Help yourself to some unemployment

So I’m in the drug store buying a few personal items which may or may not have included enough cheap whiskey to stage a St. Patrick’s Day Parade (I’m protected against self-incrimination by the Fifth Amendment, or in this particular case, the Two-Fifths Amendment…and we’ll now pause for a moment while you let that joke soak in) and when I put my items on the counter, the cashier – who seemed to be pretty busy contemplating the Meaning of Life or her need for a new manicure because she was holding her hand up in front of her face and staring at her fingernails – asked if I wouldn’t rather use the self-checkout kiosk.

I said: “No, I’d rather help you keep your job.”

To which she replied the company had assured her that the self-checkout kiosks would not endanger her cashier’s job and as we all know, corporations never lie or make promises they have no intention of keeping.

Google “what’s the most common job” and at least one source says the answer is “cashier” so if companies that employ them can convince the rest of us to check out our own items, they can fire millions of cashiers and save money.

And if you’re thinking that might be a good thing because then the companies that saved all that money could reduce the cost of their products, let me welcome you to planet Earth and ask how things work in the galaxy you’re from.

Because on this planet corporations would take the savings from firing workers and give it to people in upper management because you never know when a CEO is going to feel the need for a third vacation home or a new BMW convertible they’d only drive on the weekends or a boat so big it’s got its own area code.

Self-checkout stands are my first item on Corporate America’s Let’s Fire As Many People As Possible Agenda, what’s next?

Self-driving cars

Assuming you watch as much TV as I do (and I’m pretty much limited to sporting events as long as you consider the New England Patriots versus the New York Jets “sporting” and I have the feeling millions of Jets fans don’t) you’ve seen the ads from car companies demonstrating the miracle of “hands-free driving” because apparently we’ve all been dying (which seems to be an ominously appropriate word) to rocket down the freeway while singing a song and clapping our hands to Queen’s We Will Rock You instead of going to all the trouble of actually steering the Two-Ton Killing Machine we and our Occasionally Loved Ones are riding in.

In the Real World (which has almost nothing to do with the Advertising World where 98-pound nerds have smoking hot girlfriends because they use Axe Body Spray) I don’t know anybody who is overly-interested in hands-free driving.

According to the internet, autonomous vehicles (also known as AVs and “Hey…who the hell is driving that thing?”) are involved in 9.1 crashes per million miles traveled, compared to 4.1 million miles traveled for conventional cars, so AVs are twice as likely to have a crash as cars driven by humans and let’s face it, the human record isn’t all that great either.

And to truly relax and enjoy sending texts or practicing card tricks or learning to do the Over the Falls maneuver with your yoyo (which is a real thing and I spent part of my youth mastering it) while zipping down the highway, you have to believe the same industry that built the Pinto, Corvair and Edsel totally got its shit together and perfected hands-free driving which has to work 100 percent perfectly 100 percent of the time if you don’t want to turn into an oncoming Mack Truck hood ornament.

Since most of us don’t care about hands-free driving, it would appear Corporate America is trying to solve a problem we don’t really have until you realize they’re not trying to solve one of our problems; they’re trying to solve one of their problems.

If they can make autonomous vehicles work, they can fire all the drivers.

Stocking associate

Coming in at number seven on our “What’s The Most Common Job in America Hit Parade” is “stocking associate” which I’d like to think is some guy paid to check out women’s legs and then recommend the correct pair of stockings because apparently some women don’t own a mirror and want to squeeze 10 pounds of sugar in a five-pound bag of yoga stretch pants, but unfortunately for my imaginary and quite possibly sexist universe it’s actually someone who unpacks merchandise and checks to see if a store’s shelves are well-stocked and it turns out a local business has just hired a robot to do that job and I’m guessing the robot doesn’t take smoke breaks or get sick or make politically incorrect comments about female customers’ legs.

So there goes another job.

Customer Service Representative

Theoretically, this person talks with customers about a company’s products and services, but as we all know by now companies have fired everybody that can answer a phone and replaced them with recordings.

