'Sorry for the wait times'

I knew a business owner whose philosophy was to pay a few top people — ”star performers” or “alpha dogs,” he called them — a decent wage to keep them loyal and productive.

The rest of the business’ positions were designed to be transient — lower-paying, entry-level spots for people to learn the ropes, gain some skills and then go elsewhere. They would then be replaced by another crop of newbies.

It was a pretty good plan, I guess, if the owner’s main goal was to sleep at night.

It didn’t work out so well in the waking world. The expected churn of eager new recruits, who gain marketable skills and go forth to greater renown and salaries, didn’t occur. Instead, the newbies stayed and stayed, growing more disgruntled with each paycheck.

This flawed business strategy is similar to the one embraced by Americans who object to paying workers a living wage. They will argue, like the business owner in my example, that some jobs are designed as starters, that people in these jobs will eventually move along, and that paying them more only devalues the workers who have improved themselves through further training.

The sad reality is that many Americans are trapped by low wages. They can barely afford to keep body and soul together, let alone budget for reliable transportation or additional education. Any hope for the future is buried by the day-to-day challenges of the present.

So they remain, toiling at low-paying job or a series of them, suffering the indignity of being “essential” without the salary that should accompany the designation. Maybe if they worked one position with a living wage, they could afford the training to transition into better employment.

That so many Americans refuse to recognize the deleterious impact of low wages betrays the contempt they have for the very people who keep the wheels of industry turning.

This contempt is apparent in the reactions of many owners who are competing with a $300 federal weekly bonus, scheduled through June 26 in Ohio, during this global pandemic. The bonus means it is temporarily more cost-effective for many workers, especially in the service industry, to stay home and collect benefits than to resume minimum-wage drudgery.

Smart employers, meanwhile, are finding ways to entice workers back with flexible hours, real pathways to advancement and even — gasp! — competitive wages.

Less savvy employers take to the signs and chalkboards in front of their establishments, whining to customers about how sorry they are for long wait times, but “nobody wants to work.”

These passive-aggressive missives shift the blame for the company’s faulty business model onto the back of the workforce. A more honest message would be: “Sorry for the wait times. Workers aren’t willing to be taken advantage of right now.”

But have no fear — the capitalistic urge toward exploitation is reasserting itself. Many states, including Ohio, soon will require workers to prove they are looking for work while collecting unemployment. In effect, these states are forcing workers back into poverty a few months earlier.

Other states are cancelling the $300 weekly bonus altogether, citing alleged employee shortages that are keeping the economy from bouncing back fully.

Taking money away from struggling Americans is not the answer. Instead, we as a society need to address the inequalities of a system where, in 2018, the average CEO made $265 for every dollar the average worker made, the largest such gap in the world.

Fixing a broken system doesn’t mean all jobs are worth the same salary or that workers should be disincentivized from trying to better their situations. It does mean that everybody deserves fair wages based on the cost of living in the place they live.

If this idea is somehow radical or revolutionary, it speaks to how far we’ve traveled down a road where workers are valued less as human beings and more as capital to be exploited.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

A great teacher forges a chain

As Teacher Appreciation Week comes to a close, take a moment to salute former educator Gary Duschl.

Duschl, of Virginia Beach, entered the 2021 Guinness Book of World Records after fashioning the world’s longest gum-wrapper chain, which measures an impressive 106,810 feet.

He began his masterpiece in 1965, the same year American combat troops arrived in Vietnam, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” first aired.

Duschl’s website, gumwrapper.com, doesn’t indicate what subject he taught. However, he told me by email that he spent most of his working years as a general manager in several manufacturing operations. After he retired, he taught part-time, certifying painters and sandblasters for work on U.S. Navy vessels.

When I showed my students a short video about Duschl, many were impressed by his persistence in ripping each gum wrapper and folding it multiple times to forge the chain.

