Everyone hop aboard the tricycle of full employment!
Almost 15 million Americans are out of work. The best way to handle this is to fire some more.
Pundits say that unemployment statistics are made up of two parts: those looking for work, and those who have given up looking. But there is another factor; a third wheel, if you will, that must be put on the tricycle of employment to get it rolling down the driveway of prosperity again.
We need to identify those who SHOULD be out of work. Those who should be de-employed.
Don’t play coy. You know what I mean. You can walk into almost any business establishment anywhere in the world and find someone who should be de-employed. I bet you can think of 5 recent examples off the top of your head.
We can identify candidates for de-employment using the UnEquation as a litmus test:
Unpleasant
Unhelpful
Unspeedy = Unemployed
Uninterested
Unnecessary
Undependable
My initial research indicates several broad job classifications that are rife with potential de-employees:
- Health aides, trusted to provide personal care for the old, ill and infirm, who obviously despise the old, ill and infirm. 1.1 million
- Food service workers with no teeth and/or rotten teeth. I’m sorry for those without the means for dental care, but jeez, Louise. Pick another industry. .2 million
- Sales and service people who take care of their personal business (coffee break, phone call from kid, flirting, texting) while paying customers languish. 4.2 million
- Guys getting double time, health, dental, and a full pension to hold the sign that says “SLOW” at road construction sites. De-employing these workers won’t actually help unemployment, because I’d replace them with a sign on a stick, but they should still be de-employed on principle. .3 million
- Customer service personnel who hide behind automatic voice systems, going about their workday without interruption, while the customer wanders, dazed and confused, through an endless phone loop, feebly pressing “0” in a useless attempt to talk to a real human being. 2.7 million
- Anyone working in fast food who is not fast. 4.9 million
- Workers who complain about their jobs, boss, other co-workers right in front of you, the customer. 3.2 million.
- Postal employee who spent 10 minutes explaining to each customer in the long line how it was not HER job to take the heavy parcels to the main post office in her car, and if she ends up having to do it today, like yesterday, then the mail will NOT go out until tomorrow, and damned if that is HER fault, and she told the union steward… 1
We’ll develop a smart-phone app that will allow people to quickly and easily send a brief report, photo and GPS coordinates of the slacker to a central processing center for de-employment review.
Once all these people are de-employed, their jobs are freed up for the unemployed who WANT to work. Employers will have their pick of people who appreciate the dignity of work and are prepared to give any job, no matter how humble, their best effort.
And what about those who have been de-employed due to their poor performance? Some sort of work will be required from those who are able. We don’t want anyone to starve, of course, so we’ll have a safety net of benefits. The benefits must be less than those earned by the people who are working, or there is no incentive to get a job, let alone to do it well.
I’ll leave the details to our elected officials. I can’t do everything.
Someday soon, when the 20-year-old barista at your coffee shop gives you a load of attitude because you didn’t use their annoying sizing terminology, you’ll just whip out your phone and start her de-employment process.
You’ll smile as you walk out with your small, regular coffee, knowing a cheerful, helpful employee will be there in her place tomorrow.
Peg-o-Leg's Ramblings 
You run a tough government, Peg, but I’m totally in.
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Cabinet positions can be bought, if the price is right, Jackie.
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Corruption from the start? Hmm. OKAY!
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I’ll start the way I mean to go on.
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I can’t wait for the Android app!
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I’ve got my programmer minions working round the clock on that.
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You know, up till now I’ve been too cheap to get a smartphone, but if that’s the only way to get the de-employment app, then it will be soooo worth it. You’ve really got me excited about this – in fact, I’m on my way to Walmart and I’m going to get started immediately!
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Wait until you get the new phone. I don’t want you standing by the check-out at Walmart, pressing the send button on your brick-like Nokia until security gives you the boot.
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I’m totally there.
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Wouldn’t you love the power?
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I’m guessing you had a bad run in at the post office recently?
While you’re on it can you please add who ever it is that keeps sending me stupid emails trying to sell me female viagra?
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Yes, that is a faithful account of the postal clerk’s ranting, except edited for space. I have never even heard of female viagra, and I don’t want to know.
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You get my vote to run the government, Peg.
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Thanks! You can be the Secretary of the Smoking Jacket.
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But then you need the Annoying Customer Pay Increasifier ( the ACPI for short) to balance this reign of terror for the roughly six workers who will be left after this takes hold. The ACPI works like this. Every time the one helpful, productive, always-cheerful person left in all these jobs hears “I pay your salary” or “I’m in a hurry so I’ve decided my problem is now your problem and somehow it’s all your fault anyway” or “You should be grateful you have a job” with a click, an extra 25% is added to the cost, which goes right to the worker, with no tax payable — and you can’t back out on the deal. Between your idea and the ACPI, good employees and good customers win and the bad ones are either unemployed or a lot poorer.