Corporate America still likes the “Customer” part of Customer Service, but is no longer so keen on providing “Service.”

Try calling any corporation you care to name and see how often a human answers. Instead, you get a recording telling you just exactly how much the corporation values your business and the exact amount turns out to be “not all that much” because if they really valued your business they’d hire some people to answer the goddamn phone.

Travel agents

I used to have a travel agent and when I wanted to take a trip I’d call her up and tell her where I wanted to go and she’d ask what was important to me; getting there quickly or saving money.

I’d then ask if they had yet to implement my idea of pumping nitrous oxide into the plane so we’d all be relaxed and not get upset when some moron drags a grand piano on board and tries to stuff it in the overhead bin or someone who spent way too much time at the Golden Corral Buffet and should have bought two tickets was oozing over into the 12 inch-wide seat you were expected to occupy for 3-and-a-half hours and she’d say no they weren’t drugging passengers just yet, so I’d say then get me there quick.

And because she spent all day dealing with this stuff, she knew the best deals and the most convenient way to get someplace which is handy because the last time I booked my own ticket to Sacramento, California I started off by flying to Austin, Texas. I mean Denver, Colorado I could accept because at least it’s in the right direction, but if I’m flying West I’d rather not start off by going directly South and if you were in a covered wagon you might question Ward Bond’s expertise if he told you the Oregon Trail started off by making a detour through San Antonio.

(Completely dated Wagon Train reference, but if you’re too young to remember that TV show, I really resent your youth, so suck on it.)

But these days we’re all expected to be our own travel agent and figure it out for ourselves and making travel agents obsolete doesn’t seem to have made airline tickets any cheaper.

Skycaps

I also used to give my bags to a skycap because giving one of them a tip seemed like a bargain when the alternative was standing in one of those lines shaped like a maze so you don’t realize just how goddamn long it is and if everyone stood in a straight line it would stretch from the airline counter to the parking lot, and it turns out I’ll pay good money not to do that.

But the last two times I visited the KC airport there were no skycaps and everybody was expected to schlep their bags inside and get their own boarding passes and baggage tags from a self-help kiosk and put the tags on their bags themselves and they had some woman who had the demeanor of kindergarten teacher working with some of her slower students, patiently helping those us who seemed to be confused by the requirements of our new part-time jobs and you know once the rest of us dimwits figure out how to deal with all that baggage stuff, they’ll fire her, too.

Fuck your buddy for a blender

Looking back over my Life many of the worst decisions I ever made were based on short-term thinking  and I’m pretty sure you know what I’m talking about:

• I want one more margarita now; I’ll worry about tomorrow morning when it arrives.

• I want a giant-ass bowl of Rocky Road ice cream now; I’ll worry about my waist line next time I see myself naked in a mirror (which is one of my complaints about hotel rooms; way too many mirrors offering unflattering and overly-accurate views of your body when you get out of the shower).

Anyway…

Corporate America is engaging in Short-term Thinking when they decide to fire people at the bottom so people at the top can have a larger slice of the pie. Fire too many people and you won’t have anybody left with enough disposable income to buy your products or fly on your airplanes or purchase one of your self-driving cars.

And the worst part about this Fire As Many People As Possible Agenda is Corporate America counting on the very people they’re going to eventually eliminate to make it possible; if enough of us agree to use those self-checkout kiosks, cashiers can kiss their jobs goodbye.

Getting the peons to turn on each other was the guiding principle behind one newspaper’s scheme (and this actually happened even though I’m not going to name the paper) which involved telling employees that if they could come up with a money-saving idea they could win a prize and of course nobody came up with an idea that would cut their department’s budget, so everybody was busy running around trying to figure out what they could suggest that would cut money in somebody else’s department and among the more sane employees, which I’m guessing was a minority, the program became known as:

“Fuck your buddy for a blender.”

Which I would never do, because I’m holding out for one of those self-driving cars.

I’ve got new yoyo tricks to learn.