Joey
What is up with Bank of America? I go there to make a simple deposit, walk into the lobby and look around for a deposit slip. All I see is a friggin' coffee station. So I figure, that's okay, I'll just get a slip at the teller's window, there's only two people in line and one of them is eye-candy, so I'm in no rush. All of a sudden, this manager-type lady comes up to me and says, "Can I help you find something?". I murmur something about a deposit slip, then she sees my wallet full of cash (like that happens every day), ad she says, "Oh, a cash deposit? Follow me." I figure she's taking me to the speedo-line, but she leads me out the front door to the ATM, where the line is three deep. She says, "Normally a deposit at this time would credit the next business day, but at the ATM it does it immediately! Would you like me to show you how?" I respond that I already know how to make an ATM deposit, thank you, and she says, "On the new system?" And I'm thinking, it must be in Egyptian heiroglyphics if she thinks I can't figure it out on my own. Then she sees how SLOW the atm line is moving, and she says, "or you can go to the drive-thru window."
Hey, no shit, Sherlock--I already figured that out, too, but it's three -deep as well! I told her--politely, mind you--that I went inside because I didn't have my account number, just my ATM card, and then she says, "Well, they can take that too," and she goes back inside. Like, "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, sir!" I ended up driving away without making the deposit, thinking to myself, "What the hell just happened here???"
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Americana continues to go bankrupt in the name of globalization. This time it's St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch Corporation, which was bought out by the Belgian InBev Corporation for $52 Billion today. Lots of people are up in arms seeing their prized Red-White and Blue-White beer bottles now turning a profit for a European conglomerate. The fuss shouldn't be about the blow to our American psyche, like some people want to make it. "What's next?" they lament. "Apple pie?" The problem runs deeper than our nation's self-image, however, although that shouldn't be lightly either. You just have to start wondering, with our dollar so weak and our government continuing its "come-and-get-it" mentality in regard to our resources, our money, and our jobs, when will it start to turn back in our favor? And will there be anything left? In the meantime, if your heart is set on drinking American beer, drink a microbrewed beer instead--they taste better, anyway!
Somebody sent me this link to this ACLU production about ordering pizza delivery in the year 2010. It's humorous but it's also a wake-up call of how today's informational trends could really become skewered in the future. Warning: any pizza delivery boy who brings me tofu sticks with my pizza gets the 12-gauge in the chest! (Did I sound like Ted Nugent there for a second?) 
I heard an interesting report on Rock 102 this morning from John De Graaf, editor of a book entitled Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overtime and Time Poverty in America. He is also advocating a bill called "The Minimum Leave Protection, Family Bonding and Personal Well-Being Act of 2007" which, among other things, would establish a minimum vacation requirement for employees working in America. I'm all for that. I get three weeks vacation plus five sick days and a week of holiday between Christmas and New Years and you know what? It ain't enough. I work in a Union shop, so my vacation time is spelled out by contract--next year I get four weeks, and I can't wait for that. It's June 12th and I'm already down to 3.5 vacation days and three personal days. By the end of next month, they will all be gone, and then it'll be the Long Haul until January 1st, where I'll be so burnt out I'll start eating up vacation days again. Talk about your vicious cycle.
de Graaf talked about all the negative effects of what he calls "Time Stress" and referred to a website called Take Back Your Time. I went there and found these interesting statistics (lifted directly from that site):
- We're putting in longer hours on the job now than we did in the 1950s, despite promises of a coming age of leisure before the year 2000.
- In fact, we're working more than medieval peasants did, and more than the citizens of any other industrial country.
- Mandatory overtime is at near record levels, in spite of a recession.
- On average, we work nearly nine full weeks (350 hours) LONGER per year than our peers in Western Europe do.
- Working Americans average a little over two weeks of vacation per year, while Europeans average five to six weeks. Many of us (including 37% of women earning less than $40,000 per year) get no paid vacation at all.
This website, timeday.org, reports that Time stress threatens our health, threatens our marriages, families and relationships, weakens our communities, and reduces employment. It leaves many of us with little time to vote or be active citizens or volunteers. It leaves us little time for ourselves, for self-development, or for spiritual growth. It leads to growing neglect and abuse of pets, and it even contributes to the destruction of our environment.
And yet, where I work, there are people who don't use all of their vacation time and gladly sell it back if given the opportunity. I never understood that. I know I'm one one of the fortunate ones, but my wife isn't so lucky, especially if she's working temp jobs. When I first heard this report, I thought it was a little frivolous, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how ingrained certain work ethics are in our society, and despite being a "free country" millions of us are actually slaves to The Man and his paycheck.