...and it's getting hot in here.
It's the hottest summer on record (so far), and everything's heating up!
In this week’s edition of “This Was a Real Job,” we crank up the AC at work for another week of hot takes and cold calculations.
As always I am AJ Freeman, and “This Was a Real Job.”
This Week in Work: Not a Bad Job
It’s summer for sure in the Northern Hemisphere…the temperatures have shot up, concert season is in full effect, the French have taken to the streets, and there’s a fresh batch of blockbuster remakes to forget were ever made by the end of the year.
This time of year always makes me particularly appreciative of my “real job.”
You see, long ago in freshman year of college, I chose the “retail” peasantry path over other common options such as “hospitality” and “customer service,” partially because anyone who has ever walked into a big box store knows that the employees there are under no obligation to provide either of the latter.
Other outstanding perks included the ability to work in an air-conditioned room (civilized storerunners will even allow you to sit behind the register!) as well as consistent access to top name brands at unbeatable prices. If you’re an underfunded college student and gotta scrounge up beer and book money in some way, you could do worse than selling overpriced t-shirts in a free t-shirt.
That perspective led me through a series of storefronts (after a brief detour through the legal profession) over the next 15 years or so all the way through to today, where I spend a few days every week in a Pacific Coast gift shop to supplement my regular income to levels where I can continue to eat multiple daily meals, as I have become quite accustomed to doing.
I suppose, in a way, this destination was preordained.
My father was a salesman. My father’s father was a salesman. His father’s father was sold by a salesman. Now, here I am selling my opinion to you in between selling sundries to the smoking public. It’s not what I dreamed of doing in my youth—kids don’t generally have posters of shopkeepers on their walls—but the summer season offers cause to consider my relative good fortune.
Like, I could go into a whole thing about the downtrodden workers of our world, but I suppose this at least masquerades as a workplace technology publication with a focus on industrialized Western societies. We know and accept that our comfortable lifestyles are built directly on exploitation…it’s why no one questions the fact that all the US’ fruit is picked by barely-paid migrant workers.
No one cares about some kid in a Funko Pop sweatshop all the way over there.
You, the target market for such a publication, want to hear about people just like you and me, folks that could pop up behind you in line at the supermarket or in the seat across from you on the train (as long as this person is able-bodied).
That’s why I’m here to tell you that despite my unremarkable salary, I’m actually fairly well-off among the regular workforce as well.
Here today, resting upon my buttocks in this perfectly temperate room, my thoughts turn to Eugene Gates, Jr., the former Texas postman who made the final delivery of his life last week. After 66 laps around our Sun, through rain, sleet, and snow, a 115-degree day on his regular route pushed the man’s sense of duty past his corporeal limits.
There he died, his last breath of life expended upholding the spoils of empire in the richest society in the recorded history of humankind…it may feel like a third-world country to many living in it, but the second-day shipping is guaranteed.
I don’t expect that this will be an isolated incident either, particularly in a jurisdiction that has seen the human need for water during hard labor become a point of legislative contention. It’s certainly not a problem limited to the crudely drawn, suspiciously straight borders of Texas either.
One of the largest labor disputes in US history is currently coming to a boil for related reasons, as workers at UPS prepare to strike if an agreement with company brass is out of reach in the very near future. The core concerns are the same as ever—pay, time off, pay, benefits, pay, pay—but another prominent point of protest is that many UPS delivery trucks apparently lack even a cab fan.
With temperatures across UPS’ primary service area not expected to decrease any time soon, it’ll be a pleasant surprise if no one gets cooked in one of those trucks (which should probably not be painted brown for heat retention reasons, but I just did a “Color Commentary” last week plus, y’know, branding uber alles) during what looks like both the hottest summer of our lives and the coolest for the rest of it.
So, with all this having been typed, if I have to either work or die, I definitely feel lucky to be in this comfortable environment so I don’t do both. The pay isn’t amazing (although the clientele is interesting), but there’s no room for a robot in here plus the job’s demands on my time and energy are minimal…when I am on the job I don’t feel dead, inside or otherwise.
It’s a benefit that many better-paid gigs are not equipped to offer.
Maybe Update Your Resume: Pizza Robot?
In a rare reversal of the trends that define this publication, an organization’s gamble on costless labor failed to deliver immediate dividends.
After raising nearly 500 million dollars in the kind of orgiastic capital venture that results when you corral more dollars than sense into the same room, alleged tech firm Zume spent 5 years failing to replace the labor of a 15-year-old with their first-ever job.
Touted as a disruption to Big Pizza, the system was never made viable—apparently it had trouble cheesing pizzas on a moving vehicle—although the principals at Zume somehow retained enough capital to pivot to [checks notes] sustainable packaging in 2020. Finding similar results with the new business model, the company became insolvent and was forced to cease operations.
Now, my expertise in both engineering and business administration are both fairly limited, but I’m pretty sure if you start off trying to reinvent the production of a food product, fail at that, then can’t even devise a better way to make the package it comes in, you may be short on practical experience as well. Hell, I’m pretty sure I could manage to figure out cardboard.
