Saturday, March 06, 2004
Weekender Strikes a Sour Chord (check them out at www.weekender.com)
The Weekender has run an article about the people in the North East PA area including Hazleton who come off factory shift work and other sorts of night jobs and go to the bar. The Weekender's stand on this is that it is totally normal for a person working at these hours to enjoy a drink after work to relax. They even give suggested morning drinks.
Here is where I become enraged. There is no mention about how wrong this is. Not only is it wrong that bars can cater to this with relish; it is wrong that the Weekender plays on this as if it perfectly normal. It is not normal for a person to go to work when the sun sets and leave work as the sun rises glaring him in his exhausted face as he limps home from another freak-shift of twelve hours on his feet if he’s lucky! Gom knows! He’s been there. The Weekender and their interviewees brush it off: “It’s happy hour” for those that work different shifts. That’s where everyone is missing the boat. This isn’t happy hour at 7:30 AM! It’s time to numb yourself so you can wind down and get some sleep to be rested just enough to drag your tired ass back to your miserable job the next night! Why is it that no one is addressing the inhumanity of shift work or how the factory continues to upgrade its ridiculous schedules of 12 hour swing shifts and over time so that a person (remember we ARE still people) are bound to the factory and the line and the job? It all suits the production. None of this helps the common worker.
Alcoholism like this: Drinking your mind away to forget about the hellish shift you were just in is NOT happy hour! Not at 5 PM and certainly not at 7 AM! When you have to pour a quart of booze down your throat because of the job you just got through or smoke a pack and a half of cigarettes to bring yourself down there is a fundamental problem (Not with you the worker, but with the system). No one especially in the mornings goes from work to a Hazleton bar to just have a nice drink and relax. They go and get blasted, pickled, krunked and sometimes smashed beyond recognition.
This is the Coalcracker region, where people have been used and abused and exploited as virtual meat puppets or beasts of burden. They are used and discarded. And alcoholism is rampant because of this abuse of the labor force. You go anywhere outside the Hazleton and Northeast Region and you drink like you do here (like the old miners doing their shot and a beer) and people are horrified! You are a drunk! No, that’s not true, you are just coping with the insanity imposed on your life by the factories so graciously brought in by CANT DO; jobs that make your head spin, you arms tired and your lungs full of cigarette smoke. And that’s the privilege of working in the Hazleton Area. The only reason they don’t try and curb the drinking is that it is the only thing keeping the people around here from using their heads and rising up against the oppressive Haves! The drink keeps us numb. And there is No happy hour. Nothing has changed here since the coal barons ruled us…And no one can see that because their faces are jammed in a bottle trying to forget the night before on the assembly line.
As George Harrison once sang: “Think for yourself”
Bloody Mary (The Drink)
Also in conjunction with this rant is the PROPER mixing of a Bloody Mary. If you have to drink at 7 AM, you might so well have the right drink!
2 oz vodka
4 oz tomato juice or V-8 juice
Juice of a quarter of a lemon (and/or lime)
2 generous dashes of Worcestershire sauce
1 generous dash of Tabasco sauce
Black pepper
Add ice. Shake well. Garnish with a stalk of celery. Drink fast. Repeat.
Other morning drinks include: The Screwdriver, The Fuzzy Navel, and The Hairy Toenail
*See Old Mr. Boston’s for most of these and others. Drink responsibly (yeah right!)
The Weekender has run an article about the people in the North East PA area including Hazleton who come off factory shift work and other sorts of night jobs and go to the bar. The Weekender's stand on this is that it is totally normal for a person working at these hours to enjoy a drink after work to relax. They even give suggested morning drinks.
Here is where I become enraged. There is no mention about how wrong this is. Not only is it wrong that bars can cater to this with relish; it is wrong that the Weekender plays on this as if it perfectly normal. It is not normal for a person to go to work when the sun sets and leave work as the sun rises glaring him in his exhausted face as he limps home from another freak-shift of twelve hours on his feet if he’s lucky! Gom knows! He’s been there. The Weekender and their interviewees brush it off: “It’s happy hour” for those that work different shifts. That’s where everyone is missing the boat. This isn’t happy hour at 7:30 AM! It’s time to numb yourself so you can wind down and get some sleep to be rested just enough to drag your tired ass back to your miserable job the next night! Why is it that no one is addressing the inhumanity of shift work or how the factory continues to upgrade its ridiculous schedules of 12 hour swing shifts and over time so that a person (remember we ARE still people) are bound to the factory and the line and the job? It all suits the production. None of this helps the common worker.
