I decided not to open today. Instead, I’m using the time to figure out some of the more automatic features of the drum box. It is tedious to do it manually and even more so when there is a guitarist telling me I’ve got the speed wrong every time. Besides, anybody who has
seriously listened to drumming these days knows that most of it is synthesized. This “Chatahoochie” song I’m learning has no live drums at all, and in fact throws itself off beat in two places and has to stop [a trick I use on stage when needed].I went for supplies this morning and bought some ballpoint pens that said they were “anti-bacterial”. This is precisely the type of nonsense I would outlaw. If you read the fine print, the pen has an antibacterial coating, but the disclaimer clearly states this protection does not extend to your skin, it is “product protection designed to protect the surface of the pen”. The print is so fine, I cannot get it to scan. So, here is a picture of another pen to get rid of “red-eye”.
That’s a fine example of American culture. Don’t change the bad habits of the photographer, buy a fix-up pen afterward. Today featured a newspaper article about a man at General Motors who took an early pension of $36,000, or 60% of his former salary. He was a “team build coordinator”, a Japanese concept. He laments that formerly he “was in a position where people listened” when he spoke.
Let’s look at it from my point of view. The guy’s name was, appropriately, “Kenneth Doolittle”. 60% means the dickhead was making $60,000 a year for “supervising”, a vastly over-rated and soon to be extinct American concept. Good riddance. I said decades ago that only one person in 10,000 who ever held a “management” position had any aptitude for it. Most did more damage than good, but as long as American (and Canada) were squandering the boom money from the World Wars, this fact was glossed over. Doolittle has not figured out that the people who were “listening” finally got tired of his crap. He says he “contributed” but does not say what.
My fifteen years in the corporate system taught me all the truths these so-called managers seem to finally be learning the hard way. I had many chances to move up the ladder, but said, “No thanks”.
Now, ten years after, I can get a job any time that pays what I was earning before. I recall too many managers who used to snicker when I would go to school after work rather than head with them to the stripper bars. The fact that I scored with more women in my class than they did between them with the pros has nothing to do with it. At least I think it doesn’t, maybe.
Furthermore, I recognized early that much of the friction that apparently existed between management and union (yes, I was a union member) was the result of these low-grade “middle” managers trying justify their paychecks by imposing juvenile Oriental work tactics. Those who objected to this nonsense were [told they were] not “team players”. Funny, now neither are their managers, fancy that!
These people are getting what they deserved: The economic system is telling them something they could never admit on their own – that they are useless all around and always were. It was grand while it lasted, but the party is over. Did they seriously believe they were worth $31 per hour each? The company I worked for was one of the worst for surplus, unneeded managers. By 1995 the phone company had one manager for every three employees.
Don’t misunderstand me – my coworkers where not exactly innocents themselves. It took up to six of them to do the same work I did on the average day (one of the reasons I left). What I did soon became so vastly over-managed that this disparity became the norm, I was “expected” to perform to that level. On many an evaluation day, I was told that I had “failed to provide any proof that I could not have done even better”!
There were also other factors, such as ever increasing compulsory union deductions for benefits that I did not qualify for, such as “equality” and “maternity leave”. When I left, these “insignificant” ¼% deductions added up to a full 8% of my paycheck (which with other union dues and taxes, put me in a marginal 44% deduction rate). When you are paid by the hour, this is brutal.
The system was retarded by 1996, when I bailed (with a buyout package). There was a strong movement for equal pay, at my expense. I was expected to take a lower than normal increase so that clerical workers could “catch up”, as if it was I and not the company who had been exploiting them. However, the type of managers I just mentioned were experts at buying union votes in this fashion. It is a fact that I quit at the first opportunity after the first time the union voted themselves a raise out of my pay. Clerical workers outnumbered the rest of us six to one. You call that a “vote”?
[Author's note: that last paragraph was unclear, let me explain. My union used to always shoot for an annual raise that at least covered inflation. At the time, this usually meant 5% to 6%. Those with higher rates, such as myself, would get proportionately more, but that is the correct formula, because I earned more. In 1990, a movement came about that everybody in the company, regardless of their job, should earn the same amount of money. Duh. At the next contract, therefore, the tradesmen (me) would only get a 2% raise so that the clerks (them) could get a 9% raise. This was to continue until “equality” was achieved. A clerical worker would soon be making $50,000 a year.)
In the end, this never happened. The company fired them all instead and farmed the jobs out to India.]
By increasing the resolution to max, and using enhancement software, I have the disclaimer from the anti-biotic pen
.Later, I ran into a guitar player on the way to the store. He plays the Blues but is definitely aware how futile that is in this town. His name is Luis and he has much the same requirements in a band as I do. He can also read chord charts, so he says. For a guy who can’t speak English, he is sincere enough to get a chance. We are scheduled for Wednesday.
Until then, rejoice that America can sleep just that bit more soundly tonight knowing your ball-point pen cannot get sick and die from any of the diseases on your fingertips.
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