Workplace Terms: The Gag Reflex

Certain terms have become commonplace in the workplace & they make me want to throw up! Why do we have to be a TEAM MEMBER? Why do we have to like to WORK UNDER PRESSURE?  How come it is mandatory that we are ENERGETIC, or that we can HANDLE STRESS?

I guess ‘team member’ is supposed to connect us.  What it really means is that, like a dog, you’re expected to be totally enthusiastic, slobbering all over to BE the BEST – suck up, that is. RAH, RAH, SISS BOOM BAH !  Where are the cheerleaders?  Team members are to be blindly devoted completely to the company.  Ask no questions and we’ll tell you no truths.

Yeah, I’m a ‘team member’ – to a point.  I’ll do what my job requires me to do:  show up every day, try to do my best, do it on time and to the specifications to the job.  I draw the line, however, when it becomes obvious that I am being used or lied to or mistreated -OR- if I am expected TO lie and mislead.

WORK UNDER PRESSURE means, “How much can you take before you crack?” How much can we get OUT of you? How far will you go for this company?  How much of yourself, your needs and life outside the company will you give up? How far can we push you?

ENERGETIC means: work like the Energizer Bunny.  That’s GREAT if you’re 25 and just out of college wanting to prove yourself.  When you get to your mid-50′s, forget it.  The bunny needs a recharge!  I’m past killing myself for a job.  Been there, done that when I was in my early 20′s.  Worked 50-70 hour weeks.

WHY ARE WE EXPECTED TO WORK THIS WAY?  Aaaahhhh….. the old GREED factor.  Workers are disposable (see previous post on this) and this has become the new American corporate way.  Like paper towels, we are meant to be thrown away when we’ve been used up.  There are a thousand others waiting in line if we aren’t a team member.

RANT: Medicine Bottles & Kids

WHY is it MY RESPONSIBILITY to struggle to get a bottle of aspirin open because some kid ate it and died?

Some ‘childproof’ containers are adult proof, too!  Vitamins, pain medication, household cleaners:  everything is sometimes so difficult to open you want to smash the container rather than have to try to get it open.

Back to the RESPONSIBILITY thing.  If YOU as a parent, leave the medicine or cleaning solutions where the kids can get at them – it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY – not the manufacturer’s!!!!  The manufacturer did NOT come into your home and shove half a bottle of medicine down your kid’s throat!  YOU are the idiot!  YOU left it where the kid could get into it.  YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE!

When I was a kid everything was kept out of reach.  There were no ‘kid locks’ on the cabinets.  All medicines were kept where my sister and I could not get to them.  We were TAUGHT – ‘never take medicine unless Mom, Dad or Grandma gives it to you.’

Nobody wants to be inconvenienced!  Nobody wants to take ANY responsibility for anything. It’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault.

No, America – YOU are a bunch of IDIOTS!  Quit pointing your fingers at manufacturers, blaming them for what should be YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.  Whatever happened to ‘buyer beware?’  The legal system has turned it into ‘manufacturer beware’ because of the stupidity and irresponsibility of consumers.

We should go back to having lids on things that we can open and if your kid eats/drinks something – as the irresponsible parent – you should be fined or thrown in jail!

This is YOUR FOOD We’re Talking About

Corporate America is trying to take one more step to control food.  Small farmers are being threatened yet again by the federal government.  NAIS (National Animal Identification System)  is supposed to provide protection against these food recalls by tracking ‘food’ (in this case, animals) for their life.  Every time an animal is moved, mounds of paperwork have to be completed – for EACH animal. Moreoever – once again – this hurts the people who can least afford it – the SMALL FARMER.

Think it WON’T AFFECT YOU?

Think again.

If your kids have pet rabbits,  if you have a few chickens you keep for eggs or maybe you have a cow or two.  Goats for milking?  Those, too, will be required to be tagged and tracked.

No – what we do NOT need is NAIS.  We need BETTER conditions for these animals to begin with.  Not crowded, disease promoting facilities which harbor dangerous bacteria with lax monitoring systems!  The FDA and USDA cannot do it’s job, so they want to punish the small farmers and impose MORE TAXES on the American people.

Go to Organic Consumers to read more and tell your friends and contact your representatives!  Don’t let AGRIBUSINESS buy the saftey of the American people again!

Take Action: Stop NAIS

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been working for over five years to force a National Animal Identification System (NAIS) onto American animal owners. NAIS is designed to identify and track each and every individual livestock and poultry animal owned by family farmers, hobby farmers, homesteaders, and pet owners across the country.

USDA claims that NAIS is a disease tracking program, but has refused to provide any support for its claims. In reality, NAIS will:

Create expensive and time-consuming tagging and reporting requirements for small farms. The requirements are particularly burdensome for those farmers raising sustainable livestock on pasture. Ultimately, this will reduce the availability of grass-fed meats, eggs, and milk.

