If there’s one thing Americans hate it’s the poor. Even the poor hate the poor and are quite ready to abuse them.
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In 2007 my wife and I went to visit New York. We stayed at a Bed & Breakfast in Brooklyn, operated by a husband and wife. That wasn’t their full-time job, though. Or rather, not their ONLY job. Bibi ran the B&B and then went off to work. The husband had TWO jobs, one as a busdriver and something else I can’t quite recall. I think he did deliveries to stores at night. So all in all, four jobs between them. (It was a pretty big house, with several rooms that were rented out. Running a B&B of that size counts as a job, as far as ‘m concerned.)
The husband was originally from Holland and he clearly enjoyed pissing all over his native country, especially to fellow Dutchmen. According to him, we were living in some sort of hell, where people were either thieves or victims of a socialist government. Boy, was he glad he had moved to the Land Of Opportunity.
I really, REALLY wanted to explain to him that my wife and I only had one job each, part-time in my wife’s case. And 4 weeks of paid vacation per year, which is more than he got. We were neither thieves nor lazy,
but we did have affordable health care and didn’t need extra jobs to pay the rent. Also, when we voted, our votes counted just as much as anyone else’s (they weren’t discarded just because we had voted for a ‘losing’ party) and our neighbours did not have the right (or the opportunity) to buy a machine gun and keep it at arms reach. From our perspective, we had it better than that guy in almost every respect. (We didn’t have Netflix in Holland at the time. Or even a single Cheesecake Factory.)
America has no shortage of delusional idiots such as our host. Americans live in poverty, amass huge debts, 1 in 4 ends up in prison or with a criminal conviction, they’re the fattest nation on earth, millions can’t afford healthcare, millions more pay for healthcare and then don’t get it when they need it and in 2011 the nation spent 665 billion (!!!) dollars on their military and, by way of contrast, 70 billion on education.
They lead the world mainly in fuel consumption, teenage pregnancies and frivolous lawsuits but somehow they all think that they live in paradise. And so all of them, even the poorest and dumbest, will continue to vote against their own self-interests and in favour of legislation that benefits the rich. After all, they themselves will be rich one day!
Well… Glad to get that off my chest. Pfew.
It helps to think of all this when you read the article ‘I was a warehouse slave’ by Mac McClelland. In it, she tells us of her job at an Amazon warehouse, where she was treated only marginally better than a rented mule.
It’s a job for the poor, the transient, those whose pensions aren’t enough to live on (*) and the as-yet not well educated. People that Amazon and other companies can and do take advantage of. To disavow themselves of any responsibility, they don’t operate the warehouses themselves, but they use companies that act as a middleman and that can take the blame for these conditions.
(* But who have been cheerfully voting Republican their entire lives so fuck ‘em)
Here’s an excerpt where Mac gets some insider tips from a lady at the local chamber of Commerce:
"They need you to work as fast as
possible to push out as much as they can as fast as they can. So they’re gonna give you goals, and then you know what? If you make those goals, they’re gonna increase the goals. But they’ll be yelling at you all the time. It’s like the military.
They have to break you down so they can turn you into what they want you to be. So they’re going to tell you, ‘You’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough,’ to make you work harder. Don’t say, ‘This is the best I can do.’ Say, ‘I’ll try,’ even if you know you can’t do it. Because if you say, ‘This is the best I can do,’ they’ll let you go. They hire and fire constantly, every day. You’ll see people dropping all around you. But don’t take it personally and break down or start crying when they yell at you."
"Well, what if I do start crying?" I ask the woman who warns me to keep it together no matter how awfully I’m treated. "Are they really going to fire me for that?"
"Yes," she says. "There’s 16 other people who want your job. Why would they keep a person who gets emotional, especially in this economy?"
Still, she advises, regardless of how much they push me, don’t work so hard that I injure myself. I’m young. I have a long life ahead of me. It’s not worth it to do permanent physical damage, she says, which, considering that I got hired at elevensomething dollars an hour, is a bit of an understatement.”
Sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it? You’ll also read all about how the warehouse is so massive, you basically spend your lunch break walking to and from the bathroom and how, as you do your job, you are repeatedly electrocuted by static electricity.
It gives you something to think about, next time you order something online. Oh, please note that Amazon is referred to as ‘Amalgamated Product Giant Shipping Worldwide Inc.’ But it’s them. Who else sells nappies, books, flower sifters and sex toys from a warehouse in Ohio?
Full article (4 pages, don’t forget to click) at Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor
Some additional links, while I’m at it:
‘What is life like for an Amazon worker' at Gawker.com. An article based on emails from a former warehouse employee.
Also: The Secret Lives of Amazon’s Elves at Gizmodo.com
from: http://warnas.tumblr.com/post/61861310973/american-wage-slaves
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