Is there a more insulting commercial on the air right now other than the one up above? Well, besides that AshleyMadison commercial I mean…
With the economy still in tatters and millions of people out there barely able to get a job stocking shelves at Wal-Mart or flipping burgers at McDonalds (assuming their credit score is good enough), how insulting is it to see something like this on cable or satellite TV to remind us that there are those out there who maintain that we just don’t measure up?
In a word, very!!!
They only work with “the big talent”?!?!?!?
Just what or who is “the big talent”?!?!?!?
Is it the same “big talent” that brought down Lehman Brothers over a year ago and was welcomed back into the executive and management fold with open arms while the rank-and-file workers, their support staff, are still struggling not only to find jobs but to merely survive life a year later?
Is it the same “big talent” at AIG that soon after they got their bailout money from us that they sent their top executives on a “junket” to a California spa for $440,000.00?
Is it the same “big talent” like John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, who spent $1.22 million to re-decorate his office?
Is it the same “big talent” at Bank of America that refused to extend credit to Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, forcing the shutdown of the company and termination of its entire workforce?
I’m asking a serious question here. Who decides which one of us is worthy of the “big talent” label and which ones are not?
There are so many people out here who are hustling just to get a job so that their family doesn’t become homeless, we really don’t need a reminder like this one that we are considered to be a “bad risk” or that we are “lazy”, or that we are a “deadbeat who doesn’t really want to work”, or that we “want the government to take care of us”. A lot of us are not collecting Unemployment Benefits anymore simply because they have run out, yet we still have people calling us “Socialists” while they get their prescriptions through Medicare at the local VA Hospital. Many of us have applied for the job where we would have to “shovel shit in the sewers” only to be told that we do not have the experience they are looking for by the same guy who told us a week earlier to “get a job ya bum!”
So while the Wall Street fat cats live “high on the hog” on their “Golden Parachutes” and take a long, slow drag on their illegal Cuban Cigars in the Executive Smoking Room at their new company, the rest of us have to rely on food banks and borrowing money from relatives while planning yet another garage sale even though we have already reached our garage sale limit for the year.
By the way, here’s a little tip – never schedule your Garage Sale to fall on the same day that 9/12 demonstrations and the Boise Flea Market are being held! UUUAAGGHHH!!! Well at least we made enough to pay auto insurance and go to the grocery store. Now we’re going to try again this Saturday and hopefully make enough to keep the lights and Internet access turned on.
But, I digress…
It is not right that the same people who got this country, and by extension the world, into this financial mess should be able to earn a living while those people who scheduled their appointments, got them their coffee, made their travel reservations, and kept their lives organized are still unable to support themselves let alone their families. So if they screwed everything up to begin with, then what makes them worth the 7-figure salaries they pulled down then, and continue to pull down now? For that matter, if these “executives” and “managers” are so good at what they do, then why are they looking for jobs in the first place? If they really were ”big talent” and worth an income that reaches $100k+ then shouldn’t they still be in their previous jobs? Shouldn’t they have been good enough to make sure that their companies stayed strong and did not go belly up?
I’m not trying to be a smart-ass here, I’m just asking the same questions about them that their HR Directors have been asking about the rest of us for months, if not years now. If they can question our competence and our abilities to do a job based on how long we have been out of work or by our credit score, then why can’t we ask those same questions of those who are considered “big talent”? Seriously, fair is fair. If we are going to be judged by a set of standards that tips the playing field in the favor of those who want to keep us out of work and create a lower class by destroying the middle class, then they should be judged by the same standards as we are.
Now I can hear some of you working it right now saying that these “big talent” executives and managers have special qualifications and talents that the rest of us do not, so they should be held to different standards. Oh really? Well considering that some of these companies did a crash dive on their watch, those special qualifications and talents must not be so “special” if they were unable to save their company, now would they? Doesn’t that say to you that these people were not very good at their jobs, because that is what it says to me. And if I were a hiring manager someplace I would have to think twice about hiring then for my company. How could they guarantee that the same thing that happened at their last job would not happen at their new one, huh? And I can hear some of you saying that that’s not fair, and that someone who is seeking a job should not be held accountable for their previous company going out of business.
Well it seems that that is what is happening to the rank-and-file workers of Lehman Brothers who are joining the ranks of the underutilized and being transformed into “unpersons”, so if anything is good enough for them then it should be good enough for executives and management of said same company who have been able to go back to work, right?
All of the education and degrees in the world are no indication of how well someone can manage a company or how good of a boss that person would be. I am assuming that all of this “big talent” have at least one degree on their resume, and that it didn’t come from the Tabasco School of Business and Agriculture headquartered in Indonesia. I’m assuming that they went to Ivy League, Pac-10 and Big 10 schools and made a lot of lifelong buddies there, some of whom were only too happy to provide them a safety net when the bottom dropped out last year. Meanwhile their Administrative Assistants are still unemployed, being told by complete strangers who already have jobs that they are lazy and that they should “get a job” while diving in their couch cushions for whatever change they can find so that they can buy their weekly ration of Top Ramen while they send out 37 more applications for jobs that they will be turned down for because their credit score has taken a dive due to all of the bills that have gone unpaid.
Here’s something to ponder for all of those companies that hired all of these loser executives and managers from Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns, IndyMac and others: if they mismanaged those financial giants so badly that the companies either folded or had to be bought out, then how do you know they would be able to perform any better working for you? Old habits die hard, so how do you know that they have changed their ways and are now actually doing a better job at your company?
How do you know that these “big talent” schmucks are actually worth all of that caysh you are paying them? What makes them so “special”? The answers are – you don’t, and nothing. Just because they have been in a position of authority doesn’t mean that they can handle it. Instead of being something out of Harvard Business School they may be something straight out of “The Office”!!!
We have been rewarding incompetence in this country for too long and look where it has gotten us!!! We have under-talented, overpaid, uneducated executives and managers making decisions on who gets to work and live and who gets thrown out into the streets and dies – talk about your “death panels”! It is time for the responsible adults to start re-building this country, and it is time for the frat boys in the penthouse to join the soup lines that they have brought about. It is long past time for the real workers of this economy, those of us who are unemployed, underemployed and underutilized, to catch a break and be allowed to support our families again.
And it is time for those critics out there who already have jobs and are calling us lazy to sit down, take your socialized medicine, and shut the fuck up!!!!
Sorry, did I say that out loud?!?