Give factory confinement farms a loophole through the use of group identification, providing yet another unfair advantage for factory farms. Not provide any information to the consumer, and does not improve food safety, because the tracking ends with the animal’s death.

Replace states’ existing, well-functioning disease response and brand inspection programs with an unproven, expensive, and unreliable system;

Impose high costs and government surveillance on every farmer and animal owner for no significant benefits, and will likely force many small producers out of business.

NAIS does nothing to improve food safety for consumers or prevent animal diseases. This program is a one-size-fits-all program developed by and for big Agribusiness. NAIS will increase consolidation of our food supply in the hands of a few large companies and put the brakes on the growing movement toward local food systems.

The grassroots movement has already successfully stalled USDA’s plans for NAIS, which originally called for the entire program – premises registration, animal identification, and tracking – to be mandatory by January 2009. The proposed rule is an opportunity to get thousands of objections in the formal record, and have an even greater impact.

It is imperative that people speak up to protect our right to farm and our food supply!

Take action today! Go to: ORGANIC CONSUMERS to see the video and learn more.

The deadline to submit comments to the USDA is March 16th.

Remember:  This is YOUR FOOD and America’s SMALL FARMERS we’re trying to save.

(Source:  OCA Feb Newsletter)

We Are All LAB RATS

YOU and I are lab rats.  Your KIDS are lab rats, too. Unless you grow and consume all your food yourself, YOU are held hostage by the food companies.

Think about it.  Everything thing you eat -  e v e n   those so-called ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ foods probably are tainted in some way with something.

I know too much.  I have my roots in the local food movement, but they stretch way back to the environmental movement.  What I do here, and on my website an other blogs, is try to EDUCATE.

For the most part, the average consumer has their head up their butt when it comes to food and the environment.  They think it’s not their problem, that it doesn’t concern them and that it doesn’t affect them.

Do you send your kids to public  school? Do they play sports?  Do they eat school food?  Do you take them to fast food joints?  What do you buy for them at the  grocery store? Do you eat in restaurants? What DO you eat when you eat? What DO you drink when you drink?

What about your home life?  What products do you buy:  laundry detergent, body care products, beauty products, perfumes, lotions, hair dye, nail polish?  What do you paint your walls with?  Where did you get your furniture? Do you use any bug killing preparations?  What about your lawn?  Do you have a lawn care service and do you KNOW what they put on your lawn?  Have you had a pest company assure you their ‘chemicals’ are safe around kids and pets?  Do you go to Lowe’s or Home Depot and buy lawn care products to keep the nasty bugs away?  Do your KIDS PLAY ON YOUR LAWN?

Where do YOU choose to shop?  Is Wally-World your best buddy because you have fallen victim and been brainwashed by their  ‘save money, live better’  catchphrase?

Big business, especially the likes of Wal-Mart, does NOT give a shit about you.  Look at the way they treat their own employees?  They’ve been convicted on a vast array of charges in recent years of labor violations.  Going waaaay back, and I have a copy of the article in my files here…. they even wanted to move a Native American cemetery because they wanted to build a store!  Do you think, in this day of corporate greed, that it’s gotten any better, that they’ve become a kinder, more gentler Wally?

There are numerous links detailing environmental disregard -and- total disregard for human life on this planet BY food companies and agricultural chemical companies.  You and I and this planet are being POISONED by thousands of chemicals a day because the likes of Monsanto and Bayer… those kindly aspirin people.

DO THE RESEARCH.  Do it for your kids, your friends, your family, your friends and if you care enough – our planet.

Go GETTUM Sen. McCaskill!

This is for my friend at Bank of America!

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/politics/2009/01/30/sot.mccaskill.on.wall.st.cnn

Want A Job? Move To India

A friend who has worked for Bank of America just learned her job will end on July 31st.  She has worked there 15 years through various name changes and takeovers/buyouts.

Her boss announced the jobs would be outsourced to India.  Isn’t that NICE!

I just found out (un-officially) that I will be out of a job on July 31st .. wow. My dept is the best in the country – we have come under goal for 18 months! Not one other dept can say that. The big honcho came in person to tell us. One of my co-workers called me and told me .. management has yet to call me. Our jobs are going to India.  India!?! Freakin’ India?? Bank of America just got more bailout money .. for what?! I want to know what the hell they are using that money for! To decorate another office?! I am writing every person I can find – this is so not right! I am literally shaking from anger ….

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?  Those of us who are out of work and those who have recently lost their jobs and those who will be losing their jobs…., where are the jobs for us?

I guess we have to move to India.

There aren’t enough burger joints for all of us to work in!  Time was, a game of kiss-ass would keep you a job.  That doesn’t work, not when daily announcements of losses and layoffs blankets the news.

