The Adventures Of A Uncommon Man

Chapter 10 A Change Is As Good As The Rest

By the time I had reached the canteen, my nerves were a complete, jangled mess. My thoughts were racing and my heart was beating fast again, so hard in fact, that it felt like it was going to explode out of my chest. I got myself a strong, instant coffee and sat down at a table in the corner, staring down into the steaming hot, frothy liquid, wondering how things had truely gotten so bad. For the last couple of years I had been coming to work, doing only what was required of me, collecting that pay check at the end of the month to pay my bills and existing debts as well as supporting my wife. Even though the job was a boring one that did not fill me with any sense of joy or creative fulfilment, it was a job and the money it paid, even though it was crap in everyone's estimation, was enough to pay little extravagant lifestyle and cover the payments on my bills and debts. I was still able to eat out once or twice a month with my wife and treat myself to the odd PlayStation portable game or Google and ITunes cards for my phone and IPod. Now, with the threat of redundancy, all of that was being turned on its head. My world truely felt like it was collapsing around my ears.
There were over a dozen workers in the canteen. It was unsurprising how many of them had not returned to their offices and workstations. Many of them, like myself, were in a state of shock and disbelief. These were people who had families to support, mortgages to pay, bills and some even large debts like loans. They had all relied on their jobs as a means of income, a way to fund what they felt was a decent lifestyle. To have that turned inside out was gut wrenching. All of a sudden, the future looked uncertain for them, a dark place where in their minds, they were predicting negative outcomes.
Josh sat down next to me with a mug of steaming hot coca. He had my list in one hand and was studying it with great interest. When he saw the long face I wore, he grinned across at me.
"A change is as good as a the rest," he said taking a sip from his chocolate drink.
"I can't believe Bradshaw has done this," I said to him. "He's not only humiliated me, but he's eviscerating my entire world from the inside out. Did you see the cold look on his face? The way he read that speech like he was reading a weather report. He doesn't care for his workforce and we are the ones who break our backs, bend over backwards for that jerk? The management are just cold, ruthless people whose sole job is the advancement of the company. Fuck the workers!"
Josh put my list to one side and looked across at me as I nervously put a shaky hand on my cup and brought it to my mouth. "I did tell you months ago that times are changing," he said to me. "The economy might have picked up in leaps and bounds since the 2008 banking crash, but you had to ask yourself why people still thought we were stil in a recession."
"You said it was because the jobs have not come back," I said, recalling the conversation. "Before 2008, you said that big corporations worldwide were wanting to get rid of the deadweight in their companies and 2008 was like the tide washing in. It gave then the excuse to fire their employees in the hundreds and replace them with either technology or cheaper versions of their previous workforce."
Josh smiled as if he was pleased I had remembered that particular conversation. "And its happening on a global scale. What you heard just now is an example of a changing world. Why do you think so many companies are outsourcing their work to countries like India, China?"
"Because the labour is cheap."
"And why do think the temp industry has exploded? You've seen it yourself here over recent years, the use of agency staff on temporary contracts. Companies now want maximum efficiency while at the same time being able to get away with paying less or nothing at all."
"It's greed!" I said, feeling my anger flare up inside me. "Fucking people like Bradshaw who only care about looking out for number 1!"
Josh simply shrugged at my outburst. "Can you blame them? If you only knew what it was like to run a business in a world where the competition was brutal, you'd understand why being tough and focused on the company's survival is vital to them."
"And what about the rest of us?" I said to Josh. "The people who are about to lose their jobs?"
"Do you want to lose your job?" enquired Josh.
I shook my head obviously. "Hell I don't! But by the way things are going, I think in the next year or so , I'll be out of a job on the dole, collecting benefit payments!"
"That could be possible," agreed Josh. "But the fact is that you are an intelligent enough man to have seen the changes occurring. The Glockspiel System has been a project that has been in the pipeline for years and the management were going to make it a reality one day, to automate the whole factory. With that knowledge, it should have occurred to you that maybe your job is not safe and maybe you should do something about it...But like everyone else, you made yourself comfy in your role. You hoarsed around, squandering your precious money thinking it was going to last forever. But news flash dude, it wasn't."
I folded my arms and sat back in my chair, trying to keep my anger and frustration in check. "So what should I have done then?" I asked him in a challenging way.
"You should have sat down and asked yourself, really asked yourself what you wanted to do with your life instead of settling for less. Then focused on those goals and made a plan for yourself on how you were going to get there. You should have invested some of that money you were earning here on yourself, not just your future, but on your education and training if there were certain skills you needed to succeed at what you wanted to do. You remember I said that if you wanted to earn a living you only needed to work on your job, but if you wanted to be a success..."
"That I needed to work on myself," I said, finishing his sentence.
"You knew this but you did nothing about it," he pointed out. "You were too busy partying, being lazy, spending money on useless craps you didn't need, wasting too much of your precious time. Now life's caught up with you and like a dog with sharp teeth, it's come up and bit you up the arse."
I didn't say anything about this. I was at a loss to say anything to this. I guess Josh was right, that it was my fault that I had squandered my time and money thinking that I was safe in a simple day job. But that is what you get when you depend on a employer to make or break your day. Looking at everyone else I could see just how hopelessly dependant everyone was on their jobs. They get so comfy with being spoonfed a reasonable wage that they take it all for granted. They bank everything, sometimes their entire lives on a single job to keep them going, even going as far as doing crazy things like myself, taking out a credit card or loan and building up debts, some even foolishly living beyond their means. The fact was, as Josh had so rightly put it, that you could no longer depend on an employer to provide you everything you need. The economy had changed, and had remained forever changed since the banking crash of 2008. The systems so many of us depend on were never going to last forever. Corporations and big major international companies were only focused on survival, maximizing their profits to survive in tough, cutthroat business world. And they wanted to do it by giving less to the people that worked for them. I once read in an article in a magazine called Focus that within the next decade or so, all production factories across the world would be automated, or at least have machines making the job of human labor that much easier. It even mentioned that the creation of AI was just around the corner and that humans were slowly becoming obsolete. It sounded like something out of The Terminator films and even more disturbing was the fact that many billionaires were spending millions to have their consciousness put inside machines. Now I do recall a film called Transcendence with Johnny Depp which covered this subject and the whole idea of people transferring their consciousness to a machine was something straight out of a science fiction film. But apparently it was science fact and it just proved that what I had just heard from that meeting proved that the very jobs we depend upon are now slowly dissapearing.
"So you saying I should start my own business?" I asked Josh. I heard him sigh lightly to himself.
"If you want to survive in these changing times you need to change the way you look and see things."
He tapped the side of his head. "You need to change what is up here. Make it really clear on what you really want and just go for it. The time for being lazy and complacent is over dude. Complaining that you never have enough, that you are not being paid enough won't change your situation one iota. You got to get your shit together, focus on making yourself great, thinking like a winner, being productive and in demand. Because if you carry on doing what you have been doing all along, you will fail dude."
I nodded as if understanding. What Josh was saying though was doing little to calm my nerves, ease my growing concerns over my future. But I knew that what he was saying was true.
"You said I had very little time," I mentioned to him. "You care to elaborate on that?"
Josh leaned back in his chair and looked at me with narrow eyes. "How is your wife?" he suddenly asked me.
"She came in late last night, but she was at no night club," I told Josh. "I found that strange because she always likes clubbing. Lately though, she's been quite distant, sometimes bothered. You don't seriously think...She did say she had something to tell me."
"No," was Joshs reply. "What I do know is that your wife's explanation will surprise you in more ways than you can imagine."