had a grip on their duties, but, well… if one doesn’t work out, there’s always the next guy.
We’re doing it wrong. Like with most things of the modern world, reason is a last resort. And it’s too late to turn it around.
Sure wears a body out, thinking too much. Best just forget it, and put your apron on.
“And the world was asleep to our latent fuss.”
-David Bowie