The War On Thanksgiving

This has been heating up on social media and it’s beginning to piss me off.   I get it.  We shouldn’t be shopping on Thanksgiving.  We should be staying home with our families instead giving into the corporate machinations that drive greed and force retail workers to be on hand during the holidays instead of at home with their families who are probably hateful, drunk, and dysfunctional anyway.

The problem is that it’s not a perfect boycott.   Here’s why.

• Gas station attendants have to be on hand for you when you decide to pack up the family and go to grandma’s.
• Toll booth workers have to be on hand to collect on the turnpikes and expressways
• Hotels have to be staffed for you when you have to stay at the Comfort Inn because grandma has fifteen cats and you’re allergic.
• IT Analysts and System Admins have to be on hand for when Amazon or eBay breaks down because everyone who says, “I WON’T SHOP IN TARGET ON THANKSGIVING!” decides they will buck the trend by point and clicking their way through shopping instead of courting the brick and mortar versions of their favorite retailers.
• I could go on.

Look, I spent three years working on New Year’s Eve, Easter, Mother’s Day, and Thanksgiving in a hotel where the biggest problem was I had to cater to other peoples’ families instead of sharing in the holiday with my own.  It sucks, but it’s life.   Declaring with a graphic and a like that you won’t shop on Thanksgiving while doing other things that require support staff to handle your other activities is just hypocritical.  How about stay off social media on Thanksgiving.  Some poor IT person at Zynga or King or Facebook  has to be on hand because you’d rather stay home and play Candy Crush or Famville instead of shopping at Walmart.   And… some intern at Twitter has be on hand when you tell the world, “Gassing up at BP and turnpiking it with my fam instead of shopping at Target.  Suck it Wall St!”

You know, some people have no family.  Some people don't want to be around their family on the holidays, so working that day at time and a half pay might be something they enjoy or at least look forward to.  And you're robbing them of that because YOU feel YOUR AGENDA is the way it should be.  

Do I think stores should be open on Thanksgiving? No.  Black Friday?  Definitely, NO!  But it's not my problem.  It's not my place.  If people want to be assholes and corporations want to be greedy.  That's their business.  It's the framing of the argument that I take such issue with in this case.   Where do we get off high horsing our views and being placated because of it?  What entitlement crap gives us anymore say in this matter.  Vote with your dollar and don't shop.  But don't shame others into believing they're horrible because they do.  You're just as bad at other things that require support staff so don't act all high and mighty feeling that your own beliefs are solid and infallible.  Mind your own business. 

Oh, and don't read this on Thanksgiving.  Got it?

2009 D-Bag Awards - Heat Five: Million Dollar D-Bags

In the game of Monopoly, he who owns everything is the winner. In the D-Bag Awards, those who do so by means which are considered shady and ridiculously low class are the winner. So, for this match up, the following contestants will compete in a “Biggest D-Bag Take All” Game of Monopoly.

• Wall Street (The Wheelbarrow)
• Auto Industry (The Racecar)
• Fox (The Dog which we’ll call a Fox)
• NBC (Thimble which represents Jay Leno’s chin)
• Raj Rajaratnam (The Battleship or Galleon)
• Bernie Madoff (The Sack of Money: Deluxe Editions)

Since anyone of these contestants could drop off the map, let’s do a quick play scenario. On the board we have our six contestants. Each one will take a Chance card which will decide their fate.
First up is The Auto Industry. Representing the Auto Industry is Ford, GM, and Chrysler. You may remember their CEOs made the trek to Washington in 2008, looking for money to bail them out in hopes that they could get more federal funds to stem the bleeding from the recession. They did. So, here’s their turn.

CHANCE: Elected Chairman of the Board. Give yourself a bonus, cut workforce production, go bankrupt and be replaced.

Next up, Wall Street. With the TARP funded bailout last year, one would hope that Wall Street would have learned their lesson and been a better boy this year. Not likely, After lavish retreats and continued bonuses, we realized that the bailout really didn’t trickle down all that much. Yeah, the country didn’t go under and the Earth continues to turn, but even in paying back TARP funds, some banks look to make a profit by cutting the interest and passing along the bill to you.

