So there we were wrestling....

  Wet tee shirts and mud.  Utter emotional chaos.  In the working world there was resistance to change, resistance to youths and ex-cons getting work, and resistance to becoming slaves to the machinery instead of each other.

  Middle agers were a mix of shock and doubt.  The challenge from the young workers who'd survived various "trainings" (bumped up pay by roughly 1/8 of a load of laundry and served as part of promotion for many) had come without mention of whether or not there would be alcohol involved.  The survey on preferred beverages was as revealing as the assessment question how far would you go to help a team member? And this helped us too busy to put it on paper people to pass torch and glean what wisdoms we could in a workforce suddenly really on the move.

  Some local parents were mortified that a generic management team was going around surveying "knockers and ass".  Scouts for "server jobs" were mostly young, white, and male.  They were at odds with male and female "in house" management that had developed a practice of people looking each other in the eyes when speaking to each other and being like soccer players not touching "the ball" with hands.  Actually looking at each other to communicate, well, it changed the tone of megaphone and pedestal management.  Looking at your boss/propietor and admitting the nature of error, well, it gave space for people to work our attitudes into more work day; less backstabbing, talking behind backs, and slamming things around instead of reasonable confrontation.  

  "Is this over the top?" An intermediary asked.  "The extension cord?  Or, the amount of fantasy in 'dream job'?" The painting crew wrapped up a mix of disposable and re-usable tools in a sheet of plastic.  The floppy painter's hat was spattered and autographed and had big black marker music notes all over it.  "Are they making you guys, uh, girls wear the outfits they picked?" She asked.

  "No ONE IS MAKING ME DO ANYTHING.  I'M JUST having a work day until it all becomes too ridiculus.  Then I'll..."

  "QUIT?!  I've done it 18 times already this morning."

  "Up your butt micromanaging control freaks and then the disappearing vacuum style?"

  "I guess."

  "I heard about them," a visiting site-manager raised bushy eyebrows and made spooky sounds."

  For trying to keep conversations professional some of us young people kept calling everything style.  It went with glimpsing aspects of full-grown peoples' "lifestyles".  And there were "good people" among the crowds.  These were grounding rods in sometimes stormy days where all manner of people were equal as consumers.  Some of the best managers refused to get wrapped up with anyone emotionally, but managed to filter the rough and tumble into calm and steady work environment.

  At one job we spent about three weeks taking turns being manager.  "That's a style alright," a beloved traveling manager rolled his eyes at the asleep on a stool for working three jobs M O D (manager on duty).  "Better than being whistled at and ordered around through a megaphone," someone commented on another's turn taken.  "Hey," the other person said, "I told you guys I was also a PE teacher." Chuckles.

  "Or was before...."

  "The avalanche

  "Landslide

  "Armaggeddon"

  People were coming up with similar description for the mixture of debt and job change and wage stagnation.  Disasterous economic state.  "And that will never change in a place like this," a good person spoke truth.

  Meanwhile any time outside work for people with energy and ambition (despite a lack of funding) was spent in a landmined landscape with it's own mostly unchanging tones of dysfunction.  The language for all that varied.  The super-religious colored it all witches and demons, no gray areas, don't care what you call it.  And, almost as a response to terrible troubles made fortress of church and family.  This as political party shuffled "the peoples'" point of view like playing cards to develop a presentable popular show.

  People who'd spent lifetimes on cause were bordering on feeling suicidal, but nobody could talk about that out loud without being slapped with labels like "crazy" and being told (like you'd say to an overtly romantic couple) to "get a room"....only there weren't any more sanitoriums or group homes.  Especially for working people it was a one foot in front of the other march into the battles of survival, no safety nets.  And for people who couldn't get work and/or couldn't get on "the grind" it became work to drum up survival too.  People teamed and re-launched as their economic recoveries happened.

  And people grew thicker skins about getting attached and not holding back....say what you need to say.

  If you go down that road, you might not make it back.

  Who says I want to come back.

  I don't want to get stuck.

  The stuff of my dreams or bust.

