Quiet Quitting

As opposed to noisy quitting?

Image by Alexa from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man." -Benjamin Franklin

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I get it, I do. I quietly quit more than one of the jobs I had prior to retirement, but "quiet quitting" sounds appalling to people with good work ethics. 

{Just how many jobs did you have?}

In my defense, Dana, I had a good work ethic. I never quietly quit before coming to the conclusion that trying to be a conscientious employee at a given job was pointless. Even when I was in my hippie with a job stage (long story) I tried to be as good an employee as was practicable. 

Comic Interlude:

Me: "Hey, _______, I hear ya got a new job."

Unnamed acquaintance: "Yup, minimum wage and all you can steal." 

While I didn't/don't approve of that attitude it's still a great line. 

I never quietly quit just because of the nature of the work itself. As has been said, that's why they call it work. If it's that awful, you need to actually quit and find another job. Note to Stickies: I highly recommend securing the next job before quitting the current one.  

I did quietly quit once or twice while looking for another job once I realized there was just no way to make the situation work. Also, I occasionally took on a job out of sheer necessity, when times were tough, knowing that I'd be outta there ASAP so you could argue that I quietly quit the day I was hired. 

But I never ghosted anyone. I gave as much notice as I could. I apologized.

{What about the time you worked as a busboy for nine days for that psycho that ran the dining room of a Holiday Inn like a female version of Joseph Stalin?}

I ghosted her out of fear for my life. I hope she's long gone or doesn't read this. Shudder...

Sometimes the boss is so incompetent that it's not even possible to manipulate him/her/them into doing their job. You may need to quit quietly while looking for another job and struggling to keep your current boss from screwing even that up.

Some advice for Millies, I'm a Boomer, a population cohort often under attack by succeeding generations. I'm told that many unemployed/underemployed Millies are counting on inheriting some of the wealth my generation has stashed away. Sadly, this isn't something I need to concern myself with. 

Careful, If you plan on killing someone you need to be that much more careful if you stand to inherit anything. The more dough involved, the closer the Homicide Division is likely to look. A given Millennial should be patient and let nature take its course... perhaps with a judiciously applied nudge. 

I'm willing to wager that the parents of most Boomers didn't tell their offspring to find and follow their passion, mine didn't. I think that an often somewhat less-than-ideal childhood, the Great Depression, and a worldwide hot war followed by a worldwide cold one tended to dissolve the stars in their eyes.

I don't think they imagined a future that included an ever-expanding welfare state financed by an ever-expanding national debt, or the decline of a moral consensus that included a work ethic based on paying your own way to maintain your pride and dignity — and three hots and a cot.

I learned the hard way that most people are unlikely to be able to pursue their passion at work. But if you work hard you can build the best life possible under your circumstances, and with a little luck, you'll have a few bucks left over to pursue your passion on your own time.     

The current "quiet quitting" kerfuffle is a new wrinkle for which the wrinkling Boomers are partially responsible. Notions like follow your passion, you can have it all, etceterall, began with the Boomers. We meant well, but it turns out that most people won't make the big bucks, or even adequate bucks, by following their passion.

Trying to compete at work with those who seem to thrive on "hustle culture" sucks as much nowadays as much as it did back in the day but the answer isn't quiet quitting, embracing mediocrity, and hoping for the best. 

Most people can't/won't have it all and chasing that notion is too much like work. But you can figure out what you really want (which will change as you live your life), what you really need to do to survive, and chase your dream — while taking care of business and making the world a better place just by doing your j.o.b., and doing it well,

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Feel free to love, hate, or troll me on my Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays, other things other days. Cranky don't tweet, but in light of recent events, I'm considering it... Go Elon, go!

Baltimore (Or Less)

 The more things change...

Image by Bruce Emmerling from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"When it comes to Baltimore I want to say that it's actually a lot worse than what you see in 'The Wire.'" -Gervonta Davis

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I've never been to Baltimore, Maryland and I don't even know anyone from Baltimore, Maryland. But like all fans of The Wire, which I've recently rewatched, and anyone paying even minimal attention to the state of the republic, I'm aware that its current reputation isn't the best.

Baltimore's fellow Citizens of the Republic looking for a geographic cure for the problems of the area where they find themselves currently residing aren't dreaming of moving to Charm City. 

{Wait-wait-wait. The Wire? Ain't that a TV show that came out, like, 20-30 years ago?} 

Ahem. The second-best TV show ever made premiered on 7/2/02 on HBO, back when HBO was busy cranking out several of the best TV shows ever made. Nowadays, well... not so much.

{I think you're just stuck in past, old man, but I'll bite, what was the best TV show ever made?}

Deadwood, of course, another HBO show.

{Huh? Never heard of it. What about the Sopranos?}

Fourth best, and yet another HBO show from the same era.

{Seems like you watch way too much TV.}

I'm retired. In my defense, I spend a lot of time reading and writing, but the former doesn't pay at all and the latter has paid very little but I'm hoping to be discovered after my death.

{Fingers crossed. Wait a sec, what exactly is the subject of this column supposed to be?}

It's about the fact that Baltimore — which I'm cleverly using as a placeholder for any number of cities that are riddled with crime and corruption and are failing their children miserably — is a hot mess even though their systemic problems were revealed, in detail, on a TV show that ran 20 years ago. 

{Far be it from me but when I was in school I was taught that the subject of a given essay should be made abundantly clear right from the start.}

Harumph! You're the one who doesn't know what Prestige TV is and sidetracked me with a bunch of inane questions.

{Go harumph yourself, I'm just a charming literary device, you're the writer.}

Anyways... Baltimore is still a city in freefall, one of many devastated by America's dramatic and rapid switch from making stuff to selling stuff made elsewhere. 

