Job Worship

So, the US job market is very slow right now, and experts are calling it “The Great Freeze.” All this while 730,000 federal employees are working without pay, while another roughly 670,000 have been furloughed. A friend of mine works in the Target corporate headquarters, a company which tomorrow will announce who on their staff will be included in a mass purge of 1800 individuals. Amazon may lay off 30,000 employees this week, with another 500,000 on the chopping block in the coming years to be replaced by AI.

Whenever I have complained to my family about my job — at least when I’ve had one — the response has always been, “Well, just be thankful that at least you have a job!” This while millions of folks on social media constantly share memes about how short weekends are, how much Mondays suck, and how we’re not supposed to be here on this earth with the SOLE purpose of paying bills.

We have absolutely created a cult of job worship in this country. Many don’t have jobs and have to spend countless hours fruitlessly competing with our fellow Americans to try to wrest away from each other the few positions that are actually available. And most of the rest of the workforce are trying to rationalize or understand the point of all of it anyway, as they spend most of their lives away from their spouses, children, and pets to go sit in an office with their “work family” which obviously takes precedence over actual family — all with the same ridiculous shared goal of just amassing as much money as possible to simply stay afloat and meet monthly expenses.

This is not sustainable for the mental health of the nation. And it’s starting to show more and more, as wages stagnate, unemployment rises, jobs disappear, and people feel trapped in a system they were born into with no say whatsoever. All while that old adage continues to prove more and more prescient: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

This is starting to feel a bit Hunger Games-ish, don’t you think? Since I have the inside track, I can tell you that all of the Target corporate staff were instructed to work remotely this week, so that termination notices will be received from home. Thanks for your time, but don’t bother coming back in.  I imagined a vignette in which all of their employees were gathered in a large room, with names being read aloud, and many tears, much Kleenex, and hugs of comfort being shared.

Can someone please explain to me the purpose of all this?

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