The Things We Aren't... Anymore

     Yesterday, I was blessed to be contacted by an old friend from childhood. This friend was not someone I knew very well, but she knew me well enough to remind me of our childhoods, with both of our fathers working for NCR (National Cash Register) and our respective families going to company picnics and other gatherings. It made me think of all we have lost as a country and how desperately we need to get some of those things back.

     For example, our company held picnics at a local forest preserve, not at a resort or at someone's house. They were unpretentious, as everyone was in the same circumstances and understood that this was a privilege, not an entitlement. We looked forward to those picnics, with unlimited ice cream, hot dogs and cracker jacks, and the games that inevitably followed for both adults and children. Children, of course, won prizes, and I think the adults did too, if memory serves. Adults did things like sack races, egg toss, water balloon toss and horseshoes. We all brought lawn chairs and settled in for a long day of fun. My father's boss, Gene Chalet, would take it upon himself to clean the outhouses the day before the picnic. He said it wasn't beneath him to make sure the outhouses were clean for his employees, and I'm sure he wanted to show that. He always led by example, and I never heard my father or anyone else say a cross word about him. We knew his wife and family, and they knew us.

     My grandparents' companies also treated them well. My grandfather spent his years working for U.S. Steel, and my grandmother worked at American Specialties. Those companies not only held picnics and Christmas parties, but made baseball teams and bowling leagues a part of their employees' existence. It was a way of giving people a life in return for all the employees did for their labor. They understood the sacrifice that employees make when they spend their lifetime dedicated to perhaps the only job they were qualified to do. When my grandfather retired from U.S. Steel, he was given a retirement party, and an award with his 40th year of service. How different that is from today's world.

     Today, I do not see employers appreciating employees as in the past. I see them being brow-beaten and driven to exhaustion with no end in sight. I see pay cuts and health benefits taken away, which was not unheard of in my grandparents' day, but was certainly rare, and pay cuts were done as a reflection of performance. Now it is done as a matter of fact. I see our elders being squeezed out of jobs they have held for a lifetime in favor of new graduates who would work for a lower wage or just to increase profits.  Because they possessed old world values, they never even considered a different job because it would be deemed disloyal. As a result of employers' greed and disregard for the lives of their employees, employees are now reduced to chattel, driven by the verbal whip, and made to feel as if they and their efforts don't matter. No one should ever be made to feel that way. It is an insult to humanity to drive employees to exhaustion while flaunting their personal wealth at their employees' expense.

     So what to do about it? If I had a company, I would most certainly be the exception rather than the rule. Yes, profits are important, but so are people. They are the very legs you stand upon and must be rewarded, not abused. I spent eight years as a department head at the local opera company, and the women who worked for me were well-rewarded. I took on the most difficult performers, i.e., the ones with the biggest egos and kept that stress away from my team. After each closing night, I gave my team a thank you party at a local pub, where all the food and beer were on my dime. There was even a time when I refused a pay increase and asked that the increase be split among "my girls". When I left the opera company, the ladies only stayed around for one season. Having caught up with one of them later on, I asked the reason they didn't stay on and was told, "It wasn't fun anymore without you there." What a wonderful compliment. I guess I did it right.

     There's a lesson here for you, corporate America. You complain that your employees are not loyal to you and yet you give them no reason to be. You take from them without giving in return. You say that having a job should be its own reward, and in a way, you are right. However, if that job does not benefit the employee in his spirit, he will move on to one that does. Let's see you hold onto employees for an entire lifetime. Henry Ford understood what was required when he gave his employees a 40-hour work week instead of working them to death. He knew what it was to come from nothing and make something of his life, and he treated his people well. In return, his employees loved him for it and gave them their trust. Let's see you hold to that standard. I will bet that most of you turn a blind eye to the past, and that is your prerogative. However, remember the old adage that if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. We are repeating it now. Are you learning?

Nazdrowie'

Paczki Puta