blog this

why do i have a blog? someone asked me at the outset if it was because i was lonely.

it is because i want to write. it is because i consider myself a writer despite the fact i am not a writer by profession. ever since i got off the path towards a career in journalism, i've continued to write. often my writing habits have been poor and my output amounts to a collection of autobiographical essays and some poems, but as miller said, writing is its own reward.
if i could find my way to gainful employment as a writer, i would do it in a second, even if it meant enduring a pay cut. here is what happened.

as a student in my late 20s i was renting a room from a friend, living with his budding family. it was not ideal for newlyweds with a baby and it amounted to survival for me as i went to school. after about a year the family needed space and i needed to pay rent.

i worked as a csr by day and tried continuing school at night but i fell out. i guess it was just too much for me. i needed a life. so in my position as a csr i made a decision: as long as i worked in this call center i was going to do the best job possible in order to advance. i figured the time i spent there would be the same regardless of what i was actually doing so i wanted to make as much money as possible. and i saw a mass of, (for lack of a better word,) borderline idiots above me on the professional ladder. so i kept my head down and took as many calls as i could. i gave the best customer service you ever heard. i was utterly professional. i impressed the people above me without even trying to impress. i just tarried on under the presumption my hard work and perseverence would pay off, which it did. in about a year i was moving up and in about two years i moved into a role training others. soon after i was the trainer. using scraps of materials pre-existing me, i wrote the training manual for this call center. i worked with my boss to put together a training agenda and went about training hundreds of new csr's per year. i administered advanced training. i used multimedia in my efforts and i was effective.

after five years of training i moved into a supervisor role managing employees. my salary arrived at a comfortable place and here i am today, still managing employees in the name of customer service. i am good at my job and it takes a great deal of common sense-not much more. now my professional writing consists of yearly reviews, memos and emails. i'm quite a note passer. as a result of all this, i do not get to write creatively unless i find the time to do it on my own and that's hard. it takes a lot of energy. and so this blog is a labor of love, a means to rediscover the writer within, the man who wants to rage against injustice and embrace my kind.

i had a teacher once critique an essay i wrote criticizing a short story by either lawrence or melville. (it was either the rocking horse winner or bartleby the scrivener-i'm not sure.) in my essay i raged against capitalism and the teacher suggested i meant to rage against utilitarianism. my response is this; isn't one the byproduct of the other? i don't want to talk keynesian economics or anything. (i'm definitely not qualified to do that.) but, in our capitalistic society where everyone seems to be reaching for the golden straw, isn't the result utter utilitarianism?

these people who find meaning in jobs like mine kill me. i think their lives must be dull, colorless, odorless existences, as devoid of real joy as they are of common sense-that or they're just liars. a new boss at my call center recently proclaimed for all 150 or so representatives in the center, at a 6am introductory meeting for him, that he loves call centers. he proclaimed it with pride, suggesting to all that this thought may seem strange to us but we too could find one day that it is truly a rewarding thing to discover the joy of running a call center. (in the ultimate stroke of pure irony, the person he replaced called him a buffoon though i think she loved call centers too, so go figure.) i suppose he expected to be seen as a bit of a nerd who just enjoys tinkering with machine-like, social structures? oh that. that's cool. (whatever.)

would you agree that a business, as such, has a person or group of people who essentially run it? i would suggest that person or group has the only possibility of finding, a. any reward in related tasks worth having, and b. anything interesting about their work. it's not just the taking orders and answering to people, which any man would involuntarily reject by nature, it is the tedium of assigned tasks. even if ordered to write every day, a part of me is going to squirm and writhe like a snake in an acid bath. (although, compared to today, it would be utopia.) and business requires specialization nowadays. i knew an engineer once who made tuna cans. where i work, virtually everyone there would prefer to be somewhere else. my former boss would rather be on broadway. there are people who would like to retire but the $14 an hour dissuades. my current boss has a planned escape route, i'm pretty sure. others would rather follow the dead or stay at home with a brood. i'd prefer to be writing. this is the norm but in a job interview people will talk about what great interest they have in managing people and how rewarding a career with budweiser is, how driving a truck satisfies them or how marketing stimulates them. order breeds tedium. these people lie.

