top heavy and distant

i watched a tidbit of the president’s address last night about the stimulus package. eh. i have a little trouble believing that what got us into this mess (overspending) can get us out… but i suppose something has to be done? all the while i was fighting my own battle which is reflective of why we’re in such a mess.

i’m a bank of america customer and they don’t care. about anything. about me, about what they’ve promised, about business. they don’t need me and the people who answer the phones could care less about the injustice – they’ll go pick up their kids at 5:00, make dinner and watch The Office. the people who should care (the ones making money off the business) , don’t, because they don’t know i exist. thus the problem.

i hung up the phone from the credit card people more than once feeling very small and insignificant. why? because to them, i am.

my husband hates when i say things like this, but our business is too big. i work for a company that used to be small and flat. we did amazing things, got great reviews from our clients and our employees were very happy. add a few levels to an org chart and it wrecks havoc for everybody but the 10 at the top. the same can be true for any organization.

if there’s one thing i’ve learned from my stint working within recruiting and HR, it’s the fact that our country employs a lot of people to do nothing. people employed just to watch people work. for instance, i’m working on a project, doing all kinds of grunt labor online so another guy can present it. he’s supposed to be “recruiting”. he’s not. he’s taking the list of people that i have found, researched, and presented to him in a nice neat excel spreadsheet and he’s calling them. he’s not recruiting, he’s a recording. but if you were to compare paychecks you’d see that he should be doing even more work.

pay people more money to do less. that seems to be the business philosophy of the day. give someone the title of “vice president” and a raise and you can surely bet that they’ll spend their day in “meetings” doing nothing of significance for their business or their world.

if all the large corporations were to slash even just their top 10% wage earners by even 20%… well, i don’t do math well, but i have a feeling that it would be enough that several of the bottom rung people would get to keep their jobs. and the people at the top would still be rich.

this, my friends, is why i say that we are not a “christian nation”. we may have lots of people who go to christian churches that live in our country, but our basic operating principles are not wholly christian. i can’t recall a single story told about or by Jesus that ended with “so, save yourself, take care of yourself, and let everyone else worry about themselves.” when faced with people on the down-and-out, i can’t recall a single time that Jesus said, “well, we live in a free enterprise society! pull yourself up by your little bootstraps!”

no, i’m not suggesting that socialism is the answer. but i am saying that we ought to be careful about what we proclaim. we live in a society that habitually treats people as small and insignificant and makes money doing so. i’m pretty sure that’s not what Jesus had in mind for “kingdom come.”

to end the note on the positive, i will say that i found justice: when BOA decided that they didn’t want to give me my rewards points anymore (even after promising me them on the phone), they let their gatekeepers keep telling me no, and what else can you do? well, i’ll tell you. i emailed the haunchos at Norwegian cruise line (where i was to spend the points). When BOA doesn’t give me points, i don’t cruise, and thus i don’t buy expensive fruity drinks and other things that make NCL money. So i emailed any overpaid VP with “customer service” in the title and had a phone call within the hour. today i received an email saying i’ll get my voucher in the mail within 7-10 business days (observation: anytime you ask BOA for anything, it’ll take 7-10 business days). now, i’ll believe it when i see it, but i can’t tell you how much relief it brought that someone finally gave me a voice. let justice roll down (and send me on a cruise).

2 Comments

  1. paul

    a cruise seems to be an odd reward following your post. 🙂

    great thoughts

  2. Michele

    i didn’t quite understand, and then i just listened to your first sermon on service… way to lay on the guilt for cruising! 🙂

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