Everything at my location has slowed down so much that tasks which took an hour now take two. To make it worse, the new hires we're getting don't seem to want to learn how things are done. I'm not trying to blame anyone, but I'm curious if this is a general problem across the company or if my store was just unlucky. Is this what it's like everywhere?
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The beginning of the end
First some ‘backstory’ on the origins of the economic quagmire that laid the foundations for your question. In 1971 president Richard M. Nixon removed the gold standard for the United States dollar. This led to back-to-back recessions during the Seventies. Adding even more financial misery was the *1973 Arab-Israeli War which led to OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) imposing an embargo on oil exports to the United States of America and other Israeli allies. Fast forward to presidents Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), “Get big government off our backs” (middle class Americans mistakenly thought he was referring to them) & George H. W. Bush (1989-1993) “Cut the capital gains tax”. These two administrations gave the US 12 years of unprecedented spending for the military and the ‘private sector’ (Cronyism nicknamed ‘Reaganomics’). After suffering decades of abuse the United States economy was in bad shape. Late in the Bush presidency and early in the Clinton administration, believe or not, Congress actually did their job and worked together to place spending caps on the budget. Now much of the federal money that used to go into the pockets of special interest groups was now redirected and reinvested back into the pockets of the true generators of wealth: the taxpaying businesses and consumers. This resulted in the longest postwar expansion in American history; the ‘Go-Go nineties’. Jobs were everywhere, startup businesses were popping up at an alarming rate. The Home Depot, started in 1978, saw substantial growth because of the booming housing market.
Now here’s where the reason for your question comes into reality. Unfortunately at the same time, Wall Street was busy removing the laws that were put in place after 1929 (remember what happened in that year?) to prevent them from repeating that disastrous event. So after the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 (Prince was right), Wall Street invaded corporate boards like a virulent, metastasizing, CIA-engineered, fast-acting cancer. However, not everyone was on board with this new state of affairs*.
Whew! That was a lot of exposition, but absolutely necessary to accurately answer your query. What has happened over the past 55+ years is that your job and others like it have been reconfigured for the ‘new economy’. Old school business practices tested and proven over thousands of years have now been replaced by a single Wall Street doctrine: 'Buy low, sell high'.
Low: Hire the least amount of people, give them minimal training (Time is money and training needs time), and pay the lowest wages possible to keep them returning to work. Remove and/or reduce benefits and incentives (healthcare, vacation, bonuses, etc.).
High: Layoff and/or terminate as many personnel as you can and load their duties onto the remaining staff to complete in addition to their own work. Instead of managers, hire ‘overseers’ (hypocrites who demand you toil in tasks they never have, would not and/or could not do) who bully personnel into compliance for less money and will not give their employers any empathetic pushback on behalf of the workers.
In summation: Hire the cheapest and pay them the least. And the purpose for all this? To keep the stock price up by any means necessary, even you have to cannibalize the company (or nation) to achieve this. To the reprobates of Wall Street, the NASDAQ is GOD and they are fervent, religious fanatics. And you? You are nothing but a bunch of heretics and ‘useless eaters’ that need to be excommunicated (fired).
And when the workers eventually complain? Tell them they need 'coaching'*.
The United States economy has withstood many downfalls, disasters and calamities. And the reason for that is simple: the customer and trade always came first. That natural order has now been usurped. The economy is now based on shareholders and investment banking. One generates wealth, the other manipulates it (OPM=Other People's Money)**. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. American corporations are working to keep Wall Street profitable, not to serve the American consumer public. Think about this the next time you reflect on your job or the economy. They’re both bass-ackwards (reread paragraph 3). Remember: the reason the Glass-Steagall Act and others similar to it were enacted was to prevent a future 1929. And when it was repealed, what did we get in return? 2008. The only way out of this mess is to once again put Main Street (Congress working for the American people) ahead of Wall Street.
Who needs te------ts when you’ve got these clowns running your country?
*=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/oil-embargo
**=https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/glass-steagall-act, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_legislation, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/071603.asp
***=Film ‘Wall Street’ by Oliver Stone, 1987, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_(1987_film),
Search: japan t. boone pickens
hostile takeover
corporate raider
**=https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/reprobate (Very accurate description of the parasite class)
*=1984 is a 1949 novel by George Orwell about a dystopian future where reality is brutally countered by the psychotic ‘Big Brother’.
”War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Quote from the book.
‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoDOazaijYY
The ‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’ scene is standard practice in the American workplace. Just ask Boeing.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1124327/ (different topic, but relevant nonetheless: Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq. Iran?)
**=Search: wall street criminal
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/09/criminals-of-wall-street.asp
The only reason they were prosecuted and jailed is that they were not well-connected enough to beat the rap. ‘It’s not what you know but who you know’.
P.S.: Here are the true owners of Home Depot. Scroll down to ‘Key Shareholders of The Home Depot’.
https://matrixbcg.com/blogs/owners/homedepot
And here is Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, explaining how woke will be ‘forced’ on us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwwN5kwjAtQ