CHANCE: Your Xmas Fund Matures. Pay back loans early and deny the hand that feeds you with stock prices that cut the amount of money paid back leaving you a profit. Get out from under the thumb of the government so you can go back to paying bonuses for suits and cosmetic changes to your offices. Continue to bend public over a chair as mortgages continue to be foreclosed on in America.

Third in turn is Fox. Fox has gone on such a high this year thanks to the addition of the show glee. However, this is the same company that managed to shift good shows to Friday night’s graveyard while relying on American Idol to win them all the money in the world. That and they copyrighted the word “glee”, but that’s another story.

CHANCE: That’s right. Fox doesn’t take chances. They just cut and run when shows aren't performing that well. The fan club of Dollhouse thanks you.

Next up, NBC. NBC has long been considered one of the best networks. After all, with shows like Law & Order, The Cosby Show, Cheers, ER, Friends, and The Tonight Show in your stable, you must have been doing something right, right? FlashForward to September 2009 and you’ll see why they are in contention.

CHANCE: Advance token to nearest high roller cable company and offer to be bought while simultaneously killing your schedule by doing away with 10pm dramas in hopes that Jay Leno will bring everyone over to watch his new show. Honestly, if Comcast gets controlling stock of NBC, you will see tons of issues. Think about wanting to watch your favorite show and seeing the TV Guide list a four block of time when it might show up.

Raj Rajaratnam, you’re up. Raj has taken time out of his busy schedule today of pleading not guilty to 11 counts of insider trading and we thank him for that.

CHANCE: You’ve been given insider information. Now that’s not even remotely a real card, but then again, we are dealing with a hedge fund. Raj denies benefiting from insider information dealing with a merger between IBM and Sun Microsystems. That non information led to a non million dollar windfall for Raj’s funds. Being a relatively non player in the game of nonsense, Raj is no match for our final contestant.

Bernie Madoff, come on down. As you can see, Bernie is being led to the board in a wonderful orange jumpsuit. That’s because Bernie has already been convicted of running the biggest ponzi scheme this side of organized religion. He managed to ruin more people’s lives than the Internet.

CHANCE: Go Directly Back To Jail, You D-BAG!

The list of Madoff’s d-baggery is so extensive will be in jail for the next two lifetimes and that’s still not enough punishment. There is a special level of Hades for this d-bag and I hope he’s made friends with the sisters on the inside. I’d love to hear that voice over being done by Morgan Freeman.


Today’s match brought to you by Cash4Gold and other fine scam artists.

McScrewed

Bailouts.. TARPs… Recession… Stimulus… No matter how you label it we’re a little McScrewed. I use that term because that’s probably where I’ll end up working with the way things are going. The government seems fit to throw money at organizations that have shown they can’t be trusted with money. The promise is that the Federal Government is giving IOU’s to banks to stabilize credit and in return they pay back the loan with interest. In theory, there should be a profit.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the last time I used an IOU was when I was a college student and a little short on cash around the holidays. I used my student computer account and Photoshop to create these little “Coupons” for my parents that basically stated that I would clean out the garage or wash the cars instead of buying them a present. That was 15 years ago and I never did make good on those IOUs. So, how do we know the banks will pay back the Government? In essence, the Government just became Fannie Mae and the banks became the American homeowner who bought a sub-prime mortgage.

For the most part attitudes have changed but still people are conducting shady business as usual. John Thain, there’s a guy we’ve all read about in the news, he was the Merrill Lynch CEO that used $1.2 million dollars to renovate his office and gave out billions in bonuses to executives days prior to the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America. In his defense, he cited that a lot of the losses Merrill Lynch suffered were due to his predecessor. Ok, the man had a $1400 garbage can in his office. You tell me who is to blame for this? Oh, and his answer for why he gave the bonuses, “if you don't pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise.” Well, guess what, Bucko. You were supposed to be the best and you almost destroyed the franchise.