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You may be on to somethiing here, Chris. One thing’s for damn sure – we’ll have full employment among programmers trying to figure out how to make all this stuff work.
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I’m rather liking Chris’s idea too! ( although how you account for it in your IRS system is beyond me )
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Chris is from Canada, so everything is simpler up there.
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Can you add Technical Support people who groan a lot and make you feel like a complete idiot? Or does that just happen to me?
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It happens so much that when people like me have trouble with a computerized doo-hicky, we junk it and buy a new one to avoid the supercillious smirking and eye-rolling of the support people.
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My God, I think you just fixed the world. Can you imagine such a heavenly place where people have jobs and are grateful for them?
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The only problem is, the Secretary of Labor may be one of the few people in the civilized world who still haven’t subscribed to my blog.
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Just yesterday, while navigating the ridiculous Japanese game show of a commute I take every day, I was thinking about all the construction workers junking up said commute who stand around doing nothing. The guy holding the SLOW sign was working the hardest. I don’t get it. So yeah. I’m in. But I don’t know if I could do the job of de-employing people. A couple weeks ago, I told an acquaintance not to hire someone who was leaving the place where I work and applying at his place. This guy totally deserved to be denied the job. But they hired him anyway. And I was annoyed that they did. But I felt bad telling them not to do it.
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Sometimes it’s hard to balance our hard heads and our tender hearts. The few times I’ve had to fire someone, I was physicially ill, even though I knew it needed to be done. Love the mental picture of a Japanese game show of a commute!
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Forget it Sarah, Michelle and Hillary—-Pegoleg for first woman President!!!!!
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I’ll have to get busy practicing my side-step.
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Funny thing about those signs that say “SLOW” on the other side they say “STOP”. While some of those people aren’t really doing anything useful, others are actually there for a good reason.
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You’re right. I’m not talking about the signs that they have to coordinate switching back and forth to control traffic. I mean the ones that just want you to slow down.
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But wait! If de-employment is to be effective at all, the whole US Senate, House of Representatives and most state governments have to go as well. We could sit in the galleries and whip out our phones on cue. Would that terror even be enough to make the parties start working together? Nah. Let’s just flush ’em all and start over.
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I figure all the early de-employment applications will come from Washington.
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I so love this! I have done a couple things on customer service but you have done it so much better! K so you are definitely not on the de employ list!!
Chris
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Thanks, Chris! Sometimes I’d like to be on the de-employment list. As it stands now, lots of them make more than I do for doing nothing.
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I like it! In the area I live, I’m more surprised when people are kind (even more surprised if I get any kind of eye contact), than if they’re not. I meandered your way from FP and enjoyed the post about your dad too—sounds like a great guy. Thanks for the smile.
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Isn’t it crazy to be grateful for something so elemental as eye contact? What’s wrong with the world! Thanks for stopping by, and for the nice comment.
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Poking around your site, and really enjoying doing so!
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Poke away, and welcome!
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Tough love! I’d like to nominate those who make junk (everything from useless glue sticks to $3000 refrigerators that can’t seem to make ice cubes) and take zero responsibility for the quality of their products. You go girl!
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As soon as I get the smart-phone app put together, you can be the first to nominate those scoundrels!
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I’d just like to jump on the “Peggy for President” bandwagon…of course, I can’t vote in the U.S.
How about government employees who are there because they “knew somebody”?
Wendy
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Oh no, THAT doesn’t happen anywhere, does it? You must be from Chicago, home of the deep-dish pizza and it’s-not-what-you-know, it’s-who-you-know politics.
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The motto here in Chicago is “vote early and often” which I would certainly do for you. There’s even a cemetery nearby filled with registered voters! Huzzah!
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Pingback: If Worthy Words were Orthy Ords « A Lighter Shade of Grey
Hey! I came here via “A lighter shade of Gray”. This is a fabulous post. “Anyone working in fast food who is not fast..” made me laugh! Anyway, nice work… your last comment about ordering coffee struck a chord with me. Here’s a funny post I wrote about that, you might get a kick out of it!
http://brownroadchronicles.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/welcome-to-starbucks-what-can-i-get-you-today/
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Hey, I’ve seen you around the blogosphere. Thanks for stopping by! I’ll be sure to check out your post.
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