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Going in to web blog systems is similar to playing a game of Attrition. I invented attrition back in the eighties when I was doing engineering work for big retail headquarter groups. This story is from the annals of attrition in Household Merchandising. I was a store engineer. The royal shaft was being given to so many people in those days; its hallways were battle fields.
Old guys, part of the Old Boy mindset, lingered at their desks harboring heart conditions. Old women who had been loyal to their job and bosses were now state-of-the-art pawns. Layoff threats were used to get them to retire early. Sometimes an elderly woman would come back not to bring us all cookies, rather she would yell from the halls, "Quit working so hard; it ain’t Worth It!!" She had worked for the corporation for 38 years. Now they “forced” her retirement, since she could not understand mechanics of the new secretarial cesspool.
There was a warehouse boss who had been there over 40 years. Top management’s hit men worked on him every day. I was involved with merchandising and some material handling when I caught wind of what the hit men were rumoring. Supposedly the target had been backing up to the docks to haul off “things that had fallen off the truck” for almost his whole tenure. He took the things to his flea market operation on weekends.
This obvious breach of “everything corporate” took eight months for the final day our hit men put it to the dock boss man. The warehouse boss looked like an animated scarecrow as he walked long strides to the exit. He wasn’t allowed to clean out his locker. He was screaming something in Czech as he waved his arms at the suits behind him.
I was eyewitness because my particular expertise was needed back in the transitory eighties of Household Merchandising; otherwise I too would be yelling from the roof tops: "It ain’t worth it!!" This is the period before smoking was banned in the offices. Women were regarded as helpers rather than candidates for boss.
The early Eighties at Corporatism: There was no call for security since anyone could come and go as they pleased. There was a company store on premises, and a cafeteria. It was a great place to work, before the eighties. Now the pensions were being attacked. The motto they said in the upper ranks was “Combat for Commerce;” I kid you not.
I tried to keep up with all the maneuvers, and tie down the best of the plays by managers and gifted gibbers. As I said I started my outline for the Game “Attrition” that one day I would invent. It was best to stay completely out of sight. I was young and somewhat ambitious so I came prepared to buck the system each day. I was trying my best to ape all those gibbons of rank. Wow, that implies I was there not to work at all. That is a pretty heavy concept... no?
Unfortunately it was how I pictured WWII Germany with Gestapo walking the halls, cigars lit, laughing at everyone's looks or hairdo. As they marched by, besides the stink of butts and musky smell of wool, there was the glee. I suppose they were sergeants who were getting to do a captain's work, finally. It was their time to be grim reapers and close down divisions. They were being paid to be incoherent. The sweeping of the hallways and looking into cubicles was to clean from the bottom up.
As the “last standing” had once been the elite executives, they were offered some sort of stock option settlement, and their secretaries were transferred to the new mega-pool of dreariness driving a desk. Mega pool was a snatch haven row after another row of metal desks in the middle of the building. It was smoky and developed its own micro climate.
If they did not want to go then they were severed. It turns out, “Severance” was a new concept to me at the time; I think it was also new to the Human Resources group. I was a friend to HR, as they had helped me very much over the years: I visited the HR group often as they were in the midst of this brutality.
It was a brutal and frenetic undermining of the corporation that had stood for 80 years. At the time most of my acquaintances in HR started looking rather catatonic as they reviewed employee after employee with the knowledge that they would screw that employee in the end. Finally the climate of doom kept me out of there too. The force of right-sizing was working.
Note to Preamble to Attrition; it is in the eyes. Those who know, who have a conscious will develop distant bloodless eyes. If they started with bright green eyes, they were now pale gray, and distant, and sad.
That larger than life congress of desks filled a huge part of the building. Every desk sported a new 386 PC that each “secretary” attached to a local area network. Some bottom feeders then began to arrive and canoodle up beside some of the displaced women now sitting in the Audit Caste. They were mostly men like you used to see at the H and R Block tax places.
These new arrivals were assigned files on shipping costs. Their whole job was to find all the mistakes, and get the credits in line for the ultimate audit that was coming. As a fee they charged a percent of what they found.
If one ever wants to find an answer to "How did Germans allow the feeble little Storm Troopers led by the dimpled Hitler to gain so much power;" the above contrived Attrition activated by men with cigars and a score to settle is a great example. Hiring free agents was the final draw for many of the displaced secretaries. There were more and more empty desks each week.
Almost everyday I was asked what my loyalty is by one of the guffawing salesmen gone badly. If I shrugged some little troglodyte would come up to me later and say; "Never shrug when asked about 'whomever.'"
Note to Attrition: Able Ass kissing is a major attribute in Attrition.
I suggest everyone make up their own minds as how a few end up with 98% of the pie, while the rest are tattled around like they have no good sense.
Is that unfair and just too difficult? I agree as it took me living through it and then coming up with some kind of analysis to finally accept it for what it was: Was I on the side of Greed or the side of Fear?
Back then I was on either side, switching back and forth, as deftly as possible. I wanted to get everyone's story. I needed to stay around to watch what eventually ended in one big PooHt.
Final Note to Attrition:
It turns out, those stocks they handed out to the heart broken people, I kept a few shares. It turns out they are almost worth about 5 cents now. I just wanted to see how it all came down in the end. Do you blame me?
end. pd aka MooPig
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Please submit this to a business publication and let it's poetically stated truth ring in the ears of the young and old (for different reasons) and let me lead the choir of Amens! to this - the last and best explanation of the Wrong-minded Right-sizing Auschwizt of the 80s-90's Corporate Elitism. We are paying the price today. What the overseers didn't recognize is that our amateur "elitism" would simply welcome in the real pros of de-humanized labor forces, first the Japanese and then the Chinese. Oops, oh well. The sons and duaghters of the windfall artists are now graduating from expensive universities and, propped-up by healthy trust funds, they are the champions of new economy destroying ideals like "Think Green Everybody!" Ugh-h, here we go again............. MooPig (aka Buns) - for us simple-minded, your poetry is wonderfully palatable and awe-inspiring in your gift for story-telling. More please. Compostholestoy, Self-ordained spokesperson for the simple to the profound..._______________________________________
Originally published in July, 2008.
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