  For some people all disasters-- natural, economic, emotional were all the same.  In analysing "abuse" we were also getting better understanding of "balance" and good enough and drive!  In looking at the "divisions of labor" and the American Dream we were also gaining insight into how much time and energy anything takes.  Youthful passions didn't often match up, exactly, to "vision plans" and not losing "edge" creatively, as a caring person.  We wondered if we'd traded our souls for purely "making money".  People marveled at how just working people could get.  And in music and the arts, some "outsiders" said, told you, told you.

  Just be you!!!!!!!   People were yelling at people in a daze of picked apart, never quite the ideal (given in media, magazines, and theoretical worker modeling), crumbling under an ethereal pressure that sounded like a chant: USA, USA, USA.

  No matter political persuasion and/or religion, we prayed for STRENGTH.

  

Building relationship IS part of recovery

  It was a major discovery in the 1990s to realize that "relationship" had to do with "recovery".  It was why we organized networking dinners without alcohol.  Many "small businesses" were just ideas and seeds at first.  And even people in the midst of divorce and devastation could understand, more objectively, that seeds need water and soil and sunlight.  There's a relationship there.  Or not.

  "Work-life-balance" hadn't been a thing, certainly not for the working poor.  And we had to overcome being raised up as servants and taken advantage of and even abused in/within ourselves as we were adjusting to the equalities of being professional.

  Of course there was no way around giant issues which people had been boxing and slapping labels on--GENDER, RACE, SEXUALITY, RELIGION....all the diversity had been labeled and people had been mastering CAUTION, CAUTION about personality.  And bringing things up.

  All this stuffing stuff down, ignoring, and denial lent itself to a stiff structure between management and "worker", and/or wrestling over job duties for team.  Kind of like the infighting in D.C.

  Is we is or is we ain't a team?  Some Knoxvillians reinvigorating jazz culture and working in retail and restaurant kept asking.  And that asking each other was checking in on relationship.  It was also more "give" than just showing up.  And, it was: Let's take the high road here.

  We can do it together.

  But it's a professional relationship.

  Silence.  Assuming something else?

  My MAN....

  Suddenly, everyone had a man!  Even manly men.  Stumbled through awkward for me parts of the over-talkative exuberance about getting on with life, around gaffes, with "saves" like, "Yeah, I gotta guy for that."

  Fighting crime and drugs just sort of happened most days as we all made a safety-net of professionalism.

  

  For a while in the 1990s we were full brakes and full speed ahead.  People were getting the economy back on track and we all discovered: you can't do that without being in your life.  Even the people in denial and fighting that basic factor were worked over by group dynamics which required presence.

  This was before 4000 choices of energy drink and a non-profit craze.  The world seemed split like an atom....came up, uh, what word do we say now?  Us young people had had good educations and had  already started down the roads to, all fresh and excited about "the American dream" and the promises of a prosperous nation.  Our middle agers were towing "the mainstream" and losing the Greatest Generation.  Our mentors and leaders were not in Washington.  Not except for visits and carrying the batons to the face we need to put on.

  "You're fucking kidding me?"  A manager was sucking a cigarette in two drags and letting the body fluids and drinks ooze out of a trash bag before carting it to a dumpster.  He'd whittled his entire vocabulary down to those four words though he'd studied philosophy and psychology.  It didn't matter if "the news" was good or bad.  "Yah," an out-of-work Ukrainian mechanic said back.  "Is he?" The manager asked a co-worker.  The co-worker shrugged and walking away loudly mumbled, "How the fuck would I know if he's fucking kidding you?"

  "What this mean 'kidding'?"  The Ukrainian asked me.

  "Means faking or pretending," I told the mechanic's girlfriend.  She translated and the man's face fell out of the trying to uphold smile--new day.  He pointed his finger at the manager and said something in Ukrainian.  The girlfriend translated: "Don't point at me." The finger then pointed at the sky and he asked the girlfriend to explain, he shouldn't be accused of breaking the pipes, that's bullshit, and he'd explained he was a mechanic and not a plumber.  "Did he tell me that in English?"

