http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/
By now you've probably heard the buzz surrounding Steven Slater, the
veteran JetBlue flight attendant who was harassed by a passenger on a
flight and decided to say "F this job!" and illegally exited the plane
down an emergency chute, with beers in hand. Maybe he was living out
all our closet fantasies (and paid the price by going to jail, but
he'll get the book deal and TV circuit). I'm sure he would have
preferred to do his job (of 28 years) happily with others treating him
respectfully. Though what does that say about the state of the US
workplace and society if Slater is now celebrated as a folk hero for
breaking the law, possibly putting people in danger, and acting
against everything in his professional training? That customer must
have been an astronomical bitch because JetBlue FAs are some of the
best in the industry, and probably have very thick skins after years
of abuse and training. But honestly, I'm sure we all have a list of
people we'd like to curse out on the PA system, and many
jobs/customers that we'd like to stick it to.
I'll try to refrain from a cliched anti-society diatribe, but humor me
with this set-up. I know we tend to remember the "good ol' days" with
rose-colored lenses, but we probably weren't always this stressed out,
this nasty to each other, and work wasn't this horrible, was it? Some
things have changed since the last generation was young. We usually
don't have pensions anymore (and don't stay with 1-2 firms our whole
career), nor just one car/TV per household. Standard of living and
life expectancy have risen, but so have costs, while real wages
haven't kept up (unless you're a CEO, and in that case your wages have
ballooned). For many of us, the finer things in life are still
unaffordable without taking on dangerous debt, but we still try: total
US consumer debt is now in the trillions, our pre-recession savings
rate was negative, and savings is currently still worse than postwar
America. We have also segregated ourselves into many racially and
economically homogeneous suburban enclaves, and may not need to have
"real interactions" with strangers for days at a time (automate
everything, drive-thru everything, hurry up and be on your way).
Culturally, it's also strange now that it's accepted and almost
desirable to act like a spoiled good-for-nothing like Paris Hilton, a
cocksure idiot like Sarah Palin, or a pathologically ambitious a-hole
like The Donald. What happened to doing right by people and making an
honest buck? Sorry, I'm 30 and I sound 70.
When IBM envisioned the first computers, the designers hoped that they
would help humans by saving us time on repetitive, grunt work
calculations. But since the PC revolution, computers and mobile
electronics have only served to take time from us. Yes computers allow
us to be more productive, but now employers demand more of us (and
practically expect some workers to be on-call 24-7, plus some tech or
work-addicts even do it to themselves, checking their BlackBerries at
completely inappropriate times). An average, not even an excellent,
worker is now doing the jobs of 2-3 workers from 1960, and many
traditional US industries have vanished or relocated overseas. Gadgets
and the internet have allowed us to share ideas and access resources
like never before (for better or worse: tolerance of diversity has
increased, but so have all sorts of cyber-crimes), but also bleed us
of our precious free time (and money) with semi-pointless,
quasi-social distractions like Facebook. Families spend less time
together (maybe a good thing depending on the family), and even less
quality time. We may spend more time exhausted in front of a screen
than raising our kids.
Competition for quality education, jobs, government services, and
other basic living essentials has risen drastically. Workers are
spending more time in commute, more time in travel-heavy jobs, and
more time at work in general vs. the 1960s. The rich-poor gap has
increased, and more Americans are employed by corporations than ever
before. Executives and managers are under more pressure from
shareholders and others to cut costs, innovate, and find new ways to
boost productivity/efficiency, even at the cost of worker morale and
the law. Forget the work-life balance; for many people work is life,
which makes the personal pain of an unsatisfying job or losing a job
even harder to handle. The recession has only exacerbated these
tensions and problems.
All this creates an environment for people to treat each other badly,
and we have many pressures and incentives to do so. Our egos fall
victim to our competitive free-market culture, and we may equate
differences in wealth/achievement with differences in personal worth.
"I'm a big-shot doctor, so I can talk down to you, lowly flight
attendant! I paid my ticket and I can do whatever I want!" Worries and
threats are everywhere. Bad news on the 24-7 channels, bills coming
due, and everyone seems to try to take advantage of us, make us part
with our hard-earned money, or otherwise short-change us somehow.
Politicians are always in scandals, there is less public trust, and
therefore less trust and courtesy for each other. When anxiety is
high, we are not ourselves, or is that our true nature? We have less
time and more stress, so we're living on the edge with a shorter fuse,
and minor annoyances or injustices could cause us to blow up. And as
the many life annoyances wear us down each day, we have less patience
and energy to handle the big problems and confrontations with poise.
And it doesn't seem that this trend is going to reverse any time soon.
But no one wants to acknowledge the insanity of our predicament for
fear of appearing weak and unable to cope.
Maybe an airplane is a microcosm of our social condition. A bunch of
impatient, tense strangers, who would rather be somewhere else doing
something else, packed in an uncomfortable, artificial enclosure with
bad air. There are turbulence, crying kids, and terrorist threats, and
of course weather and technical delays. The only things keeping us all
from descending into chaos are watered-down cocktails, an LCD screen
in front of us, and Sully Sullenberger.
No comments:
Post a Comment