Alcoholism like this: Drinking your mind away to forget about the hellish shift you were just in is NOT happy hour! Not at 5 PM and certainly not at 7 AM! When you have to pour a quart of booze down your throat because of the job you just got through or smoke a pack and a half of cigarettes to bring yourself down there is a fundamental problem (Not with you the worker, but with the system). No one especially in the mornings goes from work to a Hazleton bar to just have a nice drink and relax. They go and get blasted, pickled, krunked and sometimes smashed beyond recognition.
This is the Coalcracker region, where people have been used and abused and exploited as virtual meat puppets or beasts of burden. They are used and discarded. And alcoholism is rampant because of this abuse of the labor force. You go anywhere outside the Hazleton and Northeast Region and you drink like you do here (like the old miners doing their shot and a beer) and people are horrified! You are a drunk! No, that’s not true, you are just coping with the insanity imposed on your life by the factories so graciously brought in by CANT DO; jobs that make your head spin, you arms tired and your lungs full of cigarette smoke. And that’s the privilege of working in the Hazleton Area. The only reason they don’t try and curb the drinking is that it is the only thing keeping the people around here from using their heads and rising up against the oppressive Haves! The drink keeps us numb. And there is No happy hour. Nothing has changed here since the coal barons ruled us…And no one can see that because their faces are jammed in a bottle trying to forget the night before on the assembly line.
As George Harrison once sang: “Think for yourself”
Bloody Mary (The Drink)
Also in conjunction with this rant is the PROPER mixing of a Bloody Mary. If you have to drink at 7 AM, you might so well have the right drink!
2 oz vodka
4 oz tomato juice or V-8 juice
Juice of a quarter of a lemon (and/or lime)
2 generous dashes of Worcestershire sauce
1 generous dash of Tabasco sauce
Black pepper
Add ice. Shake well. Garnish with a stalk of celery. Drink fast. Repeat.
Other morning drinks include: The Screwdriver, The Fuzzy Navel, and The Hairy Toenail
*See Old Mr. Boston’s for most of these and others. Drink responsibly (yeah right!)
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
The Mistake: A Tale from the Files of CANT-DO “Based on an all too true story!”
The employee had gone through considerable hoops to get a job at the new cardboard factory because it seemed like a good gig. He was promised 8-hour shifts in this CANT DO land of insane 12-hour swing shifts and he was promised a good wage (by Hazleton poverty-level standards). The employee had another part-time job that was four hours a day in the morning, something he was sure he could manage with the addition of the 8-hour factory job.
However, his first night on the job he was in for another Hazleton Public Secret: All factories in Hazleton are slave-shops!
To the employees surprise the labor involved lifting continuously 100lbs or better of cardboard boxes on a shift with hours that could fluctuate anywhere from ten to fourteen per shift depending on what the supervisor decided he needed you to do in order to get his ‘numbers’ up. Didn’t matter that there were no breaks or any lunchtime. You rested if the machine broke down! The supervisor went around pretending he was a Bruce Lee hard guy while you slaved.
The employee decided that something was wrong. The next day he went directly to the main office to speak with a manager. The manager spied him with dislike and arrogance. Behind the manager was a shift supervisor standing vigil like a rabid dog with out a thought in his head that the company did not put there. The employee got right to the point.
The employee asked: “What happened to this being 8-hour shifts?”
The manager replied: “I think we’ve made a mistake.”
The employee asked: “What happened to breaks? And lunch?”
The manager replied: “I think we’ve made a mistake.” And he continued to say this like a mantra speaking more for the supervisor standing behind him then for any concerns of the employee before him. In fact, the manager was practically ignoring the employee and continued his mantra as he looked over papers on his desk.
Infuriated finally after several minutes of this insanity, the employee responded: “Why? Because I have a brain?”
This made the manager finally break out of the loop of: “I think we’ve made a mistake”
Now the manager said: “This meeting is over. Escort him off the premises.”
The employee was not aware this was a formal meeting although it had the air of tribunal with a firing squad. He was lead out by the supervisor who followed him ridiculously closely as they exited the building. Suddenly, as the sun was shining and the sky was blue, the employee felt a tremendous relief. His chains fell away. Even if he did need money, he at least had his soul back. The company and their lies and promises no longer bound him. The ex-employee raised up his freed hands to the sky and shouted: “Free!”