  A squid of an electric sound zapped and hissed.  Cooler lights flckered then kah-put'd.  Workers sighed and frowned.  The boombox kept playing.  And stockers who'd worked up to letting their personalities "shine" but only at work pulled dance moves with inventory and mentally wrote if this was a movie.  "You're fucking kidding me?" The manager asked the ceiling.

  In the parking lot a makeshift team of kind of like human resources rotating assistant managers tried to sort which stores were at what exit.  Highway traffic had been picking back up and, too young to sell alcohol; if that one's there until the other one's kids come home from school; just left, the MOD or the manager of the store?  A mounting list of snafus and issues per new policy demands.  A pot of coffee.  Highlighters rainbowing schedules and reports.  "Are you really Human Resources?" A guy in a shirt and tie under his tee shirt asked.  "No, but we're people who care."

  "Good because I've been sent to four different stores this week.  This is only Wednesday.  And I'm out of gas."

  Between the pay and the debts and the mis-spending of budget and the unforseen costs of damaged property, just go to work and work was becoming nearly impossible for most everyone.  As was getting through a day without confrontation between people not working and workers.  One visiting manager had off-the-record taught us by example that the store couldn't also be "social services". She'd recite not my problem, not my problem before having to approach on the nod in front of the pumps, or, piling up groups of people waiting for an EBT holder.  Then she'd diplomat.  Maybe one out of six people needed to PARK IT OVER THERE OR IT WILL BE TOWED.  Some people got out of steaming vehicles with hands up, waving, NOT ON ANYTHING.

  Some of the days in a final phase of the last free stuff UNLESS....find a program....for your friend then....were a crush of rambling inactivity even while previously "laid back" workers were drilled on not succumbing to apathy.

  "Wassthat?"

  "Not caring."

  "And if you don't care about yourself, just so you know, most of us are FILLED UP."

  A woman with big hair piled under a floppy painter's hat shook her head, no, not me either.  

  I have my own to care for was implied.

  An abundance of people showed up in the mornings at stores on the highways and all over in the mountains.  Political frozen-over was in a thaw.  There were, of course, people who kept on being political.  And there were those feeling ousted, so fine ah-ga-me-su.  An older woman gasped then pressed her lips together.  Then walked over to a man painting and whapped him on the back of the head.  "How dare you teach younger people to curse in Greek." He smirked.  A manager called out, "That's a cuss?!"

  "Why?"

  "Told me it was a friendly greeting." The manager put a hand over his mouth.  Shook his head.  "And on a Sunday, so you know who I cussed."

  The painting man smirked harder and winked.  "Perfect world, not so perfect eh?!" He dripped paint on the shoulder of the older woman. 

  "Because your recovery is yours, get it?" Other workers had worked through a short list of blames and excuses and into a daily sort of okay and not okay on the agenda.  Apparently a couple, someone mouthed.

  "Okay, so this hand-held device makes your labels," a visiting manager started to explain.  Someone asked, "Who drowned ours in IPA?"

  "Come on I'll show you how on this one."

  Yes, we got to this point in the 1990s too.  In fact we often do in America as we go through boom and bust, policy changes, and 'recovery'.

  We go through experiences as locales like disasters and/or being "hotbeds" of political cause and this creates an overall climate (and sometimes a group consciousness).  If the experience is frought with dangers like drugs or other illicit behavior "the landscape" can be challenging to navigate.

  That's when people find it helpful to have a steady at the helm.  When the steady is mostly on the same page about getting well (safety and prosperity) the tone of the big picture holds sway through the particulars of change.  There can be awkward moments.

  Businesses responding to changes in policy have empowered smaller groups of people to develop navigation tools for awkward.  A lot of development was put into human resources precisely because money is rarely the total solution to problem.  And often just throw some money at the problem has created more problems.  If an undisciplined human nature can devolve, a human nature motivated by simply a vague "money" tends to turn climate violent.

