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.
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