Tone Deafness

Livin' a dream.... I don't think there are many of us who have to work with the public who haven't had fantasies like the one Steven Slater lived. I can't even begin to count the number of customers I've dealt with over the last twenty-eight years who seem to think that because they're spending twenty bucks at the place I work, I'm their indentured servant. The customer is always right, yada, yada, yada. In a word: no. I get paid to eat their shit--it doesn't mean I have to like it, or not secretly wish them a severe case of crotch rot. I wasn't really surprised by the corporate/status quo response to this--interviewing his ex-wife (how many exes are going to have good things to say about their former spouse?), calling into question his account, etc. When the Wall Street Journal publishes a piece such as this, it's easy to roll one's eyes and think, yeah suree! It has to be a bit frightening to the powers that be that there are plenty of us who feel the same as Slater, and have frankly had enough. It's only natural that they would send out their trolls to show us the error of our cheering. What surprised me, though, was the utter tone deafness (or else naivete) of those whose job it is to comment on such matters (and may or may not benefit from the status quo). Brian Dickerson seemed to think it was not worth cheering because as stressful as our lives are, we should be grateful we have it so much better than our ancestors (Aside: WTF?). And that it was because airline travel sucks. Mitch Albom--in a column actually more sympathetic to Slater than I would have thought--pretty much stuck to the airline travel sucks meme. Leonard Pitts blamed it on our ever lessening civility. No, no, no. I have no idea what Slater's motivation was, but I have a pretty good inkling why people are cheering it. We don't trust corporations, job satisfaction is at record lows, and frankly, we're all fed up with bullshit raises and increased workload and corporate leadership that is so pathetically weak. We've seen the man behind the curtain, and he isn't nearly as endearing as the Wizard of Oz. And he isn't even coming close to helping us realize our dreams. That's why we're cheering--it was a big fuck you to our fucked up business "leaders" and our fucked up jobs. Peace, emaycee