I do not feel a need to explain this.

Is anyone as fed up as I am of the current American system of employment?

You live your life when an American child, being carefree and having fun. Or, your parents were the cruel kind, and pushed you too hard to excel in an area, and now you're pigeonholed. Or, you were one of the lucky (or intelligent) ones, and you pulled ahead simply by the power of your own volition. Go you.

But you are the minority. How many other people do you know that can do handstands for thirty-seven minutes straight? Or can play Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu? Or can pole vault to the surface of Uranus? Not many, I bet. I bet you know a bunch of people like me and my homies. Bright, generally upstanding people with a chip on their shoulder concerning hard work and authority.

And why not? American public schools teach more than just readin', ritin', and 'rithmetic. They teach you that everyone has their place in the pecking order - and teachers get, well, henpecked. I didn't attend private school; maybe private schools are full of well-adjusted children who listen to everything they are told, and teachers are allowed what children should actually be learning. So, I won't speak for them.

Public school, though, teaches poor little American children that being a teacher is basically a worthless profession where the only freedom one has is the adhesive used to stick the ubiquitous and vomit-inducing laminated three-color drawing of a smiling bespectacled worm halfway coming out of a similarly smiling apple. From the time I could I remember, I have overheard teachers complain about the idiotic standardized testing that "must" be inflicted upon their unwitting victims-I mean, students-in order to "prepare" them for the future.

Texas had TAAS, now TAKS, both mind-numbingly easy for any half-awake box turtle unable to kick his lifelong habit of methamphetamines. What do they teach us academically, and perhaps more importantly, what do they teach us about life? For the former, I will admit that I learned a few things. However, these things - such as simple multiplication, fractional equations, critical reading, and simple essay writing - should be learned by anyone ready to enter the human race as an adult. For the latter, these oh-so-important exams lay a groundwork of circumlocution, of fluff, of maximum reward for minimum effort.

All you have to do, little Billy, is tell me how to make a peanut butter sandwich, and you get a top score! Then, read this one-page story about how a cowboy fell off a horse, and tell me which paragraph tells about him falling off his horse...yes...good! You are sooooo smart, Billy! You get the rest of the day off while the remaining 45% of your class takes ALL FUCKING DAY to finish the same thing you finished in 15 minutes.

Butbut, there is a point to all of this, you say! This prepares us for the working world! And, sadly, you are absolutely right. All the person directly out of high school is expected to do is to count change from a cash register, lick envelopes, and hit rocks with hammers. Those who don't have the ability to do even these simple tasks are doomed to shrivel and die in a withering heap of idiocy. Right?

Wrong. To get ahead in the American working world, it is not about your ability. It is not about your talent, your intelligence, your willingness to work, your quick and critical thinking, your tenacity, creativity, enthusiasm, or any sort of thing you might imagine would pertain to having a successful vocation. No, to get ahead in the American working world, you must use what those little standardized tests taught you, but not in so many words - how to make believe you know everything, and get the people who are in control to believe you.

You see, the idea in American industry is not for the machine to work necessarily, but at all costs to evoke the idea of the machine working. Shit, we're America, right? We don't need to work that hard, everything will be fine. Just let it slide. And so CEOs hire idiot presidents and VPs that have the same friends as them. And the VPs hire idiot regional coordinators who they went to business school with. They got A's, I think. And the regional coordinators hire idiot branch managers, and in turn they hire idiot assistant managers, and so on. So by the time this huge snowball of poisonous nepotism and ineptness comes furiously hurtling toward the poor entry-level schmoe right out of high school, it doesn't matter how talented or able he might be - he has no choice but to be engulfed by the rampant flailing retardation of those who now control his fate.

And that is the real shame. Not only is all goodness quashed for the sake of getting more out of less, but those at the top basically run the lives of those at the bottom. Everyone needs to make money to survive. So you have to get a job, or become a thief, or don't shave for a few months and try your luck at joining a wolf pack. And, unless you are well-connected or a good bullshitter, all this shit rolls downhill. You will eat every single bit of it. A simple hiring or firing can leave you with less hours, and less money, and the inability to pay your rent or your bookies. And that's only one example.

You can have your pay cut because big boss decided it's not within the company's interest (anymore) to pay you what you worked your ass off earning. You can be written up for any old damn thing if the boss decides he doesn't like you. You can be given a shit schedule that you couldn't possibly follow for no reason other than "the company needs it".

Fuck a lot of that. I support being creative at work, and speaking up for yourself, regardless of the consequences. Don't let someone who may not be anywhere near your level decide how your life will be lived. Band together with lowlifes that share your point of view and tell your management just how you feel. You are stronger as a group.

In other words, eat your company's lunch, goddammit. You are working just as hard as they are.