Workin' in the USA

At 11 AM this morning I'll be showing up at work, dressed in my red and khakis, ready to show people where they can find whatever they're looking for. If this weekend is anything like the last few, it's going to be a mad-house. Everything but the flying monkeys.

I never thought I would, but I enjoy working retail. I like dealing with people, even cranky ones. I seem to have a talent for deflecting the crankiness, which is a godsend. It helps when you can show others that they're dealing with a person rather than some nameless corporate cog. If we don't have what we're looking for, the decisions regarding its availability are made at a whole different level than I'm at. In fact, often times it's made by distributors, not the retail company at all. They send us what they can, or will, based upon how many different outlets are carrying it and how much supply they have in comparison to the demand.

The fact that we're all in this together isn't exactly lost on all the customers. When I make the comment, "well, that decision is made someplace far beyond my pay-scale," it usually results in a nod from even the most aggravated shopper.

Now, we could get into a whole thing about consumerism, and the buying of cheap marketable goods made in China, but the fact remains that our economy does, in many respects, rely on people out there purchasing a veritable mound of crap they don't really need. It sucks, but there it is.

Far too much of our income goes toward the purchase of cheap, second-rate crap that is made somewhere else in the world, feeding huge multi-national corporations whose only goal is the acquisition of more money.

I work in toys. And it shouldn't surprise anyone that the majority of them are made in China. Legos and Duplos are made in Mexico. Mega-blocks are made in China. A customer pointed this out to me the other day.

A few others are made elsewhere. But far fewer yet are made here in the U.S.

We've become a nation of distributors and retailers. Not a nation of people who actually MAKE things to sell to one another, but a nation of people who exist to sell things made elsewhere to one another.

We can blame our hunger for cheap goods, or the breaks given to companies who continue to outsource our manufacturering, or on the government that has allowed this to come to pass. We can blame it on a lot of things.

We can blame it on the marginalization of the unions, on the environmental movement that placed increased restrictions on manufacturing here in the U.S. We can blame it on the media, who didn't bother to warn anyone that the shift to a "service economy" could very well hurt us in the long run.

In the end it doesn't really matter who we blame. The fact is that we have to address what we're going to do about it. Are we really going to stand by and allow part of the industrial strength of this country to be sent elsewhere and do nothing about it? Are we going to simply swallow globalization and say nothing about it? Are we really going to allow our workers to be replaced by virtual slaves held in captivity in countries that don't give a damn about workers' rights or product safety or environmental impact?

It's more than just economics. It's more than just "protectionism." It's about standing up for what's right, and fair, and decent. It's about people like Joe Sixpack, who used to work at the textile mill down the road, who now has to take two lesser-paying jobs to make ends meet. It's about mothers and fathers who have to give up actually spending time with each other, or their families, just to put food on the table and clothes on their backs.

It's about "family values." It's about rising energy costs, and general inflation, and jobs that can't hope to keep up. It's about competition for what few decent jobs there are left. It's about survival, and a sense of self-worth.

It's about America.

Corporate Greed, with its "profit-at-all-costs," incredible perks for executives, golden parachutes, and lack of loyalty to the people who made it all possible in the first place, is sucking our country dry. And, in the process, are doing their best to exploit workers in far-flung places that have even less say in their daily lives than WE do.

They rape the land, pillage whole economies, and exploit the workers world-wide, and they're not doing anyone but themselves any favors in doing so.

Someone has to hit the panic button, pull the emergency brake, and say "now hold on one fucking minute."

This train is heading for a big, deep chasm, and its taking every single one of us along for the ride. Not just us, but workers in China, and Mexico, and who knows where else. It's all based on an unsustainable level of production and consumption--unsustainable because no matter where they build the stuff, production costs are sure to go up, if only because of the sky-rocketing costs of energy for manufacture and distribution.

Where and when's the breaking point? At what point does the mountain of cheap crap being made overseas become too expensive to ship thousands upon thousands of miles to reach its ultimate destination only to eventually end up as just another mountain of crap thrown away by our disposable culture? And at what point does someone step up and admit that it's unsustainable?

Or is this lesson going to be driven home the hard way?