  Just like in grammar school individuals have to work on their personal selves in addition to all the choices about group.

  In a lot of the places I've worked there's an ongoing steady even as people discover and hone personal talents and abilities.  It makes sense that a company or corporation has different "departments" or channels of work-focus.  And in retail as brands and management groups took on more and more work "in house" (like advertising and wellness) entities got more diverse within themselves as far as capability.  

  Companies have "forward facing" parts and "internals" just as nations do.  People = talents.  Even with all our different personalities and potentials we have to move along with group.  That's why we're hearing a lot of comments right now about the pace of getting better.  It's in progress.

  I think, more than eradicating diversity or forcing a bunch of diversity into molds of "white men" what we are witnessing at this stage is more like definition of the helm.  Deck ends here, the sign might read.  And if we don't remove previous "license" that was making it possible for "slippery slope" to blur off the edges of the boat of nation, well, all may just get lost or drift out into generic "space".  That's how I'm trying to think of some of this to date.  I feel less offended and disrespected that way.

  Well in the 1990s we had the TV show "Murphy Brown".  It was like a breath of transparency to a world of obscurity created around a Cold War D.C.  The show evoked laughs that were as repressed as too much  personality and lifestyle (feared because of the vacuums of diplomacy and walls against secret-stealing).  We'd had sitcoms to "veg out" to in regards reality being sometimes different than "laugh it off", shake it off, now get through this, but nothing as innovative in approaching every living generation is too old for this shit.  Nothing as funny in calling out, so....

  So there's this stall between pulling somebody off the mainstage for being too....and getting gonged.

  So, there's this way Americans need to out what we're up to without blaring military secrets.

  So....there's some things to "keep under your hat" in certain situation.

  So?  We asked of people "making it" at work and as professionals.  Some people balked at sharing trade secrets....the they should suffer like I did mentality....not the best mentors.  Others carefully staked out boundaries around jobs against job-stealing, and hostile takeovers.  And the absolute best team members spoke from the place where I can speak from on this (because, we can't talk about x,y,z yet).

  Warriors of every race, religion, and gender tentatively put dents in our own Berlin Wall.  America was looking at ourselves.  And we had a heightened "paranoia" tension as the great divide to overcome in sales and research/development and dating.  We did it.  And we were many feeling imprisoned by poverty and bottom dollar.  We replaced the up and down lines of drug/sex trafficking with professional networking.  We agreed to (and didn't) some amount of generic professionalism from which to personalize as groups of professionals.

  In that way we were passing the decade making real progress on what before that had been contentious and polarizing "big words" for our problems.

  Some of it was comical looking back.  It'd be hard to describe the wrangle of nerves and emotion-compartmentalizing we all had going on.  Introducing abject poverty to the dollar bill earned might have broken us as a nation of people who have a lot of love for each other.  But we stuck together as an economic engine.  

  "What good is that gonna do me?"  The one proverbial "white guy" kept asking of potential employees who were only "assets" and "liabilities" in his world.  Not people.  Nobody in the regional pool of labor was as perfect as this guy.  Nobody "good enough" to underpin his livelihood by using their credit and time and energy to "make him manager".  Oh, yes, people talked amongst themselves.  Between us we had like 1056 years of experience, 17,000 hours of "training", and two dollars.  

  The guy had fished and snooped and paid money to find out who in the area might make him manager.  On a fresh business day, early, he was souring the mood behind a hear-thru wall of his "oval office" (that was a stock room) and throwing away a ream of paper printed with resumè.  He piled the remaining "selections" into credit/no credit.  Then he hissed, Find out if any of these are over twelve years old.

  Man, was he surprised when people who "look" twelve years old on financial paper turned out to be nobility, service people, people with "gray hair" from navigating world affairs and business negotiations.  And, long after he was deemed the perfect manager (who nobody chose to work for/with) he was still clueless about true "success". Nasty dictators don't have "fans".  Houses of cards, pyramid schemes, and superficial "leadership" falls apart almost at it's implementation.  People ain't got time for that.

