What’s Done Is Done

Happy Holidays!! For the third straight year, I will go into the Christmas holidays unemployed because I lost my job a week before Christmas. Whoever said life is easy? I suppose I should be disappointed and angry and miserable and sad but I can’t. I have been down this road and when you keep ending up on the same road you start to harden up. When you work a job as an employee, your fate is in the hands of the employer and if one day they decide that you are no longer needed then you’re gone. Hand over your badge and grab your things, you’re outta here. There is no longer fair play yet people like me continue to believe that people will play fair. I was trying to be a guy with no fanfare just doing his job but I forgot I was surrounded by two-legged rats. As my former supervisor attempted to justify my dismissal from the premises, I simply said to him, thanks for the opportunity and “what’s done is done.”

America, what’s done is done. There is no turning back. We have spent the last two decades getting fat and greedy. We allowed ourselves to be satisfied with big houses, big trucks, bigger televisions, big everything we could get our hands on. We were happy with our computers, our video games, our cell phones and our appetites. There was no stopping us from living the life. We just needed to keep that job to pay for our luxuries. The people were told “don’t worry, be happy.” The times were great, the economy is strong and life is good. Good times ended when the “dot-com” bubble burst, when Enron and Worldcom imploded due to fraud, the need to outsource jobs, the fall of the Big Three and the financial crash. America days of living it up was over and millions of workers were left vulnerable to the sharks.

Once upon a time when a person applied for a job, that person would deal with a representative of that company’s HR department. If they got the job then they were an employee of the company. The newly hired employee was eligible for benefits, sick days, vacation time and 401K. In addition, the employee had “piece of mind” knowing that they were employed with a company that they could have a future with. How times have changed!! Today, companies have partner up with consulting firms to provide them with “talent” to fill a position on contract. This method of stocking workers takes the companies off the hook. They are no longer responsible for providing gainful employment because the worker can be replaced by anyone in the next group of hopefuls who believe that they have a shot to get in.

In spite of all the obstacles that Americans are facing, we want good times. Who don’t want America to make that turn around the corner? We want it to go back to the way it was. We all want to believe it’s coming and then we hear stories like this one and this one and that one and realized that the turn isn’t going to happen anytime soon. At the beginning of the 20th century, industrialists like Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan controlled the money and the industries but the American worker held the power. As one, they were no one but as a group, production was stopped and money was not being made and when the bottom line is threatened everyone take noticed. Now, thanks to outsourcing and consulting firms, the power has been diluted. The American worker is a shell of what it used to be because the employer has nothing to fear. This is the reality that we have to accept when you are working as a contractor or temporary worker so if you are at work and you get that call, just remember: “what’s done is done.”

Merry Christmas and have a great holiday.

R8RBOB

~ by R8RBOB on December 23, 2010.