When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (10 page)

Amazingly, politicians have mastered the art of uttering those words with

a perfectly straight face, even though the proposition is stated precisely backward. Judging from the results of focus groups, polls and election returns that I’ve seen, and watching the advertising directed at Americans, I’d say the American people are a lot dumber than they’re given credit for. As one example, just look at the individuals they keep sending to their statehouses and to Washington to represent them. Look also at what they’ve done to their once-beautiful country and its landscape.

Wrapping up this modest review of patriotic political language, I think it’s safe to conclude that the degree of a politician’s insincerity can best be measured by how far around the world our soldiers are, and whether or not any of them is able to pronounce the name of the place. And whether or not their neighbors back home can find it on a map.

ZERO TOLERANCE

I get weary of this zero tolerance bullshit. It’s annoying. To begin with, it’s a fascist concept; it’s what Hitler and Stalin practiced. It allows for no exceptions or compassion of any kind. All is black and whiteno gradations. But even more important, it doesn’t solve anything. The use of such a slogan simply allows whichever company, school or municipality is using it to claim they’re doing something about a problem when, in fact, nothing is being done at all and the problem is being ignored. It’s a cosmetic non-solution designed to impress simpletons. Whenever you hear the phrase zero tolerance, remember, someone is bullshitting you.

Dempsey’s Department Store: Drop In Today

Shoppers! For a limited time only, Dempsey’s Department Store is offering a complete line of cheap crap at extremely high prices. Come in today and be treated rudely by our poorly trained clerks. Remember, at Dempsey’s we’re not just talking about the high cost of living, we’re doing something about it: We re raising our prices.

ENJOY A PLEASANT DIURNAL EXPERIENCE

I’m not sure you’ve noticed it, but I’m always trying to improve society. And in my relentless pursuit, I feel the time may finally have arrived for me to address “Have a nice day.” I think we can agree it has gotten completely out of hand.

Just to give you some background on my long-standing interest in this subject, when I was a young man we didn t have “Have a nice day.’ It isn’t that we didn’t have nice days, of courseoffhand I can remember several, most of them in 1949but somehow, we had them without any prompting. No coaching was necessary. The nice days just sort of happened. Perhaps at that time the days were simply nicer, and we took them for granted. It could be that today’s days leave much to be desired and actually need a little help. But if that’s true, I’m not convinced that “Have a nice day” is the best solution.

And so, in my ongoing effort to elevate human experience, I think I have come up with an improved version of “Have a nice day.” It’s an alternative system of well-wishing, and frankly, something I hope will become the next big trend.

But before I tell you about it, it’s important to remind you that there is a

limiting factor at work here: Most people have very little control over what sort of day they’re going to have. For instance, when one person says, “Have a nice day,” the other may well be thinking, “I’ve just been diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and I’m also coughing up thick black stuff.” In this case the well-wisher’s words will fall on deaf ears.

And so, I feel that perhaps, in the interest of realism, instead of being directed arbitrarily to have a nice day, people should simply be encouraged to do the best they can.

It is also probably unrealistic to expect someone to have a nice day all day long. How often does that happen? The day is simply too long and comprises too many parts. One’s day may start off well enough, but quite often the niceness is difficult to sustain over an extended period of time.

And so, instead of the now standard, and far too general, “Have a nice day,” I have devised a new, more specific system of selective, short-term well-wishing that puts much less pressure on the recipient. In my system, the time of day a person offers good wishes determines what should be said.

As an example, under my method, if I run into an acquaintance at 9 A.M., I’m likely to say, “Have a satisfying midmorning.” I believe in getting someone off to a good start, and it’s a modest enough goal to suggest at such an early hour. Had the encounter taken place a bit earlier, I may have been inclined to offer a simple, yet cheerful, “Here’s wishing you a refreshing post-sleep phase.”

And, turning the clock back even further, if the two of us had been out late and parted at three in the morning, I’m sure I would have told him to “Have yourself a stimulating pre-dawn.” As you can see, I’m fully prepared for any time of day.

Twelve noon, you ask? “May your midday be crammed with unfettered joy and myriad delights.” Two in the afternoon? “I hope you experience a rewarding post-lunch.’

Likewise as the day draws to a close. Can you guess what I tell a person at five-thirty in the afternoon? “Enjoy your sundown.’ It’s short, it’s pleasant, it doesn’t demand a lot. Here’s one for the same time of day which I reserve for more serious-minded friends : “Have a profound dusk.” I like it. I feel it shows a certain respect for the other fellow’s depth of soul. Orand this is a particular favorite of mine”Have a challenging twilight.” I enjoy giving the other person something to struggle with just as happy hour is getting under way.

By the way, I have a playful side as well. If my friend is a Scottish person I may say, “Have a bonnie gloaming.” But not too often; I don’t like to show off my command of foreign languages.

Well, folks, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little explanation of my new system, but more important, I hope you’ll put it to work in your daily lives. And so now, dear reader, as we prepare to take our leave, you may be tempted to think I’ll be hard-pressed to offer a parting wish that hasn’t already been suggested. Don’t underestimate me.

You see, I’m not limited to the short form. Occasionally, in an expansive mood, I get carried away and my rhetoric becomes ornate. And so, as we part, let me state that I hope you have a memorable tomorrow, including, but not limited to, the promising, golden hours of morning, the full, rich bloom of afternoon, and, of course, the quiet, gentle hours of evening, when time, pausing for an instant and breathing a small sigh, rushes forward to greet the newly forming day.

I hope you appreciate the extra effort.

