Outsourced

Today, my wife was told, "Oh, by the way, we're outsourcing your job in two months to Schaumburg, Illinois. If you want the job there, you'll have to re-apply for it."

What the f--k?

To say my wife is distraught is an understatement. No specific time frame given. Just, "oh, we'll move your job at some point in the future, with just enough time to fill you with dread and uncertainty". It gives you f--k-all time to prepare for that, and it throws all of our plans into a trashcan. Thanks for nothing, Unnamed Idiot Company. (Oh, the stories my wife could tell about trying to deal with these legacy processes!)

Of course, Friday is always the day they tell you this stuff. They figure they can get four productive units out of you the rest of the week, and if hearing the news curtails your mood severely, well, it's the weekend anyway. And of course, they f--k that up, too because now my wife has no incentive to provide anything beyond the bounds of the most minimal of competencies for the remaining tenure of her employment. As for giving notice when she finds a new job, well, sucks to be you, Former Employer.

I have been thinking about the whole world of employment recently. Note that I said "employment" and not "work".

employment: the condition of a contract - implied or written - wherein labor is theoretically exchanged for wages, with the hours or tenure of the labor understood by both parties. This differs from a job, wherein the contract is one which is legally recognized and which offers protections to both sides.

work: the condition of implying effort - physical or mental - to a task, either self-determined or determined by others.

There is no correlation between a job and work. There might be one between employment and work, but one of low value.

Back in ye old days, a job was something that was very difficult to lose or to be moved. This was an implicit contract betwen the employer and the employee. "If you do the things I ask you to, and I'm satisfied with them at a minimal level, I will keep you here as long as you want to be here." It was probably the closest thing to what the Brits call "the Dole" that a capitalist society would ever get; almost guaranteed employment. For employees to labor for thirty, forty or even fifty years at the same company was not uncommon.

Enter the 80s. (Really, if you think of it, probably the 70s.) I don't know the exact reasons for it, but there was a seismic shift in how employees were treated. Now, they were to be treated like disposable commodities, downsized or rightsized or otherwise euphemistically fired, shifted, or outsourced. It took about 20 years for the employees to catch up and treat employment not as a possible lifetime contract, but a contract of convenience, one to be disposed of whenever one felt that there was a better opportunity somewhere else. Of course, this merely gave the employers the justification to downgrade the status of the "ungrateful" employees even more.

As I believe, "Office Space is a documentary, but Mike Judge never intended it to be." The solution for his main character was to become a contract employee, building houses for his neighbor. I wonder how that's working out for him with the housing crisis.

I've never been great at offering condolences. Even offering sympathy, I find it hard to think of things to say. What I'd really want to do is punch the guy in the nutsack who called my wife to tell her this, but it wouldn't do to have both of us potentially unemployed.