In the movie, “SICKO”, there is an interesting note.  A person interviewed in France said, “Here in France the government is afraid of the people.  In the U.S. the people are afraid of the government.”

Maybe it’s TIME for another REVOLUTION!  Time to let government know that we WILL NOT TOLERATE OUR JOBS BEING SENT OVER SEAS.  Companies who do intend to send jobs to places like India should be fined heavily.  Not being in law or government, I’m not sure how this would work – but IT HAS TO STOP NOW.  If companies are losing money – it is because people are not buying because they have no jobs or are afraid that they are next!

The new administration  has a terribly difficult task ahead of it cleaning up the Bush era mess. I don’t envy President Obama because I truly believe he is on our side.  It’s the other clowns in government I worry about!

No Universal Health Care in the US

I am one step away from financial ruin.

I have no health insurance.  If I am involved in an automobile accident or am diagnosed with a terminal illness, I will lose my house and everything I own.  Since the value of my home has been reduced in this awful economy, and I  have no job and have been forced to start living off my investments which were to be my retirement, I stand on the precipice of disaster.

There won’t be any universal health care in the US because it’s not profitable.

Health care interests on Capitol Hill buy our legislators because universal health care would threaten their profits. They don’t make money  if they have to pay a claim, and they are very adept at denials.

I just finished watching Michael Moore’s “SICKO”.  No wonder why people don’t like him.  He tells the truth!  If you haven’t seen it, get on Netflix and order it.  It will make you mad!

The detainees at Guantanamo Bay – the terrorists at ‘Gitmo’ receive better care than the average American. In the video there was testimonial on the care these prisoners receive.  It was astonishing to see that they were looked after in a manner in which we Americans don’t ever know.  Preventative care, which is not the way of Western medicine, was routine here.

Moore also visited with many families who were denied care despite orders from their doctors.  Interviews with health care providers:  policy underwriters, actuaries and others who determine who gets care or coverage, if any.  The list of exclusions for one company probably was in the hundreds.  It was the job of another professional to find one crack; anything in past history in which to use against an insured to deny coverage. One woman with ovarian cancer was denied treatment because she’d had a yeast infection in the past!

There was a scene in which 4 women, all with health insurance, had been diagnosed with various forms of cancer. Ovarian and brain cancers had befallen two of them.  Two others had rare forms of the illness.  Their treatments were all denied because insurance companies listed chemo as either ‘not medically necessary’ or ‘experimental.’ WHAT???

Moore next visited England where he spoke with a former member of the government.  This man provided an interesting thought:

“If a country can find money to kill people in war, whey can’t they find money to heal?”

Interesting point.

Our medical system here focuses on treating people after they become ill, not in preventing the illness in the first place.  Eastern medicine, in China, for instance, does the opposite.  With natural remedies, some going back thousands of years, supplemented by modern medicine, preventative medicine is the key.

Moore took four 9/11 rescuers, all suffering from respiratory illnesses and PTSD to the waters outside Guantanamo Bay.  Over a bullhorn, he demanded the same care for these people that the prisoners at Gitmo got.  No response.

Next he took them to Cuba to be evaluated – for free – even though they were not Cuban citizens.  It didn’t matter, they were told.  With a reassuring tone, all 9/11 survivors were checked out in the hospital.  Diagnoses confirmed, they received instructions and medication.  One woman’s medication in the U.S. for one medicine, was $120.  The same medicine from a Cuban doctor was FIVE CENTS.

He visited England and France where nationalized health care is the norm.  People are not denied care.  In most cases it was either free or participants paid according to what they could afford but always received the care that they needed.  They were never told their care was unnecessary;  coverage was never denied.  True, taxes there are much higher than here.

It is a ‘we’ system instead of a ‘me’ system.  The United States has a ‘me’ system.  The ‘ME’ is the insurance companies who are ‘for profit’, looking out for ‘me’ (them) first.

This is a sad state we’re in.  I don’t know how to fix it but just hope that I don’t end up like the woman discharged from a California hospital.  She was put in a cab, still in her hospital gown and dumped at a shelter.  Another woman, suffering from broken ribs, broken collarbone and injuries to her face and head was dumped at the same facility.

They could not pay their hospital bills.

Disposable Workers

Have you heard this fairy tale?

A long, long time ago, in a far off land called the United States of America, people had jobs with companies who treated them like humans.  They could get a job and work there for the rest of their lives.  Unless they did something really bad, like steal or go to bed with the boss’ wife and get caught -  they could be assured this job for as long as they wanted it. All they had to do was show up every day and work as hard as they could.

Then one day, an ogre appeared.  It decided it was best for the company if it acted in its best interests.  Too bad about the employees, they’re just numbers on a time card, aren’t they?  They can’t have any feelings!

If the company could hire  new workers and pay them less, that would make it better for the business.  They found a lot of ways to get rid of the good, but over- paid workers and keep those out who wanted more than they were willing to pay.

