Do you sometimes get the feeling that there’s a running joke that you’re not a part of and you just can’t figure out what it is?
In this case, the joke is on the working class and it’s the management class and higher that’s laughing. The thing is that I don’t think it’s a particularly funny joke that they’re laughing at but a sick one that we’re the butts of.
In most jobs if you screw up you maybe get called in for a talk, or maybe you get written up, but a lot of times you’re just out. I know that happened to me. I was let go all of a sudden without anyone sitting me down to try to steer me to steadier waters. We live in a time where it’s seen as far easier to let someone go than to try to get them on the right path. I can see where sometimes you need to cut the person loose – they aren’t a good fit, not a good worker, have a bad attitude, or whatever – but that’s not everyone. Not by half. And the thing is that it has to cost more money to go through the recruiting process, hiring process, training process, and then wait to see if they pan out than it does to just help someone do better that has the job.
It just makes sense to do that.
Too much sense.
Alas, that’s not corporate culture.
Neither is holding human resources accountable for hiring people that aren’t good fits, something I have seen firsthand, where it’s basically ‘shrug life’, try again.
It’s strange though that jobs have gotten so cutthroat considering all we hear over the past couple years is how ‘no one wants to work’, something I still find ridiculous.
For sure, there are a LOT of professions that it’s clear they are having a hard time finding workers but no one has bothered to ask if that’s because those jobs need to evolve or not. It’s the workers that are the problems.
Not the jobs.
OK.
If it’s so hard then why are people so easily let go?
And if it’s the hiring process, why not make it so you are getting people into the positions that fit, or that you’re ‘coaching them up’ to get them to be better employees?
The funny thing is to watch how the executive class fails upward.
They get raises while the working class get laid off.
They get promotions despite financial missteps or questionable leadership skills.
They are like ticks and once they are in, they are in.
Even when they are out, they are in.
They have golden parachutes that land them safely with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to just get out of their chairs and leave their jobs.
Isn’t that crazy?
To be paid to leave?
Sure, they have contracts, like some sort of celebrity or athlete, but they get PAID TO BE FIRED!
Insane.
Watching as corporate Hollywood craps their bunk beds but still has the same people in place at leadership is…fascinating.
I suppose it’s a stroke of brilliance to take full advantage of tax laws but to see how they have weaponized them is chillingly brilliant.
‘Oh, we can get a huge write-off for just making content we paid for to disappear? DONE!’
It’s like the guy finding out that he knocked a girl up and she’s like – naw, I don’t want you in our lives – and the guys is all YEAH!
These people spent recklessly, they mismanaged funds, and now they’re bailed out but our stupid government and who pays?
The creatives and the public who are losing content that we never get to appreciate because it’s been written off and shelved.
We’re treated like patrons at a restaurant that tells you what you’re going to have for dinner – the MOST ridiculous concept I can think of.
Oh, you want a steak, NOPE!
I wanna cook fish today, sorry.
Bro, then go home and COOK FISH and give ME the steak I am paying for!
If they’re more artist than chef, boss, but man, that has to be a limited range of folks that want that.
ANYWAY!
The insanity of corporate Hollywood makes the head spin.
They want to cut out ALL the people and let machines run the show.
They’ll let a machine program the upcoming television and movie slate based on…an algorithm?
The past?
Witchcraft?
I dunno.
There’s math involved.
The only ones that pay when corporate mistakes are made are the creatives and the public. ‘Oh, gosh, we shouldn’t have spent half a billion dollars on a movie that bombed, better cancel everything else’.
‘Oh, sports are down, better to fire everyone’ – instead of seeing how better to tell the stories of the sports they have.
They’d rather have a machine write all of the work out there because they don’t have to pay them. So they’d rather make sure THEY don’t lose THEIR high pay because they cut everyone around them.
There’s a Twilight Zone episode about that sort of thing.
We don’t pay attention to that stuff though, it doesn’t pay.
I can’t imagine trying to work for these people but heck, there are only so many jobs out there and the creative class at the top doesn’t seem to want to pool their money create something better.
Easier to travel, party, and write a check to a fund or foundation from time to time to give back.
Oof.
And this is where we are.
We should be making work EASIER for working class, not cutting them out.
WHY?
Because even the most trained machine is not a human that can think outside of the box and can think creatively, not ape what’s been done but think about how it COULD be done. We are telling stories FOR humans so why have a machine regurgitate what others have said. Even if every story has been told they mean that in the large scale, like love stories and tragedies and the like have been told but not EVERY STORY.
That’s like saying every life has been led.
It hasn’t.
But we’ll pay these people who forced their way into prestigious schools and got their degrees so they can go work for someone’s family member they know and then fall into their golden parachutes and we admire them.
We listen to these fairytales of people bootstrapping their way to success when few actually have done it.
It’s like the fable of the war hero who picks up a machine gun and charges into gunfire and saves the day.
We’d rather these quaint lies though and not the truth that sociopaths are getting these high-end jobs and simply see the employees as numbers, the same way a general sees losses in a war.
Well, it’s the cost of doing business.
And as long as there’s money for the investors, no one cares.
And if the numbers don’t add up, lay off some people or hide some content in a closet and get a write-off.
The American way.
The last time we saw a long writer’s strike we saw the surge of ‘reality (HA!) TV’. This time we’ll see AI driven content with scripts that miraculously appear out of a vault as if they had existed all along.
We are literally a culture that doesn’t want to have sex any longer but wants to masturbate to its own image and this is what we call progress.
Sigh.
Here’s me, pulling the cord on my moth-eaten parachute, hoping I’ll land in gator-filled waters so at least they get something out of the bargain.
…c…
I write books. Go see for yourself.
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 