I have finally read it all, twice, there is no new content.
In a previous life, many moons ago, circa the Y2K panic, oh how the world was such a different place as recently as then, because *then* when a cop I knew at the time showed me a pic (screen cap from a vid) of a “girl” they were trying to trace, and save, cos she was being exploited and abused innit, I was free, or felt free enough, to answer him honestly.
He didn’t show it to me in the “helping with enquiries” sense, he showed it to me to prove what a serious and important job he had, see, he’d just been telling me all about what he did, and I said his job was complete bollocks.
So, he shows me this pic, young blonde girl holding a horse / donkey / pony cock near her mouth, and I just burst out laughing as soon as I saw it.
It wasn’t the reaction he was expecting, clearly I should have vomited in disgust and shock and then praised craptain save a ho, as the young girl obviously desperately needed saving and wescuing…
When I could stop giggling I told him to do an internet search for Bodil Joensen, like, this chick you’re trying to save, she died 15 years ago, (from then, in late 1999) aged 40… in Denmark.
Cunt hated me for that, see, you can’t rescue someone unless they are suffering, so if you wanna be a rescuer, there just *has* to be lots of suffering, and if there isn’t enough, then that becomes a problem that needs solving.
I mention all this, because it seems to mirror the approach everyone has now, economy bad? No sweat, just break some windows… sorted…
I have talked in the past about my mate who was always complaining about his job, and me always telling him to keep his head down and take the fucking money every month, because on the other side of the employee fence your crap job will suddenly start looking like a dream job on a goldmine salary….. not something you have *any* realistic hope of getting.
Well, last week he got shit-canned.
His position (head of IT) isn’t being filled, his manager is stepping into those shoes, so the company structure is now a couple of directors, a bunch of managers, and a load of worker drones, fungible labour.
See, wages paid to managers are an asset, wages paid to fungible worker drones a liability.
For my sins there are quite a few ordinary working stiffs in various places around the globe that I talk to on a regular / intermittent / random basis, and of course since there seem to be more and more “trouble spots” around the globe, this means more and more of them are in said places, and others who are in places that are not apparently trouble spots, but have the same sorts of stories to tell as those who are..
And those who are “here”, like my newly unemployed mate, the stories are different in degree, not nature.
You get some working stiff on ZH who says fuck it, had enough of all this shit, burn it down and start again.
I dunno, what would your attitude be if one day you wake up and discover that all the managers and directors and politicians and lawyers and bankers think exactly the same fucking thing?
Cos they are.
That’s what this whole thing is that lost my mate his job, companies are getting lean and mean, and that means a core management team, no employees important enough or smart enough or knowledgeable enough to take the company down in a fit of anger, and a bunch of fungible drones who can be hired or fired at will.
In the mid to late 80’s, in another country, I did the whole wetback thing, day working, one day’s work for one day’s pay, maybe you’ll get asked back tomorrow, maybe you won’t… but, to be fair, the hourly rate equaled one menu del dia per hour, so better than many…
It fucking sucks.
Owners like that shit though, y’all only need one ganger with employee status to herd one crew of them, and he knows he can be replaced real quick too… and it is too late to get your company ready for that shit, when that shit is already being sprayed everywhere by the fan.
Back in the 70’s in the UK when the IRA were still doing their “spectaculars” there was a joke doing the rounds, as jokes go, it wasn’t that funny, what made it work was the picture it painted, the faces and expressions on them, of the people in the joke.
What’s the fastest game in the world?
Pass the parcel in an Irish pub.
You know the sketch, a parcel is passed around until the music stops, and then that person has to peel one layer of wrapping off, but instead of the final layer of wrapping revealing a nice present, it was a bomb.
It was funny on many levels, not just because of the imagined expressions on the players as the parcel did its rounds, and again when the music stopped, but the whole Irish / stupid thing, it didn’t really help you a whole lot to be relieved when the parcel was passed to the guy next to you, or anyone else in the pub.
You see the analogy, NatBarcloid Bank is going to shit, thank fuck I’m with HSBC.
Mesopotamia is going to shit, thank fuck I’m in Romania.
Real estate is going to shit, thank fuck I’m in tourism.
You can substitute pretty much anything, where the first term applies to you, and the second to some other group.
My mate’s IT management job has gone to shit, thank fuck I’m the Cisco kid.
I’m in a race against time, I have to raise enough funds to buy myself a new full size industrial laser, while the getting is good.
Who knows how many layers of wrapping are left on that parcel, god knows it has to be a finite number, and they have been playing all night….