Customer Service Smiles

I got a kick out of a joke sent to me today about Noah and the Ark. In it, all the animals were looking out over the hull with concerned looks and Noah was scowling at the bird hanging to the side of the boat that was full of holes. The caption read: The Woodpecker Might Have to Go!

In the early 1970s my mom glommed onto the song by Sammy Davis Jr. entitled 'I've Got to Be Me', essentially promoting our right to be unashamed of who we are. She and my dad had just weathered a difficult breakup and, like we all do whenever something happens that shakes us to our core, some rebuilding was necessary to restore her sense of value.

Relationships are advanced citizenship on its most intimate level. And being part of a community of employees, especially when it's been our life for decades, can't be anything but a significant measurement of who we are.  How can our grotesque capitalistic country, with millions now kicked to the curb, not show the least bit of compassion to help with a fallback position? What are we, woodpeckers?

I still hear Sammy Davis Jr sing that song every once in a while and remember how desperate it sounded at the time, the notion that we need to shove back when we are turned from and used. How ironic that I watch the homogenousness of the workforce, with the scripted responders and impersonal voicemails, and know I am a casualty of American social de-evolution.

Look for us in Reminisce magazines, friends! Ours will be the sad story beneath a caption that remembers the golden days of the meritorious, polished and experienced workers wrinkled from years of customer service smiles that were stripped of their livelihoods due to Wall Street greed.