Feb. 2016

 

At work, I try to fill the shelves as quickly as I can because da clock is ticking faster and faster to kick-off time to Superbowl 50. Da Supah Bowl is only a few days away, there is much talk about it and lots of food shopping in the supermarket for the upcoming football game to beat all football games. It’s my 4th week at the local supermarket. It’s my new part-time job. I work hard expecting a good evaluation for my first month of probation. I am hoping to pass the 3 month probationary period and look forward to the good health benefits of a large corporate chain store. My pay is only $9.50 an hour, but this is why I work two, sometimes three part-time jobs to make ends meet. My wage is good, considering the minimum hourly wage is $8.50. Like so many other Kauaians I accept the high cost of living and poor pay in paradise. In Hawaii, $10 can only buy a half gallon of milk and 4 rolls of toilet paper and/or a loaf of bread. Instead of complaining, I contentedly fill the shelves with chips and cookies. It’s fun observing many young families filling their carts with hot dogs, chips, soda and beer. The frozen apple pie shipped in from California looks like it’s selling too. I smile at the children pulling on their mothers’ blouses and begging for cookies and candies.

I think about my youth in the 1970’s. Long ago, in college, I enjoyed studying feminism. It saddened me momentarily when I remembered a telling statistic of violence against women increasing after the Super Bowl. It was and still is an unpublicized and little known fact. I learned this during my youthful 20’s and doubt that this tragic statistic has changed in my near 60’s. I will be 59 years old in March.

Not many are interested in feminism nowadays. While the study, knowledge and wisdom of feminism has faded, the old patriarchal sport of football increases in its popularity and near media hysteria of celebrity hype and consumerism intermingled with countless sports statistics of team success and failures. I learn this from what I have been hearing and observing in the store while the clock ticks closer and closer to Super Bowl Sunday. The stacks of 12pack beers keep getting taller and taller each day.

Millions of dollars in advertising entice millions of American consumers to buy more beer, eat more hot dogs, wear tighter jeans, buy anything and everything to win and succeed in a world of competition, profit and consumerism. To lose is to suffer defeat, to fail is to lose your dreams, your entitled piece of the American Pie. The media festival of 21st century technology glorifies the combative, violent sport of super testostorone charged athletes while omitting the bone crushing, brain destroying outcome of lifelong physical and mental injury. The inevitable fate of rich, famous young athletes who will live the life of anonymous disabled, suffering old men at middle age is left untold . The severe consequences of irrevocable damage to the personal health of athletes and the damage to families and communities because of increasing violence in homes and society is denied and ignored.

Da Supah Bowl can never be filled with enough dollars to fill the greed of corporate shareholders. There never seems to be enough bags of chips and jars of dip to fill the hunger for fabricated dreams of fame and fortune, wealth and power, eternal youth and beauty. I wonder how many pieces of American Pie can the Super Bowl hold. I imagine millions upon millions never filling it up because it’s all a dream.

Kauaians are no different from the rest of American football fans, except for the geological distance from the continental U.S. about 2000 miles and approximate 5hr flight to California. The internet instantly connects us to the world of most recently publicized statistics regarding the most successful number of football passes, touchdowns and sexual conquests of your favorite team members. All the thousands of football fans on tiny Kauai will join with all the millions of Americans covering the globe screaming for their favorite team and guzzling beers, hot dogs and chips.

I personally know this because I am having trouble keeping the shelves stocked fast enough before my shift ends. The snack shelves are emptying faster and faster the closer it gets to Super Bowl Sunday. Yesterday, I made the mistake of working 10 minutes over my scheduled shift. I pressed my index finger against the electronic time clock identifying my fingerprint which entered my exit time into the national data system. When the typical message appeared: “Goodbye ,” 4:40pm flashed by, little did I know, a few minutes of what I considered diligent effort would trigger a series of events which would end my employment. I had never worked for a national corporate company before. I was about to learn about da digital Corporate Clock ticking to the heartless beat of profit.

Yesterday,  my name was called over the store intercom,  I thought, “Oops! Did I forget today was my one month evaluation meeting.” As I sat with the management staff, I felt comfortable and anticipated a positive evaluation.

WRONG! My numbers were low. According to my statistics my scores averaged 47% too low to meet corporate standards. Apparently, my scores for attendance, dress code, attitude, courtesy toward customers and co-workers were high, but I was filling the shelves too slowly. My production numbers were low and worst of all I clocked out 10 minutes too late(trying to finish filling all the shelves). All this added up to my being laid off, not “fired,” technically called “temporary suspension” meaning the company will call me back (maybe) to work, but don’t hold my breath. Well, for a moment my breath was knocked out of me.

I did my best to explain why it was difficult to keep up with the demands of stocking while accomplishing other required tasks and courteously answering customer questions. It did not matter. The numbers and time on the clock were the only facts necessary for a positive evaluation. “My number was up,” and another digitized replacement with better numbers and no clock “infractions” would succeed where I failed. It hurt. For the first time I knew the pain of being treated like a number not a human being.