LET’S KILL A TREE FOR THE KIDS

Regarding public Christmas displays: At some point, someone who worked at Rockefeller Center must have said, “Boys, I have a great idea for Christmas. Let’s kill a beautiful tree that’s been alive for seventy-five years and bring it to New York City. We’ll stand it up in Rockefeller Plaza and conceal its natural beauty by hanging shiny, repulsive, man-made objects on it, and let it stand there slowly dying for several weeks while simpleminded children stare at it and people from Des Moines take pictures of it. That way, perhaps we can add our own special, obscene imprint to Christmas in Midtown.”

A SORE POINT

Regarding the criticism of Al Gore’s actions upon being elected president in 2000 and realizing that the Bush family would do everything in its power to reverse the results illegally: I recall at the time hearing some of the usual morons in this country refer to President-elect Gore as a sore loser because he sought legal redress in the courts.

Sore loser? You bet your fuckin’ ass! What on earth is wrong with being a sore loser? It shows you cared about whatever the contest was in the first place. Fuck losing graciouslythat’s for chumps. And losers, by the way.

Americans have just flat-out lost their spirit; you see it everywhere. Have you ever watched these hockey assholes? When the game is over, they’re forced to line up and shake hands with one another after spending three hours smashing each other in the mouth with sticks. Biggest load of shit I ever witnessed. Whatever happened to “In victory, magnanimity; in defeat, defiance.” So said Frederick the Great.

EUPHEMISMS: Write If You Get Work MARX MY WORDS

These days, people who have jobs are called members of the workforce. But I can’t help thinking the Russian Revolution would have been a lot less fun if the Communists had been running through the streets yelling, “Members of the workforces of the world, unite!”

And I’m sure Marx and Lenin would not be pleased to know that, today, employees who refuse to work no longer go out on strikes. They engage in job actions that result in work stoppages. And if a work stoppage lasts long enough, the company doesn’t hire scabs, it brings in replacement workers.

READY, AIM, NONRETAIN!

When it comes to firing people, companies try desperately to depersonalize the process so that no human being is ever seen to fire another. The language is extremely neutral, and whatever blame there is goes to something called global market forces. Fuckin’ foreigners!

And these companies go through some truly exotic verbal gymnastics to describe what’s taking placealthough I’m not sure it makes the individuals in question feel any better. After all, being fired, released or terminatedwould seem a lot easier to accept than being non-retained, dehired or selected out.

Nor would I be thrilled to be told that, because the company was downsizing, rightsizing or scaling down, I was part of an involuntary force-reduction. I really don’t care that my company is reshaping and streamlining, and that, in order to manage staff resources, a focused reduction is taking place, and I’m one of the workers being transitioned out. Just fire me, please!

I read somewhere that apparently one company’s senior management didn’t understand the fuss about this issue. After all, they said, all they were

doing was eliminating the company’s employment security policy by engaging in a deselection process in order to reduce duplication.

P.S. By the way, when those deselected people begin to look for new jobs, they won’t have to be bothered reading the want ads. Those listings are now called employment opportunities. Makes you feel a lot better, doesn’t it?

EUPHEMISMS:

What Do You Do for a Living?

American companies now put a great deal of effort into boosting their employees’ self-esteem by handing out inflated job titles. Most likely, they think it also helps compensate for the longer hours, unpaid overtime and stagnant wages that have become standard. It doesn’t.

However, such titles do allow an ordinary store clerk to tell some girl he’s picking up at a bar that he’s a product specialist. Or a retail consultant. If it turns out she’s a store clerk, too, but her store uses different euphemisms, then she may be able to inform him that she’s a sales counsellor. Or a customer service associate. And, for a while there, they’re under the impression that they actually have different jobs.

These are real job titles, currently in use to describe employees whose work essentially consists of telling customers, “We’re all out of medium.” Nothing wrong with that, but it’s called store clerk, not retail consultant, and not customer service associate. Apparently, stores feel they can charge more for merchandise sold by a customer service associate than they can for the same junk sold by a clerk. By the way, if a clerk should be unhappy with his title, he can always move to a different store, where he may have a chance of being called a product service representative, a sales representative or a sales associate.

And I hope you took note of that word, associate. That’s a hot word with companies now. I saw a fast-food employee mopping the floor at an In-N-Out Burger andI swear this is truehis name tag said “associate.” Okay? It’s the truth. Apparently, instead of money, they now give out these bogus titles.

At another fast-food place, Au Bon Pain, I noticed the cashiers name tag said hospitality representative. The cashier. The name tag was pinned to her uniform. The people who sell these uniforms now refer to them as career apparel Oreven worseteam wear. I had to sit down when I heard that. Team wear.

Teams are also big in business; almost as big as associates. In Los Angeles his KooKooRoo restaurants the employee name tags say “team member.” At a Whole Foods supermarket, I talked to the head of the meat department about ordering a special item; I figured he was the head butcher. But his name tag identified him as the meat team leader. Throw that on your resume. I guess the people under him would have been meat team associates. I didn’t stick around to ask.

So it’s all about employee morale. And in a lot of companies, as part of morale-building, the employees are called staff. But it’s all right, because most customers are now called clients. With those designations, I guess the companies can pay the staff less and charge the clients more.

I’m not sure when all this job-title inflation began, but it’s been building for a while. At some point in the past thirty years secretaries became personal assistants or executive assistants. Many of them now consider those terms too common, so they call themselves administrative aides.

Everyone wants to sound more important these days:

Teachers became educators, drummers became percussionists.

movie directors became filmmakers,

company presidents became chief executive officers,

family doctors became primary-care providers,

manicurists became nail technicians,

magazine photographers became photojournalists,

weightlifters became bodybuilders

and bounty hunters now prefer to be called recovery agents

And speaking of lifting, those retail-store security people who keep an eye on shoplifters are known as loss-prevention managers. Still more to come. Later.

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