To this the supervisor was disgusted and growled: “Just leave!”
The moral of this story is never trust a factory, especially one brought to Hazleton by CANT DO. They lie to you, cheat you, trick you. And when you are all used up they dump you like so much trash, because they have another sheep lined up to take your place who is just as in need of money as you are.
Now here's a borrowed RANT from our good friends at the Institute Bulletin... 7/16/03
Well I'll be a son ov a bitch, oh wait...Penndot's gonna raise the speed limit on 924! At the request of Hazleton Chamber of Commerce members (and with no regard to all the working stiffs who drag their asses daily down that evil road), the limit will be raised from S. Broad to past I-81 15mph to 55! And up from there to the south Luz. county line a big 5mph to 45. I'm sure this is much to the chagrin of the State Police, who've probably black-balled the trooper whom ticketed the COC big whig and inadvertently raised the liberty of working class schleps who need a boot in their back to keep their place. How long do ya suppose it'll be before countless tax dollars are pissed away to study how this action has turned 924 into a road even Mad Max would avoid due to the speeding carnage?
--Thanx Raymond (make sure to check out the webring!)
The employee had gone through considerable hoops to get a job at the new cardboard factory because it seemed like a good gig. He was promised 8-hour shifts in this CANT DO land of insane 12-hour swing shifts and he was promised a good wage (by Hazleton poverty-level standards). The employee had another part-time job that was four hours a day in the morning, something he was sure he could manage with the addition of the 8-hour factory job.
However, his first night on the job he was in for another Hazleton Public Secret: All factories in Hazleton are slave-shops!
To the employees surprise the labor involved lifting continuously 100lbs or better of cardboard boxes on a shift with hours that could fluctuate anywhere from ten to fourteen per shift depending on what the supervisor decided he needed you to do in order to get his ‘numbers’ up. Didn’t matter that there were no breaks or any lunchtime. You rested if the machine broke down! The supervisor went around pretending he was a Bruce Lee hard guy while you slaved.
The employee decided that something was wrong. The next day he went directly to the main office to speak with a manager. The manager spied him with dislike and arrogance. Behind the manager was a shift supervisor standing vigil like a rabid dog with out a thought in his head that the company did not put there. The employee got right to the point.
The employee asked: “What happened to this being 8-hour shifts?”
The manager replied: “I think we’ve made a mistake.”
The employee asked: “What happened to breaks? And lunch?”
The manager replied: “I think we’ve made a mistake.” And he continued to say this like a mantra speaking more for the supervisor standing behind him then for any concerns of the employee before him. In fact, the manager was practically ignoring the employee and continued his mantra as he looked over papers on his desk.
Infuriated finally after several minutes of this insanity, the employee responded: “Why? Because I have a brain?”
This made the manager finally break out of the loop of: “I think we’ve made a mistake”
Now the manager said: “This meeting is over. Escort him off the premises.”
The employee was not aware this was a formal meeting although it had the air of tribunal with a firing squad. He was lead out by the supervisor who followed him ridiculously closely as they exited the building. Suddenly, as the sun was shining and the sky was blue, the employee felt a tremendous relief. His chains fell away. Even if he did need money, he at least had his soul back. The company and their lies and promises no longer bound him. The ex-employee raised up his freed hands to the sky and shouted: “Free!”
To this the supervisor was disgusted and growled: “Just leave!”
The moral of this story is never trust a factory, especially one brought to Hazleton by CANT DO. They lie to you, cheat you, trick you. And when you are all used up they dump you like so much trash, because they have another sheep lined up to take your place who is just as in need of money as you are.
Now here's a borrowed RANT from our good friends at the Institute Bulletin... 7/16/03
Well I'll be a son ov a bitch, oh wait...Penndot's gonna raise the speed limit on 924! At the request of Hazleton Chamber of Commerce members (and with no regard to all the working stiffs who drag their asses daily down that evil road), the limit will be raised from S. Broad to past I-81 15mph to 55! And up from there to the south Luz. county line a big 5mph to 45. I'm sure this is much to the chagrin of the State Police, who've probably black-balled the trooper whom ticketed the COC big whig and inadvertently raised the liberty of working class schleps who need a boot in their back to keep their place. How long do ya suppose it'll be before countless tax dollars are pissed away to study how this action has turned 924 into a road even Mad Max would avoid due to the speeding carnage?
--Thanx Raymond (make sure to check out the webring!)