  By then we were into "the show down" between salaried pay to play workers and people with potential investment money and so "access" to everyone's personal data and the 24/7 surveillance of consumers/users of the economy.  A lot of "pairing meetings" to find counterparts in differing companies via common ground of distribution and services began and ended without much said.  Insulation developed between co-workers and rivals.  Making a politically correct "funny" (not a joke or gaffe) was an indication of a general awareness that it was humanity versus the machinery of humanity.

Disaster burnout

  Unfortunately disasters happening can contribute to not feeling good.  And that not feeling good about situation and self can be contagious.  And that, of course, can lend itself to a coloring of mood about everything.  So then we can create an invisible voice in the national "room" that's blaming and paranoid.  That voice that's screaming...over this, tired of this, everybody's screwing everybody, and...it can really spiral us.

  More than being an ugly dictator circumstance, so far, the Republicans are putting forks in the works, and, trying to say we need to look at this and that.  I think of Social Security which was a program created per economic catastrophe in the 1930s.  It's 2025, so yeah, there may be some updating/changes that need to happen.

  I also think of economic troubles in 2008ish.  Retail was having "sales" of 65-75-85% off hard goods.  In retail we were seriously wondering what "fire sale" mode was going to do to consumerism longer-term.  We had to work harder at customer relations to tow a mid-range on costs.  Have some items we could sell really inexpensively but not just "follow the lead" and hurt our business by selling everything "cheap".

  Someone brought up the point the other day that when Hurrhell happened (on top of post-Covid) there was a desperation for workers and employers were paying more in wages, but those hourlies are not sustainable.  We have to be adaptable which is harder when the costs of living are drowning and starving us.

  In the Bible the tide turns more strongly against Jesus making any more headway.  He hadn't picked a fight with a more powerful enemy, but the brute forces (not interested in love and forgiveness, and not accepting of Jesus as sent by God Almighty) were displaying their version of "power" in going after Jesus.  Even as sword is drawn and a defender of Jesus' ear is cut off, Jesus heals the wound and intimates that the bigger picture requires an acceptance of making the ultimate sacrifice, and, letting the longer storyline (God having Victory over death, Jesus giving his life to take away the sins of the world--creating a Way for every person to receive forgiveness) survive Christianity-universal.

  When it comes to "deals" without a lot of layers of diplomacy, there's a part of it that is more about cutting our losses and moving on (directly attached to the hard goods of money and weapons); and there's a vacancy of intelligible explanation/interpretation (although there's no shortage of "commentary").

It's never all bad

  My mom Sherry was the type of person who could (and consistently willed herself to) find gold in a shitpile.  Even decades before "recycling" and "repurposing" was a thing, she'd eye a pile of beat up stuff as we did "elderly chore aid" and realize...oh, I'm going to be decorating for the Fifties Dance at the kids school, that somewhat broken lamp with the poodle, that's perfect.  "What's perfect?"  We'd ask just seeing a depressed old person's old stuff that us young people were going to have to muscle up and cart.  "Oh, you'll see," she'd say.  And then in the lighting, with themed table centerpieces, and 1950s mood music...wal-ah! The poodle was "spit shined" and a glorious focal point helping us overlook more Tang and sgetti.

  In the 1990s there were enough people who'd survived the ravages of the 1980s that their ideas and practices about recovery and building something better shone on the humdrum get her done work days, and we all, across America, got something going!

  We also got more confident about what makes us unique, not just all-the-same-kind-of-American.  There was still a lot of fear of the "other" (even between States) and there was a healthy dose of that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  In other words, honoring each others' boundaries but also honoring "progress" in a forward direction.  The past is the past could be said of some movements in history, as well as an individual's life turned around.  Discussions about image could sometimes get into the whys...why something degenerated and so sales slipped from steady and so cuts to worker hours and so...a professional "we" got to work on local and national.

  We'd had a lot of loss, generationally and in on-the-move like shepards to business, and there was hard alone time for travelers and it took music and art and media to keep reminding local and particular--hey, we're all still part of America.