RAILROAD SIGNALS of the U.S.

RANT #9
My Bosses Are At It Again
Where Are Corporations Headed?
Rated R for bad language
 

RAILFAN GUIDES HOME
RAILROAD SIGNALS HOME

Well, maybe you've read my past rants about the workplace, #4 in particular.  If so, you have some background in these two "flamers".

With all of the shit going on around us, the recession we are still in, and then you hear or see shit like:  "GE makes 5 Billion dollars in profit for 2010, and didn't pay any taxes" (read it in the latest AARP newsletter), or "Why are we still giving oil companies a subsidy when they are making record profits, even in light of the BP disaster last year" (Saw if the other night on one of the nightly news broadcasts), it makes you wonder where the United States is headed.

Maybe you heard years ago that the the former Bethlehem Steel mill in Baltimore was sold to (I believe) a Russian company, and presto, the retirement/pension of the former employees was gone... poof... vanished into the thin fucking air!

Maybe you have noticed that when Verizon or Comcast comes to your house for a new installation of cable or FIOS, that they no longer use ANYTHING to hold the cables to the side of your house, instead, like on my neighbors house, they just wrapped the cable around the AC power cable coming into the house, and then if you look at my cable bill, they do nothing but raise the bill almost every month, yet we are getting hardly anything for it.

AND, have you ever tried to get service out of either of these two fucking companies??? (that's a whole nuther rant)

The divide between the rich and the poor is getting wider, and we, the assholes stuck in the middle, seem to have to pay for "it all".  The rich don't want to pay taxes out of greed, the poor don't have the money to pay taxes, even tho most of them wouldn't mind the privilege of doing so, and the illegal immigrants, well, that's a whole other story too, but let it suffice to say that a small minority of them contribute to the well being of our country.

Anyways, let's get back on track on how this has something to do where I work.  Obviously, for national security reasons, I can't tell you where I work, but it's not at McDonalds. 

A couple of years ago, I had suggested something to my boss as a cost savings measure for our customer.  Now, I don't know about you, but if you took your car in for a repair job, and the shop offered you a way to save money, wouldn't you be as happy as a pig in mud?  Well, we get these blower motor / fan assemblies in, and they get some rusting on the bottom of them where it is exposed to water.  So I got this bright idea of taking the thing back to the shop, and cleaning it with the glass beader.  I taped off all of the holes, and 10 minutes later, presto, I had this beautifully cleaned blower that looked almost like brand new.  I took it to our inspector and asked him if this was OK to send back out into the field, and he couldn't find anything wrong with it.  The technician who started cleaning the blower with a Scotchbrite pad was impressed too, and it saved him a lot of time and elbow grease.

So, I took this blower to my boss, #1, proud as a new parent, and he shot me down because he wants to bill the customer 800 bucks for a new one.  WHAT THE FUCK?  I hope in retirement, that he comes across people who do the same thing to him as he has done to others, it's sort of a Golden Rule thing.

It just ain't right.

There have been a few other instances where I have tried to reduce the cost of business for our customers, and they have all been met with the same fate.... no-one around here seems to want to reduce the expense to our customers, cause it helps to keep our profits up, which soothes our stockholders

Going back to the oil subsidies, my boss (not #1 or #2), explained to me that it is a cushion for the oil companies in case they have an event on the magnitude of the BP oil spill of 2010. 

Yea, OK, where the fuck is my cushion against my fucking 401K losing 1/3 of its value?

And why is it that gas prices at the pump rise before an increase before the price of crude goes up (in anticipation), but then when the price of crude goes down, there always seems to be a large lag???.... greed, it's that plain and simple!

If you read the small print and in between the lines of the last pension statement from my company, you come away with the impression that they can make the pension go away at any time they deem it necessary, and I'm not the only one who got that message after reading the statement.
 

Yea, OK, I know if the rich people didn't get to deduct their losses, they wouldn't invest money (or so I have been told by others who are much more money-wise than myself), but you know what, why aren't they at least paying taxes to a rate that is comparable to what I pay every year??? 

I have witnessed the corruption that a little bit of power introduces to my supervisors and managers (a few haven't succumbed, but they are exceptional people).  I can only imagine, that despite the rhetoric we get on a daily basis about ethics and workforce engagement from the overlords of our company (which is the Pitts), that it only gets worse and worse the higher up the monkey bars we go.  Have you ever seen the cartoon of the management chain of command, were there is one bird on the top, two below him, three below them, and so on.... and then us, the low-lifes of the company, we get shit on by all of them.... cute, isn't it - but so true!

We are expected to be held accountable to the highest level, but the higher up that triangle you go, the less those laws, policies, and procedures apply.  And it only gets worse every day.

Has anyone ever seen the email with the pictures of some oil sheik that had a car body made out of platinum?  There's greed taken to a whole new level!

And then let's not forget all of the banks that got us into the current recession back in what, 2008, with giving out all of those loans with balloon payments that no-one could ultimately afford, and then wham, we wind up almost back in 1928!..... They all got huge fucking bonuses, even after the bust, what is wrong with that picture?  Your life savings is almost wiped out, and they're still getting rich off of our misery.  FUCK ME!

It just ain't right.

I have often made the observation, that despite the advancement of my salary over the years, I am worse off then I was in 1971 making three dollars an hour, and the price of gas was 35 cents a gallon.  My real spendable income hasn't really increased, when you consider the cost of everything today. 

While technology has gotten cheaper... like TV's, when the first color TV was introduced in something like 1963 or 1964, RCA charged $450 for it.  In today's dollars, that might be, what $3000-$4000?  So you can buy a 32" widescreen Hi-def TV for $300.  But look what it costs to support it..... Cable.... And at $170 bucks a month, that adds up faster than shit. 

My cellphone, if it weren't for the company discount, it would cost way more than the $70 a month I pay now, but wait, I don't even have texting on my phone.  I'm looking at upgrading, but to do that, it would cost $120 a month instead of $70.... why?  When I gave the AT&T guy some crap about texting rates, and said what's the difference between that texting and getting the internet on my phone, he gave me a stock AT&T answer which means he hasn't a clue... There's no reason to pay for texting when you're already paying $25-$35 a month for internet, after all, it's all ones and zeros.

So I'm, paying paying 200-300 bucks a month to have access to technology that in 1970, it cost me 15 bucks a month for.  Where have we really gotten ahead?

New 12MAY2011 
Last modified 28 Nov 2013