The final season of The Wire centers around the damage that can result when high-tech gleefully "disrupts" a given industry, in this case, daily newspapers. The economic tsunami spawned by Silicon Valley continues apace.

{Well yeah, but there's a nationwide employee shortage so...}

True dat, there aren't currently enough people, or enough people willing to work, to fill all the open positions. But politicians spending money we don't have to buy votes, fund folks who don't want to work, and pay for the social justice/green agenda have roused the inflation dragon we were told was long gone. For half a hot second the employee shortages drove up the stagnant wages of the little people that keep the country running but then the inflation dragon ate all the wage gains and is still feasting.

{Don't be such a Debbie Downer, the impending recession will put an end to the transitory inflation.}     

And now the Wokies — a strange alliance of certain highly skilled (at least theoretically) well-paid people and moderate to low-skilled poorly paid individuals — want to disrupt everything that made America the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen in the name of "equity."

That's how you wind up with cities wherein criminals are victims, members of an ever-growing list of "marginalized minorities" are victims, everyone is a victim of white, heterosexual, cis-normal, toxic men and the kids are being taught by "activist" school teachers that aren't teaching critical _______ theory, they're practicing it.    

  

Ronald Reagan is famous for (among a few other things) asking us if we were better off at the end of Jimmy carter's first (and last) term than before. 

Now that a relatively small, hardcore group of Wokies have captured control of most of the media, Hollywood, Big Tech, the Democratic Party, the universities, the UN, several globe-straddling corporations, and have even infested the US military — are you better off?

Or do you feel like you're living in Baltimore?

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

{Hold up, what's the third-best TV show ever made?}

Justified, an FX show that came out in 2010.

Scroll down to share this column or access my golden(?) oldies. You too can be a patron of the arts! Click here.    

Feel free to love, hate, or troll me on my Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays; other things other days. Cranky don't tweet, but in light of recent events, I'm considering it... Go Elon, go!

At The Movies

With apologies to Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

 

Image by rosi capurso from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet." 

                                                                                          -Orson Welles

Dear Grandstickies and Gentlereaders,

We moved across the semi-mighty Monongahela river from D'bluff to the SouSidah Pittsburgh in the summer of 1961.

At the time it was possible to see a double feature, at least one cartoon, and previews — no commercials — for 35¢ at the SouSide's Arcade movie theater if you were under 12. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons the Arcade would be bulging with kids. 

If I could scrape two quarters together I could also buy a snack. I saw a lot of the movies released in the early 60s. The Arcade, now long gone, specialized in first-run schlock and second-run mainstream movies. I thoroughly enjoyed both categories. 

Godzilla! Godzilla! 

Access to cable TV, which, believe it or not, dates to 1948, was rare but the theater owners knew what was coming. They organized campaigns to "stop pay TV" in its tracks. Imagine having to pay to watch TV, that's what commercials were for! You paid to see movies, movies unlikely to turn up on your local 3 or 4 broadcast TV stations till years later.

{And yet nowadays ya have to pay your local cable monopoly to watch shows saturated with commercials.}

Well, Dana, I guess that's the price you pay for not having to deal with set-top antennas decorated with wads of aluminum foil.

{Huh?}

For the record, endless fundraising by PBS stations was a thing from early on, but commercials that are not commercials, "underwriting spots," were not. Also, commercials that were admittedly commercials were limited in number and didn't take up nearly 20 minutes of every hour of viewing on the commercial stations. 

{I see what you did there.}

As the years rolled by, going to the movies got more and more expensive, there were more and more of them, but less and less of them were worth the time/money. 

I hadn't gone to the movies in quite some time when my late wife talked me into going to see Forrest Gump at one of those theaters where you can enjoy the sound of other movies playing in miniature theaters bordering the one you were sitting in. To this day it's my favorite movie of all time. 

But at the time I was unaware that being subjected to a commercial before being allowed to watch the movie I had paid to see — after having to arrange financing in order to buy some popcorn flavored with melted margarine — had become the norm while I had been busy living my life. 

So of course I did the only rational thing a man of principle could do under the circumstances. 

I started complaining to my wife in a deliberately loud voice, as though my hearing aid had shorted out. I was cleverly attempting to prompt my fellow Citizens of the Republic to start complaining in equally loud voices. 

Up the revolution!

Instead, they looked alarmed and began whispering to each other, looking around for the nearest exit. And this was prior to 9/11 and before mass shooting incidents initiated by addled whack jobs off their meds running merrily amok became commonplace.    

Obviously, I was unaware of a minor shift that had occurred in the zeitgeist. That's what happens when you don't keep up with the newsletter.

My wife didn't get upset, she just started giggling and looked at me in surprise. I'm not normally the one who leaps upon the barricade to inspire my fellow revolutionaries.

Fortunately, the police weren't called. As far as I know, no one even complained to the manager, probably because I quickly surrendered. That's one way to tell the difference between a full-blown wack job and a mere cowardly crank by the way. 

However, I like to think that I inspired a dinner table conversation or two. 

"Hey, I went to the movies today and saw a really cool movie called Forest Gump. The popcorn tasted like it was topped with melted margarine but the movie was the best one I've seen in a while, the only one I've seen in a while actually... She talked me into going.

And there was some free entertainment before the movie even started. Some whack job that was so loud he sounded like his hearing aid had shorted out started bitching about a commercial they ran. Pretty funny. I complained to the manager who gave me a free $10 soft pretzel to go away."

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column or access my golden(?) oldies. You too can be a patron of the arts! Click here.    

Feel free to love, hate, or troll me on my Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays; other things other days. Cranky don't tweet, but in light of recent events, I'm considering it... Go Elon, go!