and the invoice, it don't quite fit
maybe i'm not numb so much as tired.
to be read in a thick eastern european accent: i toil all day. all day i toil. a sisyphian rat under the ugly lights and watchful eye of ludicrously inept management who, as is typical, blame the labor force for the store's shortcomings. which is almost understandable, given that the higher-ups are constantly on their asses about numbers and profit margins and pennies that must be protected from useless enterprises such as employee raises and replacement of broken down equipment. oh, the comforts of upper management at a chain store -- you can safely take the expendable worker for granted, charge for health insurance, pay pithy salaries to lower management as you work them fifty hours a week. you can hum along to your josh groban cds in the benz on the way to a late tee on the back nine with the sort of peace of mind that comes only with knowing that your corporation is an untouchable leviathan and that the republicans in congress will never allow the minimum wage to rise above 5.15.
fridays are worse than other days. you spend all day prepping a million pizzas for the night rush in between making orders, which are more frequent when it's snowing and the roads are hazardous. usually, you barely have time to finish. around four, the rush starts to trickle in, and you crack your knuckles and then you're doing pizza kung fu, you're the bruce lee, the sonny chiba of pizza. the store is slammed, you're backed up anywhere from five to twenty-two tickets, there's pizza crap everywhere...
anyway, i started going off about the company at the tail end of the rush last night. maybe i was delirious. i mean, i was still busting my ass, i was still the jackie chan of pizza, but as i did i started talking a little too loudly about how we should form a union and lobby for higher wages and better conditions and so on. even the republican was agreeing with me. all we could come up with, though, was that we should form a make table mafia, because then we wouldn't need high-powered lawyers, just sticks. and we could take up a collection to pay a large russian man to stand behind us, stroak his goatee and look menacing.
in the middle of my little tirade, the assistant manager (who'd been on our case all night) came over to tell us we'd been doing a good job. don't we all deserve a raise? i shouted after her as she walked off. she turned around and looked at me. yes, you do.
seriously, though. i know i won't be at pizza hut or minimum wage for ever. i'm not trying to be a pity case. but some people spend their lives doing this crap. it's so easy for the educated and the better-off to say, well, they should have gotten an education. if everyone got an education and everyone was middle class, who'd be working the factories or building the buildings or taking care of your children or pumping your gas or cleaning your bathrooms or making your food? yeah, i'm on a soapbox. it's always pissed me off, i think, the way this country treats its workers. they deserve better.
to be read in a thick eastern european accent: i toil all day. all day i toil. a sisyphian rat under the ugly lights and watchful eye of ludicrously inept management who, as is typical, blame the labor force for the store's shortcomings. which is almost understandable, given that the higher-ups are constantly on their asses about numbers and profit margins and pennies that must be protected from useless enterprises such as employee raises and replacement of broken down equipment. oh, the comforts of upper management at a chain store -- you can safely take the expendable worker for granted, charge for health insurance, pay pithy salaries to lower management as you work them fifty hours a week. you can hum along to your josh groban cds in the benz on the way to a late tee on the back nine with the sort of peace of mind that comes only with knowing that your corporation is an untouchable leviathan and that the republicans in congress will never allow the minimum wage to rise above 5.15.
fridays are worse than other days. you spend all day prepping a million pizzas for the night rush in between making orders, which are more frequent when it's snowing and the roads are hazardous. usually, you barely have time to finish. around four, the rush starts to trickle in, and you crack your knuckles and then you're doing pizza kung fu, you're the bruce lee, the sonny chiba of pizza. the store is slammed, you're backed up anywhere from five to twenty-two tickets, there's pizza crap everywhere...
anyway, i started going off about the company at the tail end of the rush last night. maybe i was delirious. i mean, i was still busting my ass, i was still the jackie chan of pizza, but as i did i started talking a little too loudly about how we should form a union and lobby for higher wages and better conditions and so on. even the republican was agreeing with me. all we could come up with, though, was that we should form a make table mafia, because then we wouldn't need high-powered lawyers, just sticks. and we could take up a collection to pay a large russian man to stand behind us, stroak his goatee and look menacing.
in the middle of my little tirade, the assistant manager (who'd been on our case all night) came over to tell us we'd been doing a good job. don't we all deserve a raise? i shouted after her as she walked off. she turned around and looked at me. yes, you do.
seriously, though. i know i won't be at pizza hut or minimum wage for ever. i'm not trying to be a pity case. but some people spend their lives doing this crap. it's so easy for the educated and the better-off to say, well, they should have gotten an education. if everyone got an education and everyone was middle class, who'd be working the factories or building the buildings or taking care of your children or pumping your gas or cleaning your bathrooms or making your food? yeah, i'm on a soapbox. it's always pissed me off, i think, the way this country treats its workers. they deserve better.