It didn’t matter if the bosses made their jobs miserable.  If the workers quit, they could get NEW ones!  It didn’t matter if the good ones left.  They could get NEW ones and pay them less.

These big companies didn’t care if workers tried to have a life outside of the workplace.  It was too bad if the scheduling wasn’t feasible for the employee.  It doesn’t matter if there is nobody to take care of the kids because both parents have to work the same hours.  Surely you can pay for day care, can’t you?

We have a New idea:  let’s have the COMPUTER make up the schedules!  That way we won’t have to pay anyone to do it.  The computer can do it a lot faster.  It doesn’t matter if the computer has no knowledge of the employee’s situation.  Oh – an employee lives too far to work till after 11 and be back on the job at 6 in the morning?  Oh that’s silly – people can function of 2 hours of sleep and still be a courteous customer service associate, can’t they?  You love your job, don’t you?  You need your job, don’t you?

You have a medical condition,  &  yes, we see that you’ve brought a doctor’s letter with his recommendations.  Well, we’ll take care of that.  We’ll just interpret it to our benefit.  We’ll take every line, word for word and tell you what it really means.  If you don’t like it – there’s the door!

We’re going to save money on medical insurance.  We’ve decided that you have to work 40 hours to qualify – but – sssshhhhhhh, don’t tell anyone – we won’t hire anyone to work more than 35!  Now we can get out of paying 95% of our workers medical insurance!  After all, don’t we want to give our customers “low prices, always’ and continue ‘improving home improvement?’  After all, ‘you can do it, we can help,’  isn’t that right? We know our employees will say ‘I’m lovin’ it’ because we let them work here. We can’t let them ‘have it your way’, can we?

Your TOASTER Could Burn Your House Down!

First off, I would like to WARN everybody to UNPLUG household appliances that make heat. Toasters, toaster ovens, coffee makers, irons with automatic shut offs,  electric heaters, curling irons and hair dryers.

My toaster almost burned my house down!

It was the day after Christmas a few years ago.  I’d gone out for my usual morning walk at 6am.  When I got back it smelled like I’d left the coffee pot on and it was burning.  Going into the kitchen, the room was filled with smoke. I looked all around the room to see what was burning.  The last object I got to was the toaster.  The top was melted!

I ran over to see that the coils inside were RED.  The damn thing was ON, but I hadn’t used it in DAYS!  Yanking the cord out of the wall I chucked the blasted thing across the room!  Then I pitched it outside.

I was really shaken.  Since I was a kid I’ve always been afraid of fire.  The thing which scared me most was, had this been two days earlier (Christmas Eve)  I would have already been out the door to go to work! Being that my house sits way back from the road, it is very unlikely that my neighbors would have seen any fire in time to save the house.  All the cats inside would have died!

The toaster was made by Black and Decker.  It was only THREE MONTHS OLD.

The next day I e-mailed B&D to tell them that their toaster almost burned my house down.  At the same time I went on the Consumer Products Safety Commission website and  filled out a report because I wanted everyone to know about what had just happened.

I got a phone call from the CPSC the next day and was interviewed about the toaster.  They wanted it.  They were even willing to send someone to where I worked to get it.  SURE !!  Anything I could do to let the public know about something that was defective.  The appointment was set for Monday morning.

Meanwhile, Black and Decker e-mailed me and wanted the toaster.  I told them – NO WAY, JOSE…, because I was reporting this incident to the CPSC.  I bet they weren’t happy.

The man from the CPSC took a full report on the toaster:  It hasn’t been used in 5 days.  No, the cats hadn’t pushed the toast lever down.  It wasn’t knocked over; nothing fell on it.  I told him it was right where it always sat.  He asked to see the receipt and verified that it was 3 months old.  Then he wrote me a check for the amount I paid and also filled me in on some info that I want to impart to everyone:

Everything that has a switch in it has the potential to fail.  If the device makes heat this makes it even more dangerous. (this is one reason why I’ve never liked the idea of Crock Pots!)  When a switch fails there is nothing to keep it ‘off.’  It will turn itself on.  He advised me to unplug everything that makes heat when ‘on’: coffee makers, hair dryers, curling irons, irons,  all electric heaters, toaster ovens and especially toasters, when not in use.  He said that toasters had gotten better over the years but they still pose a hazard.

I was lucky.  There were 9 fires reported from these toasters.  The CPSC  issued a recall for all that model of Black and Decker toasters.  (They should stick to making hedge trimmers!) Consumer Reports also posted it under ‘recalls’ on their site.

If you have an instance like this - REPORT IT, don’t toss the appliance out thinking it doesn’t matter. YOU MAY SAVE SOMEONE’S LIFE.

Oh – a few weeks later, I got a check from Black and Decker.

They got off cheap: $14.95

A lawsuit would have been much more!