so this is what capitalism has wrought for the masses. especially as it relates to business, only those at the top of businesses could conceivably have truly rewarding work lives. the rest merely obey the business.

what i've learned in the belly of capitalism is its ethics check is weak. since a business is fundamentally inclined to seek profit for shareholders, lately even to the point of committing crimes, the only ethics check imagineable is the people who work in it. as globalization grows, mainstream tried and true businesses are being gobbled up by monolithic megacorporations. these corporations are not punished but rather rewarded for misbehaving. the ethics of the corporation is to make a profit at all costs. the unsaid maxim is: the shareholders can't take a loss. when they do, the business will quickly collapse as other businesses, (with wider profit margins,) sleek businesses who are willing to cut corners and be unethical, (if only in so much as it subjects the teeming masses to tedium,) race past it in a perpetual sprint of the fittest.
by and large we think we should be happy in our professions. no wonder everyone seems to be on anti-depressants these days. we seem to be a puritanical society except when you consider how quickly we'll resort to erection meds and uppers of all stripes and downers too. if we can be judged on what provokes public outcry or on our common examples of marketing, we have no problem with vanity. we want larger breasts or more hair on our heads so that we will be seen as more attractive in this competitive world? our culture says, "thumbs up!" (or something.) but if you struggle with working the jobs that seem to be available to you, your recourse is anti-depressants because something must be wrong with you. this is life. you gotta work. you don't find being a supermarket checker for 40 hours a week a rewarding career? you had better get some prozac. don't like your job at the foot locker? perhaps a milder form of crack, (legal, of course,) will help you see. . .things. . .our, way. . . ? MOOOOOO-HAHHHH-HAHHHHHH-HAHH!!! (well, i jest but sometimes i hear evidence of discontent and i swear hear that devlish laugh coming from somewhere.)

trouble sleeping because all you can think about is your asshole boss at the bank you work at? valium anyone? can't get a hard-on because you've literally ingested so much porn and hookers and deviation it takes nipple clamps, a rod through the tip of your penis, a live working girl and hot, girl on girl action on a screen in front of you to get any blood, whatsoever, pumping towards your organ? cialis. your stomach is all messed up because you worry about paying the rent constantly because every day you go to work is a day you worry you may quit on the spot in a rage of temper? vioxx.

look, the fact is, this is our system and it aint going anywhere anytime soon. i suggest we infuse elements of socialism at every turn we find it possible. (health care, social security. . .) but more importantly, i suggest we stop running around acting like we like our utilitarian, capitalistic jobs. they are not careers. they are jobs. if we can at least admit to ourselves they are what they are and we do what we do to pay the rent, etc., then i think we can look ourselves in the mirror each day with greater self-respect.

remember vonnegut's character in slaughterhouse five who while imprisoned at dresden heard the german soldiers mocking the american pow's because of how they adhered to pecking orders based on their jobs before the war? the germans laughed at the americans because they believed no sensible german would allow such a pecking order in their culture as, an honest job equated to a level respect for all, without regard for any income strata. i think that is how it should be, our mindset, that is. this is something we can only institute on a personal level. we must view people this way if we want others to and if we want our society to as a rule.
why elements of socialism? because we the people can have the power. and by socializing, we admit the nature of our jobs and we agree to lean on one another and be leaned on by one another. this is brotherhood.

make no mistake this is a complicated idea and/or task. it involves virtually every facet of society. the kind of change i would endorse is not likely to be seen in my life time. but for whomever might read this, i say endorse socialized medicine. retain social security. maintain a strong federal government as the protector of the people. don't be fooled by the double-speak of those who would take advantage. look, i'm not calling anyone a fool. i have been ignorant of virtually everything until i learned it. but in the day and age of leaders who don't represent our values and propaganda as art form science, when marketing has run amok and the legal system serves itself instead of the people, it is time to stand and be counted and take responsibility to inform yourself and make choices in favor not only of your community but of your species and your home (planet.)

i am not embarrassed i do not write in some capacity for my wages. i think it unfortunate. i recognize many write and want to write while few aim to be customer service managers.
how does one end a mini-diatribe against the current state of things without sounding trite or naive or like just another propagandist? maybe by pointing out that an idea can be found anywhere, even on an obscure blog by some nobody who just seems to be spilling his guts pellmell.