When I worked as Durgin-Park waitress, way, way, way, back in the day, there was a crudely framed sign hanging in the waitress break room. The sign, which I've guessing was vintage 1920's or 1930's, had apparently been corporate swag given to Durgin by a salesman for a fruit company. Maybe the company that sold them the strawberries that went into their famous strawberry shortcake.
I didn't recall the full quote but I did remember the bromide was attributed to Elbert Hubbard. (Elbert Hubbard was eccentric writer-artisan-philosopher who went down with the Lusitania, and who was no apparent relation to L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology.) So I was able to google it up, and here's what the sign in the D-P breakroom said. Unfortunately, our sign was minus the picture of Elbert and his snappy chapeau.
The man we worked for was a rage-filled drinker with a gluttonous appetite and an absolutely malevolent disposition. He was perpetually firing waitresses for some made-up-on-the-spot infraction, a scenario that was always followed by the fired waitress - or one of the older gals who'd waited there forever - beseeching the boss so that the fired waitress could get her job back. After an intercession, the waitress was always hired back.
This boss was a total madman.
In one encounter I had with him, he saw me returning a very nasty-looking serving of our famous "Poor Man's Roast Beef," a thin slice of usually not all that bad rump roast. (One of the items available on the 99 cent lunch menu.) In this case, rather than a nice, rarish slice of goodness, the cook had asked me to try to serve a patched together plate composed of a couple of gristly end cuts. The cook assured me that he'd take it back. I just had to try to serve it.
Predictably, the patron refused the meal - especially galling, given that her lunch companion was served a normal plate. But the boss wasn't happy to see it returned.
After screaming at me for a minute or so, he asked me to point out the table were the unsatisfied customer was sitting. He grabbed the "Poor Man's" out of my hand, stormed over to the customer, slammed the meal down in front of her and told her if she didn't like it, she could get the hell out of his restaurant.
To no one's surprise, she chose option two.
As the two women at the table gathered up their coats and pocketbooks, the boss turned to me and snarled, "Make sure you charge them 10 cents for the cornbread."
Needless to say...
Anyway, when the boss was on a particular rager, one of us was guaranteed to start quoting from the Elbert Hubbard sign, laughing all the way.
My bottom line: there's no reason to pledge fealty to, or even speak well of, an employer who's god-awful, even if he is providing your (corn)bread and butter.
Long way to lead into an article I saw the other day on an Australian jackass - a millionaire property developer - who thinks that an increase in the unemployment rate would bring the employer-employee relationship back into what to him is a more natural balance. I.e., captain of industry with his boot on the neck of a groveling worker who's gotten a bit too uppity.
Here's what this jackass had to say:
“We need to see pain in the economy,” Tim Gurner, CEO of the Gurner Group, told the Australian Financial Review’s property summit Tuesday. “We need to see unemployment rise — unemployment has to jump 40 to 50 percent, in my view.” (Source: Washington Post)
It's estimated that this sort of jump in unemployment would translate into 800,000 Aussies on the unemployment line. Swell.
“I think the problem that we’ve had is that people decided they didn’t really want to work so much any more through covid, and that has had a massive issue on productivity,” he said. Tradespeople, he said, “have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years, and we need to see that change.”
I'm sure there are plenty of people - in both the US and Australia - who really don't want to work anymore. I'm equally sure - maybe even more sure - that most people do want to work. Work gives purpose, structure, companionship, and - oh, yeah - income. Things most people want. Even those uppity tradespeople And if there aren't enough people joining the trades, the Econ 101 answer is to make their sort of work more attractive. Which usually means "paid a lot."
“We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around,” he continued. “There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around. So it’s a dynamic that has to change."
A world in which employees are supposed to feel "extremely lucky" to have a job? Sure sounds like job hell to me. (And no, I don't believe anyone should sit around growling, condemning, and eternally finding fault - the behavior proscribed by Elbert Hubbard in another quote on what employees owe the man - at least not when they should be working. But out for an after work beer with trusted colleagues? Yacking to a friend who's heard it all before? Once you get home, to your spouse? Sheesh. Bitching about work is one of life's great pleasures.
Those changes had already begun, Gurner said, with “massive layoffs” leading to what he described as “less arrogance in the employment market.”
"Less arrogance." Yes sir, Master Gurner.
Can you imagine working for someone who holds his employees in such scorn? Who exudes a big old let them eat cake/the peasants are revolting vibe.
I'm guessing that even Elbert Hubbard would think that Tim Gurner's a putz.
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