A Peek Inside My Brain

I’ve been keeping notes on stuff I want to talk about and they are all interesting (to me) but not interesting enough for their own posts so I’m going to consolidate them without pretending there’s a cohesive theme (but there might be).

The Myth of the Lazy Worker

Workers at our local Trader Joe’s unionized last month, so when I shop there I try to find a way to work in a “solidarity” remark to someone who works there. On Sunday, I congratulated my checker on his new union and he asked me why I supported it. I gave him my usual “workers do better when they have a union” spiel (spoiler: it includes the phrases “dignity at work” and “job security”) and then he asked, “But doesn’t the union just protect lazy workers and protect them from getting fired?”

That should have tipped me off that this checker was management covering a register but I stumbled blithely along, acknowledging that every worker is entitled to due process blah blah blah and that workers have a say in which grievances their union takes to arbitration etc etc. 

But when I got home, I started to think about the Myth of the Lazy Worker. This is a tired trope that gets employed by “labor avoidance” consultants as an argument for why workers should oppose a union. The idea is that unions protect lazy workers whom their co-workers resent, and thus ensure that shitty employees persist in their jobs to the frustration of their now-unionized co-workers. And I say this is a myth because after 37 years in the workforce, 27 years working with unions, and 9 years of being an arbitrator, I cannot recall a single “lazy worker” who got away with it. 

Let me work backwards. As an arbitrator, I’ve never seen a case where “laziness” or lack of productivity was the basis for someone’s discharge. That’s either because unions don’t take those cases to arbitration, or workers aren’t lazy. As a union lawyer, I never represented anyone discharged for that reason, and as a worker, I’ve never met someone who was actually lazy. Depressed, addicted, preoccupied, angry, disabled, overwhelmed, or totally disengaged? Sure, I’ve met those folks. But lazy? Not really. 

The fact is, folks don’t do their job for a lot of good and bad reasons, and employers hold them accountable in lots of good and bad ways, but unions aren’t the problem. In a lot of workplaces, they are the answer. I’ve seen lots of union stewards tell workers they are on the brink of trouble if they don’t get their attendance in line with company policy, offer workers a spot in rehab or a training program, or just straight up turn a blind eye UNTIL the shit hits the fan and then say, “Welp, sorry, good luck out there.” Unions and their members are no more interested in unproductive bullshit than management is, but will represent their members if they believe that they’re being disciplined without just cause. 

And that’s the trick. If you have a union, the employer needs to have just cause to discipline you, and employers - or their consultants - don’t like that. Without a union, they can fire you for any reason at all, as long as it’s not discriminatory (also why some of them hate anti-discrimination law TBH). If management dislikes your scowl, your cough, your red hair, or how the sky looks on the day you greet him in the parking lot, they can terminate you, if you don’t have a union. 

As a labor arbitrator, I’ve seen several hundred disciplinary cases, and not one of them involved someone who was “lazy”. I’ve upheld dismissal for people who put their family or health first or who just hated their job enough to blow it off, but none of them were “lazy.” They just didn’t give a shit about their job, and that’s different. 

 Therapy for men

There’s this ambient cultural belief that therapy isn’t masculine and dudes need to tough it out, but I wonder if that’s even an ambient belief anymore. I started watching Mr. Robot this week, and the protagonist goes to therapy and is sort of obsessed with his therapist (she’s clearly a mother substitute for him). It got me thinking about how prevalent “man in therapy” is as a pop culture touch point. Tony Soprano and Ted Lasso jump to mind immediately. The Sopranos is predicated on the unlikelihood that a mobster would go therapy. Ted’s may have been the only therapeutic relationship that is normal but it’s also the most recent, suggesting that therapy for men is becoming normalized. And look at Shrinking. It’s a whole show about three extremely human, decent, good therapists who also happen to be flawed people with their own problems. It’s almost like therapy is complicated and we’re starting to be okay with that. 

Tl:dr Go to therapy, dudes

What is this Gen X trope?

Also on the Mr. Robot tip, Christian Slater plays this strange trickster figure who is deeply reminiscent of John Bender from The Breakfast Club as well as his earlier roles as The Guy From Heathers and Gleaming the Cube and everything else he’s been in. He’s the bad boy, outside of society, but he feels like a distillation of a lot of guys my age. Cynical, rogueish, hurt. Yadda yadda. Is it a new trope or is it an old one? Is he a trickster or, given his proximate authority and position in society, is he something else? 

I guess it’s no surprise that Loki got his own spin-off Marvel show, given his alchemy of narcissism, charm, naive hopefulness, and anger that seems to embody the modern adult man. I’m not say ALL MEN are like that. I’m just positing that there are lots of dudes in my cohort that would benefit from Ted Lasso style therapy to break them of their doom-spiraling negativity. 

Finally, a tip of the hat to the Stationary Engineer.

Do you know what a stationary engineer is? It’s someone whose job it is to keep buildings running. They fill other roles but fundamentally, they maintain stationary systems such as HVAC, elevators, bio mechanical systems, security systems, etc. They tend to be very knowledgeable, very practical, and very committed to whatever it is they are responsible for maintaining. They’re also sort of invisible. I don’t assume you know what this specific job classification does because if they’re doing their job, you never notice the work they do. 

In contrast, an operating engineer is responsible for systems which move, such as cranes, construction equipment, mining equipment, and excavation. If it’s a big machine that’s painted yellow, an operating engineer is probably running it. 

Why am I telling you this? Mostly because I want other people to know about these very distinct and technical job classifications that we don’t witness and therefore don’t appreciate. But also to note a couple of cultural occurrences that we do encounter of their work that I want to recommend to you.

First, if you didn’t read it as a kid, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is an awesome book. Mike and his steam shovel (operating engineer) dig out the basement of the new town hall in just one day but find themselves stuck at the bottom of the pit, without recourse. Their plight is redeemed when Mary Anne, the steam shovel, is repurposed as the boiler for the town hall, transforming Mike Mulligan into the stationary engineer the town needs. Love this story and how it suggests that technology and work are adaptable to human need and achievement instead of the opposite. 

Also, we are watching Silo on Apple TV and the main character is driven by her desire to keep the central generator in functional order to ensure that the small enclave of humans in the silo survive. Juliette is so very much a stationary engineer, and a reminder that working people with skills, not the mythical lazy worker or the cynical trickster, are at the heart of our civilization.