Working For A Living

Is it me, or is it just getting harder and harder each day to get up and go to work. Does anybody else feel this way?

Maybe I’m just getting old, but I am finding it a real drag to have to get up and go to work. I know, I know, unemployment is near an all time high, and I should thank the Lord to have ANY job.

I am thankful, and I do thank God for my job on a nearly daily basis, but there’s one thing that keeps bothering me; the job site is getting more and more stressful to work at. Every day it seems that someone keeps changing the rules of the work force game.

I have always been the proponent of management’s right to dictate the rules and policies of their companies. I always tell my co-workers “It’s their game; they get to make the rules.” The problem though, is they keep changing the rules, and it is making life more stressful.

My theory is that the bad economy has something to do with this trend. Every business is searching for ways to cut their costs, and their payroll. The first people they look to ax are the ones not protected by a union. Middle management employees (and some senior management) are under intense pressure to justify their paychecks. They actually have to act like they are valuable to the company.

What is the answer to their dilemma? Is it to brain storm the true problems that exist in the company, and figure out how to rectify them? No. Instead they sit around thinking up new rules for the employees to follow. They always give the same old reasons for these “important” changes; “we want you to be safer at work”, “we want you to be more productive”, but they are just trying to justify their existence.

Actually, it’s become a little more than that; and I think it is approaching harassment.

Like I said before, all companies are looking to cut payroll costs. Perhaps all these rule changes are nothing more than a brow-beating to get all older, more vested, higher paid employees to retire. It makes sense. If the company can convince older people to retire, they can hire new employees at one third the cost.

The funny thing is that older employees would LOVE to retire. However, most of them can’t afford to retire, or won’t if they have to get a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart to do so.

I have a suggestion, can all the dead wood in middle-management (what a bonfire that would make!), and use that money to raise the retirement funds of the people that actually do the work. Then they could afford to retire and make jobs for the younger unemployed folks. This makes sense to me also.

So, how are things at your work place?

Count Me In for the Census

I just received my 2010 U.S. Census in the mail. I am old enough that I can remember some past censuses. In the old days a nice lady or man would come up to your door and ask questions which they would record on a paper on their clip board. We never received anything in the mail, and the census workers got paid for the work they did.

Now a days the government mails out the census, and pays money, lots of money, to advertise to us that the census is coming, and that we need to fill it out and send it back to them. The latest reports state that the government (read, you and me the tax payers) is spending 360 million dollars to advertise this census. I find this curious in today's high unemployment. Why not spend this money hiring unemployed people for a few months? I think this would be a better way of finding out our true population than sending out mailers and hoping that people will bother to fill them out and return them. Perhaps it is too dangerous to send pollsters into certain areas. Instead of spending all of this money on advertising, perhaps their goals would be better met by sending a cashiers check for $50 with each census form. The check would be made payable after the receipt of the census. I bet this would guarantee that they would get most of their mailers back and filled out.

I have heard some of these advertisements, including the one they paid 2.5 million dollars to air on the Super Bowl. They encourage us to fill out the census and return it because it is our patriotic duty, and that the information will help our local communities by getting us our fair share of Federal money, and funding.

I don't know about you, but all of this advertising has convinced me to fill out and return my census. I DO want to be patriotic, and I do want to help out my community. I filled out my form stating that my 2200 square foot house is actually an Indian longhouse, and that I have twenty five relatives; from a great aunt to my fourth cousin living here.

I sure hope this helps me get some of that Federal funding money.