It was weird. I knew I was hurt and in pain, but I couldn’t feel anything. It didn’t feel like the heat of insult, or burn of injustice, but more like a deep paper cut across the throat leaving me numb. I couldn’t tell where the pain came from at first. I wasn’t bleeding or burned just strangely defenseless, powerless and hurt. The numbers cut me out of the system , a digit dropped from the files and it was over. Time was up, my number was up, the clock turned me in and there was no mercy or recourse. The numbers didn’t care, the clock had no soul, the silent digital ticking and clicking had no heartbeat, no Aloha. No Aloha scores for kindness, consideration, effort or patience. No digital values for generosity of spirit were enumerated. The human heart had been deleted from the profit margin. There was no room for error or redemption.

Corporate America now dominated the Kauai workplace for the everyday, ordinary laborer who stocks your grocery shelves and wraps your spam musubi       ( rice ball). Work had been digitized by the corporate Clock and lost its dignity and intrinsic value. Human beings now worked for the Clock quickly erasing the joy and self-respect of honest human labor. It’s as if the human hand and human heart had been reduced to a single digitized fingerprint. Like da Supah Bowl statistics, da fingah became a numbah entered into a massive data system scoring wins and losses. Da profit game moves fast. Loss is analyzed and cut quickly.

Technology had become a tool for the 21st century plantation. The digitized laborer had become a number to be deleted and replaced whenever the system required it. By the tick of the clock and the click of a digit, profit margins were now electronically determined by the demands of an insatiable consumer culture. Chains were locked around fingertips and a gentler humanity was lost insidiously, instantly, almost invisibly.

Yet it is a better plantation then the sugar plantations of my grandparents generation at the turn of the 20th century. The air conditioning is nice and the health care benefits are good. For many new immigrants in Hawaii, this opportunity is the promise of the American pie for their children. While they themselves must work at the low level of unskilled labor, it provides what their families need. If their number fits the system, then it is a good 1st, 2nd, 3rd or even 4th job. Corporate America has landed on the shores of Kauai and their numbers are increasing.

Visitors flock here to slow down and enjoy a slower pace of island life. We Kauaians who work for the Clock, run faster and faster, as its tickity-tick, clickity-click quickens to the pace of increasing profit margins gradually devouring our humanity one tickity-click at a time.

My fingertip was chained to a clock and I could barely feel it. It happened so fast like clocking in and out. When I walked out of that meeting, instantly out of a job, I instantly clocked out, “Good-Bye.” My head had been axed. Yet, it only felt like a weird paper cut across my throat. I drove home without a head and did not notice it until I looked into my bathroom mirror. Something was missing. I found it rolling around the floor of my car. Hadn’t the slightest clue how it got there. Maybe the bagboy had pity on me and put it in my car. He had already seen many a headless former employee fumbling around the parking lot looking for their heads. I stuck it back on with my unspilled tears. Wondering why I couldn’t really feel the pain, or cry, I fell into a restless sleep.

When I awoke this morning, I realized once again, failure was a blessing. Over a lifetime of little success, failure had become a familiar friend. Without any effort from me, freedom from the Clock was won simply because I failed the system. I was like the proverbial white rat in the experimental maze who failed the test. I failed to find my way out of the maze in time to get my cracker crumb and simultaneously trigger the buzzer at the set time allowed to finish. I was unlike the successful rats who finished the maze on time and even faster each time thereafter. Each time, these successful rats won an even bigger and better cracker crumbs and rang the buzzer like crazy.

At breakfast with my dear friend and spiritual counselor Reverend Daphna, I shared laughter, good food and good company. She helped me discover the humor found in human contradiction and joy in God’s mysterious grace. I wasn’t going to tell her I was axed from my new job, but I needed to know if I glued my head on right. Who else could I ask? She smiled her generous smile and carefully adjusted my slightly crooked head. She reminded me of a favorite quote from a Christian Author, Richard Rohr: “Nothing is lost in the great undeserved economy of Grace.” Yes, not even my poor confused head.

I told her how strange the meeting felt. Although confused and disappointed, I did not feel anger toward the management. I now recognized the odd paper cut like scars they carried, but somehow saved their heads from corporate decapitation. After sharing my story of spiritual success and clarity which was first experienced as my personal sense of human failure and confusion, I could finally feel my pain and hurt. I saw it reflected in the kindness of Reverend Daphna’s eyes. Her faith, good humor and healing nature restored me. The weird irony of it all finally made sense. I could feel my whole body and soul again. We also shared blueberry pancakes, a spinach, mushroom, and cheddar cheese omelet, piles of slightly crispy home fries with ketchup. Lots of hot coffee for the Reverend and Chamomile tea for me all helped too. Nothing like breakfast with a good friend to stimulate an appetite after decapitation, especially when she fixes your head back on right.

When the Reverend said Grace over breakfast, I silently added thank you for failure and success, peace and forgiveness, friendship and pancakes.

I also thanked the Buddha for the story of the rice bowl. When he was starving himself a young girl gave him a bowl of rice. She taught him the true path to peace and enlightenment. It was simple kindness.

Mahalo ke Akua, Thank You God… Amen