Experiments Never Fail: A Guide for the Bored, Unappreciated and Underpaid by Dale Dauten

Author:Dale Dauten
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Maurice Bassett
Published: 2011-03-04T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Max stretched out his legs and peered at the dozing travelers. He said softly, "I should let you get some rest."

When people use an expression like, "I should let you rest," you're left to wonder, is that for my sake or theirs? Usually I assume the latter, but not this time. I wasn't tired. I wanted to hear more and said so.

Working Magic

"Really?" he responded, genuinely surprised. "You have a large capacity for difficult information." He stood up and said, "I'm getting stiff; let's take another stroll."

As we passed those sleeping against the walls of the corridor, mostly businessmen in blue or gray suits, my companion turned a bit melancholy: "Look at all these people. They're not much different from the farm workers in England who went to London in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. These poor kittens sleeping here in O'Hare are caught up in the greatest economic shift since those days and they don't even know it. Most of their employers don't know it, either.

"Look at them, my young friend. Beaten down. Worn out and frustrated. Dreamless. In the eighteenth century there were factories where people were worked to death. Today it's mental work instead of manual work, but our society is just as cruel. The mental burdens of workers in the late twentieth century will one day be looked back upon in horror."

"What went wrong?" I asked.

"Everything and nothing. Foreign competition. Baby boomers swamped the professional ranks. Both employers and employees got more competition. In other words, we've been slapped around by the ‘invisible hand’ of capitalism." He clapped his hands together, startling me for an instant in the still corridor.

The Big Squeeze

"We live in a time of excess capacity, not just in the old sense of industrial capacity -- too much aluminum or too many semiconductors -- but too many businesses of every ilk. We have more fast-food restaurants than we need, more dry cleaners, more copy shops. And there are too many professionals -- too many accountants, too many lawyers, too many writers.

"And that oversupply brings on price competition. Businesses get squeezed on price. How can they maintain profit margins? They do some squeezing of their own -- hammering down suppliers and employees. We have an era where ‘cost cutters’ are corporate stars. Pah. And that's going to be true for quite a while, whether the economy is up or down. That's why I don't think we're on our way back to a time of company loyalty or job security. Instead, we will continue to live in the time of The Big Squeeze."

With that, I remembered how our conversation had started and I said, "Which takes us full-circle. We started out talking about fears and expectations."

My comment sparked a recollection in the old fellow. He stopped strolling and turned to me. "I haven't thought about this in years. There's a story that just came to me.

"It takes place back in the 1950s. Orson Welles was at the height of his powers as a motion picture director, and at the height of his arrogance as an artiste.

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