Still, I have no doubt that the big cheese at Zume wil be just fine….California state records indicate that the company recieved and was forgiven nearly $9 million in PPP loans before laying off much of their workforce in 2020, and so those public funds have in all likelihood been successfully privatized.
The system works.
However, my concern is for the future prospects of that pizzabot. Once promised such a bright future in the foodservice industry, now relegated to the e-waste bin of history, career prospects for Zume’s automated pizzamaker are cloudy indeed.
The pizza robot will likely have to find another job where most who have had their professions anacrhonized do: as a quirky niche service for some rich idiot. They’ll throw it in the backyard Gravitron for a laugh, watch sauce and cheese splatter the entire veranda, and have their human servants clean up while they look on from a pool full of spring water ice cubes on a scorching summer day.
Hey, people are giving Fyre Festival another shot…maybe awful is the new great.
Cannot Be Unseen: The Power of a Promo
Known in some circles as “cutting a promo,” the art of oratory is one of the most potent ever devised by humanity.
As our history classes have made clear, the right set of syllables can convincingly highlight the positive aspects of a seemingly unpalatable concept, catalyze ordinary people to become better versions of themselves or even inspire them to follow their flag of choice into a hail of gunfire.
Former US President Barack Obama is perhaps unequalled as a modern master of the art. Whatever you may think of the person or his policies, no one denies that the man can cut a promo like few other human beings ever to draw breath. It’s a nearly indispensable element of his most famous former gig.
It is in this public-facing capacity that I recently encountered his perspective, one-on-one with comedian Hassan Minhaj in a wide-ranging discussion touching on pop culture, depression, and relevantly, climate change.
In his signature measured cadence, Obama happened to mention that in his view, the climate targets set out in recent international accords—the ones purported to keep our planetary heating at somewhat habitable levels over the coming decades—are for all intents and purposes completely out of reach.
According to the former President, best case scenarios after we “sail past” (Barry’s words, not mine) the oft-referenced 1.5 Celsius threshhold include “possibly” limiting the damage to 2.5 degrees over the coming years.
Here is a singular human being with access to information that most people on The Planet could barely conceptualize informing the public in no uncertain terms that the Interesting Times in which we live will only become more so.
Now, of course, anyone who has been paying any attention at all isn’t surprised at all by this revelation…a complete list of all the immediate tangible actions taken by major players on the world stage to avoid the worst effects of climate breakdown could be inscribed on a grain of rice, provided there are any left to spare on arts n crafts amid projected global crop shortages.
No, what actually sort of surprised me was the comments on the video.
I know, I know…even reading the comments on a YouTube video was a questionable undertaking…but for me, each comment is written by a living, breathing person (or at least, the vast majority of them). These people vote, drive, and reproduce. One day, I will encounter them in the streets, on one side or the other. I should at least work to gain a bit of insight on how their minds work.
Nevertheless, I found myself absolutely floored by the commentary. Most were just very happy to hear from him for any reason, wistfully yearning for those olden days of yore where propaganda was more polished and the quiet parts were inaudible. The powerful man’s dire prognistications for our shared future were entirely ignored. This, valued reader, is the power of a promo skillfully cut.
Now, this is obviously as apolitcal a publication as the next. I am not here to speak either for or against Obama as a political figure specifically. He projects likeability…very cool, hip, and cultural. That’s his gimmick, and it’s a solid one.
Still, the demonstrable reality is that Barack Obama could deliver a singing telegram informing them that central air units on schools, libraries, transportation terminals, and other public buildings were being upgraded this summer to blow out raw fentanyl and get a decent pop from many people.
Hell, I’m not sure that’s not what he did…different nouns, same subject.
If the same words, or personalized synonyms thereof, had been spoken by some frantic scientist, they would not have gotten over at all. More likely booed out of the building with the audience at home finding something else on TV.
…but you don’t get the job “President of the United States of Fucking America” without constantly keeping in mind that truism we were all taught way back in kindergarten: “It’s not always what you say, but how you say it.”
Hope Spot: Spain Gets Serious About the Climate
Finally, after a week of particularly hot takes, we follow tradition here On the Job by reaching out for the cooling balm of hope in our closing segment.
This week hope springs from Madrid, as the Spanish government has as of this month officially established its new Ministerio de Agricultura, Alimentación y Medio Ambiente, which I will here Anglicize as the “Department of Climate Change and Agriculture” because I am a writer so I get to do things like that.
This newest office of the federal government will be tasked specifically with tracking heating patterns across the EU member nation in an effort to determine the impact of an unpredictable environment on the country’s agricultural development. After a year (2022) which produced the country’s hottest summer on record as well as its third-lowest rainfall total, the necessity became clear.
Although it is the first of its kind for a high-profile nation, it should certainly not be the last, as climate change is also entirely apolitical and so is expected to exercise limited recognition of national borders and other geopolitical fictions.
In any event, even the simple act of creating such a department dedicated to this narrow, all-encompassing area of study shows more commitment to the future than displayed in much of the world.
It remains to be see what, if any impact Spain’s new Department of Climate Change will have in our struggle to stave off the complete breakdown of our biosphere within current human lifespans…but hope can easily be found in the fact that some of the most serious people in all of Spain are on the case.
Ideally, it’s a trend that goes global.