SOUND OFF!

For several years I worked at a corporation that I will call XYZ Inc. This company has landed many lucrative defense contracts over the years. I took the job because I had hopes of growing with the company, of developing and using many talents and skills, of advancing my career. I could hardly have been more wrong.

At first, work was great. I was fortunate to have pleasant co-workers and a nice supervisor. Since XYZ kept not only gaining new contracts but maintaining the old ones, it looked as though they were growing at an appreciable pace.

Growing, yes. Accommodating employees and compensating for that growth, no.

As you know, large companies have cube farms where people sit and perform their tasks. While I was at XYZ, I was moved twice. My first cubicle was quite roomy, more than adequate for my needs. The second was smaller, but I could still fit. The last cubicle, though, was less than half the size of the first. I could not fit all my materials in it, and as a result had to commandeer a table for holding them.

That is not all. As the company continued to add to its payroll, the top brass looked for ways to cram more people into what space we had. First, they turned the exercise room into another cube farm. I had enjoyed the exercise room because I could get on the treadmill, or lift weights, for 10 or so minutes during my breaks. Without the exercise room, I had to walk outside, or around the building if the weather was nasty. Then they rearranged the cubes time and again in order to make them smaller and smaller. Remember what I said about my space?

Even that was not enough. Soon they started putting two people in a cubicle that was barely big enough for one person. In some cases they removed the divider between cubicles and shoved in a third person where the divider had been. One man was even placed in a space that hardly qualified as a cubicle, even tinier than my final workspace! He had barely enough room for his desk and chair, and one side of the so-called cubicle was open to a fairly busy hallway. One co-worker I spoke with told me that, if he ever had to share his cubicle with someone, he’d polish up his resume in a heartbeat.

This is how XYZ solved the problem of its growing work force. Rather than expand the building, or add a second story, or rent space in another building – there was available space in the business park just a hop, a skip and a jump away – they crammed people in like livestock on a factory farm.

The growing work force led to a shortage in parking as well. Even re-striping the parking lot and adding new spaces in odd places didn’t help. People had to park in front of the recycling dumpster, or along the entrance lanes. Even though I usually got in to work around 7:00 AM, I sometimes had a hard time finding a space. I rarely left to run an errand, or go out for lunch, because of the risk of losing a good space and having to hunt for a new one. Sometimes, several cars would park alongside an entrance/exit lane so you had to be careful going in or coming out. Not only that, this complicated things for delivery vehicles. Now and then the receptionist had to send messages asking for people to move their cars to make way for big trucks, which could not navigate the constricted lanes.

I met and got to know several contractors who worked there. Some of them had worked for as long as six years without being offered a permanent job. One had gotten only one raise in all that time. As contractors, they did not get paid vacation or sick days. They could not get medical insurance through the company, or even through the contracting firm, and had to rely on Obamacare. During the winter, a lot of people came to work wheezing and coughing. Contractors were shut out of some company activities, including getting free flu shots and receiving holiday gift certificates. They stayed on only because jobs of all sorts were hard to find.

Even when work was piling up, XYZ was very reluctant to allow people to take overtime. I got in some overtime on only a couple occasions. Otherwise, you just had to hope that you could keep up with your work, which was always accumulating like mad.

Meanwhile, XYZ landed one lucrative defense contract after another. I did research, and found that these contracts were helping XYZ rake in some huge profits! The distant CEOs (I worked at a satellite facility) were making money hand over fist. Yet XYZ could not spare the cash to provide adequate work space and parking, or turn contractors into permanent employees.

From time to time you hear about people who wig out and go on shooting sprees. Whenever I walked through the parking lot to get some exercise, I spotted no fewer than a half dozen NRA stickers. You can bet your bottom dollar at least some of these people had guns at home, if not all of them. How much longer before someone who had an appreciable arsenal at home snapped? It seems as though this country can go barely a week without a major gun-fueled bloodbath.

I no longer work for XYZ; I have since found a better position with a small company that pays me a decent wage. Since I left my contracting position I have read plenty of horror stories about companies treating their workers like expendable objects, especially in warehouses where people are scolded for being too slow and are forbidden from taking too many bathroom breaks. How big companies maltreat their rank-and-file employees could fill a substantial book.

We may be seeing a turn-around, though. More and more people are clamoring for a living minimum wage and more workers’ rights. Amazon employees in Alabama failed to unionize, but other efforts are underway. Let us hope that we can return our country to one where the Little Guy has a genuine voice in corporate management as well as government.