Labor Pains

Somehow I managed to get Labor Day off this year (that’s a rarity in my industry, on account of how criminals don’t generally take the holidays off).  I just want you all to know that I am still alive, I have just been incredibly busy, hence why the Otakon review is not up, yet.  I’m still writing it.  I hope to catch up a bit on this here Labor Day, but catching up is such a pain…

That whole line was just to set up this joke.

As soon as I can actually get some time to do things besides fixing our new house (Living Room, Dining Room, Closet, and Kitchen are done…only have to do the office, bedroom, basement, attic, and the entire freakin’ outside!!) I hope to get caught up on the DotM posts, get the Otakon review up, and at least preview, if not outright release, our new feature (secret-y stuff, shh!).

In the meantime here’s a short photopost about Labor Day.

Le Gasp!!

~RC–

Wait, what?  I told you it was a short photopost.  Not good enough?  Okay…how about a Labor Day rant, since I haven’t gone all political on your asses in a while.

Labor Day is a celebration of the hard-working masses who propel this country toward prosperity, no matter how many bankers, board members, politicians, lawyers, and other classification of criminals work against them.  So why is it that the lowest-tiered jobs are actually the ones who don’t get the day off?  Look around, travel a bit, and you’ll find a (less-than-) dedicated crew of low-class workers.  For instance take a look at the common grocery store today.  While you’re away on a Labor Day vacation the Janitors, Security Guards, Cashiers, Stockers, and food preparers are still working.  In the average office building you’ll see much the same, guards and janitors sitting around BSing because there’s not much to do since nobody else showed up to do any real work.

But who always gets the day off?  Bankers, politicians, lawyers, and board members…the same kinds of people who cause all the problems and treat the low-class workers like shit the whole rest of the year.  The one day dedicated to the common worker…and these assholes make the common worker work like a common day, then take a Monday off to get drunk and bitch about how they only made $2 million in bonuses last year, instead of the normal $4 million.

Reminds me of when I got out of the service, moved a hundred miles out of the jobless countryside I was born in, and got a job in a factory just outside of Pittsburgh.  Let me remind you that the President of the Company used the company’s accounts to finance his house, his car, his wife’s car, his daughter’s car, and they fired a salesman so that they could give the company car to his younger daughter (who was only 15 at the time).  We had a crew of 13 guys working in 100 degree weather inside an old building that was poorly maintained, had poor ventilation, improper storage areas for dangerous/explosive/corrosive/deadly chemicals, and no air conditioning.  There were four AC units in the whole building…1 in the President’s office, 1 in the President’s secretary’s office (his aforementioned wife, of course), one in the Accountant’s office, and one in the back of the Plant Manager’s office that actually did more to cool the hallways between the offices of the President, Secretary, and Accountant than cool the PM’s office (where we would sit to get new orders).

So there we are, 13 guys all getting paid $22,000 a year, each.  The President came into the Plant Manager’s office and whined that he had to cut his own pay down to $125,000 a year.  Yes, he paid himself $100,000+ more than each of his regular employees, every year…and that was after cutting his own pay.  Keep in mind he wasn’t some genius entrepreneur or something…his father-in-law founded the company fifty years ago and this guy married the eldest daughter and jointly inherited 51% stock in the company through the marriage.  He wanted the PM to put more pressure on us to start working off the clock to get more things done; yeah, he wanted the 22 grand a year workers to work off-the-clock so he could raise his own pay back up to normal.  Keep in mind the guy was there twice a week, and the rest of the week he was coaching the local school’s softball team, playing golf, running for school board, or just sitting around at home watching the gardeners mow his lawn.

On Labor Day he should be working the floor while the regular workers are at home celebrating, certainly not the other way around.

~RCS

Okay, one more funny one…