This type of mentality doesn’t surprise me when you hear about all the rumblings along Wall Street in response to President Obama’s decree that salaries will be capped at $500,000 for executives of companies receiving TARP funds. Now, there is anarchy and bedlam in the board rooms as executives find themselves suddenly in a salary freeze. What to do? What to do? Rudy Giuliani has said that if you take away bonuses and incentives from these people that the rest of New York will suffer from reduced patronage at restaurants and other establishments. Sorry, Rudy, but these guys aren’t going to McDonald’s or even Houlihan's and they aren’t creating unemployment buy losing a few zeroes in their paycheck. They already created unemployment by letting their companies become so screwed up.

Look, if you are a company that is going to the Government and asking for millions of dollars to help keep you afloat then you need to tighten your belts, too. Guess what? Everyone else has to so don’t think we’re picking on you guys. My salary got frozen along with a lot of other folks’. You’re going to have to start living like the rest of us. If you can’t, then you’ve proven our point. You work for a financial institution for pity’s sake. Did you not learn how to manage your money? Now, if your company was solid and didn’t need financial assistance from the TARP, then by all means, do what you want. By that token, you should be acting responsibly and mindfully of the economy. If anyone believes we’ve already seen the bottom of this hole, then they’re just as delusional as bonus backed bankers.

Just like we, as regular taxpaying, nine to five working folks need to realize that everything didn’t change in November. You try stopping a speeding locomotive on a dime. It’s impossible, even for Superman, and sorry to say, Obama is not Superman. No one is. It’s going to take a lot of time and patience to slow this speeding train and get things working properly. Unfortunately, we are an short attention span audience. We want something to happen right now. We want our credit lines to be fixed, our jobs saved, and our President to wave a magic wand and make all the bad people go away. An economic stimulus package won’t solve all the problems. In my opinion, I don’t think I’ll be getting one of those rainbow sherbet looking checks with the Statue of Liberty on it. I think this package is more for the businesses that give us our other checks, the ones we get every other week. That’s so we can keep getting them. This isn’t a hand out. This is an opportunity to create jobs to fix roads and bridges. It’s a chance to upgrade our cities instead of building up on the degraded infrastructure that has been allowed to lapse into the old standards of the 20th and in some really depressed areas, the 19th centuries.

Is the Government doing the best they can for the nation. I hope so. I don’t think you can narrowly point to one man, one company, or one administration and say, “Shame on you.” This has been allowed to go on for years and people figured, it’s only wrong if you get caught. Somebody out there screamed and waved their arms, trying to be heard as the voice of reason and was ignored as is usually the case in any disaster movie. Well, now the economy could be the basis for a new Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich film, in fact they’re probably sitting around trying to figure out how to work in huge explosions to take out their fictional Fannie Mae’s or Lehman Brothers. Be sure that Hans Zimmer is firing up the synthesizers trying to find the right set of chords to play as President Obama, as played by Will Smith or Jamie Fox, slowly stands up with that stern look on his face as the camera pans up and around him in slow motion. This is the moment you’ll be waiting for because that when he’ll get pissed and go on the offensive, taking out bankers left and right without having to reload. Once you wake up and realize that life is not a movie, albeit almost a bad one, you’ll go back to your job, look at other companies’ postings and wildly throw your resume about hoping that one of them is in better shape and willing to hire you.

If you think that throwing money at the problem will make it go away, then all you’ll do is live from bailout to bailout, stimulus to stimulus, and we’ll be right back where we started when this whole mess reared its ugly head. We all need to be aware that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. We need to change our course as individuals whether we make $500,000 or $50,000 a year. We need to realize that when it does get better, it won’t stay that away. We need to be ready for the next big hole or out of control locomotive, otherwise we’ll be saying “Would you like fries with that?” instead, “I’d like to supersize that.”

Get your own McScrewed shirt or magnet here.