Some students sympathized with his wife. She shared how, early in their relationship, Duschl’s wrapper project snaked throughout their house. (He now stores his creation in specially constructed plexiglass display cases in just one room.)

At least a few students wondered what else he could have done with his time. This crossed my mind, too. Duschl told Guinness that his chain contains more than 2.5 million gum wrappers, and that he has fashioned at least 5.33 feet of chain each day for the last 55 years.

In that time, pondered Uncharitable Me, he could have learned multiple languages and several instruments, raised money for charity, taken up ballroom dancing ... and the list goes on.

But that’s Monday-morning quarterbacking. My house also is littered with the detritus of hobbies and interests — thousands of comic books, an acoustic guitar, several unfinished manuscripts — all of which took time that I could have spent on activities more productive, more profitable or both.

And I don’t need to flip through the latest Guinness volume to know that I’ve not broken a single record for doing anything.

Looking at the gum-wrapper chain from a different perspective, one can argue that Duschl is emblematic of what makes a teacher great.

First, he started his chain after a student showed him how to fold gum wrappers. This demonstrates a willingness by the teacher to learn. Education should be a two-way street.

Duschl made his chain from gum wrappers that his students donated. After all, there is no way that he chewed all that gum himself. (To do that, he estimates that he would have had to chew a stick of gum every 10 minutes, day and night, for the past five decades.) By soliciting student contributions, he gave them a voice and a stake in a successful outcome, as great teachers do.

His attention to detail is evident in many precise comparisons. The wrapper link, he notes, is as long as 356 football fields and as tall as 73 Empire State Buildings. Great teachers connect the known and the unknown, scaffolding what students can’t do with what they can and helping them to visualize the final product.

A page of Duschl’s website lists other people who have forged gum-wrapper chains, from 20,177 feet in Germany to just 20 feet in Pennsylvania. Like all great teachers, he is willing to share the credit.

Another section of Duschl’s website provides step-by-step instructions for making gum-wrapper links, along with an email link for more help. Great teachers give clear directions, clarifying and offering extra support as needed, and they urge collaboration.

So, raise a pack of Wrigley’s in honor of Duschl. All educators should aspire to show students, by word and deed, the value of blazing their own trails and not folding under pressure.

Or, in Duschl’s case, folding — again, and again, and again.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

Making it harder for marketers to find us

I opened a fortune cookie the other day and found an ad for a tax-preparation service.

Like a bird dog pointing quail, the marketers had found me. This time, it was on the back of a paper prophecy, in the steamy depths of a brown bag that housed my beef and vegetable combo.

Marketing is a ubiquitous part of modern life. Look around right now and count the number of logos you see. If you’re inside, chances are it’s a bunch. Even outdoors, you are probably within view of a few, especially if you’re reading on a screen.

From my desk, I spy the logo on my shirt, another on my computer, one on a package of gum and a fourth on my key fob.

How many ads does the average person see in a day? Estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000. This number seems ridiculous until you consider car logos, website banners, billboards, food boxes, toothpaste tubes and emails.

Going all day without exposure to a message trying to sell you something is as impossible as not thinking about the color red after somebody has told you not to think about the color red.

Worse yet are the marketers who are selling YOU — your tastes, habits and browsing preferences — to other marketers.

Apple this week made it harder for app developers to nose around in our business. The new iOS 14.5 update has a pop-up screen that prompts users to allow or not allow sites like Facebook or Google to track them across other applications and then share that data with third parties.

If you’ve ever wondered how you can search for a particular item on your phone and then find an ad for that very item on a shopping site later that day — well, that’s how. You’ve been sold.

The old saying — if the service is free then you are the product — has never been more true. Apple, it seems, is trying to build good will by allowing users to reclaim some of the privacy the computer giant itself stole over the last decade.

I know a couple of people — friends of friends, let’s call them, to protect their identities — who believe that unseen forces are spying on them through televisions, modems, phones and tablets. And by spying, I mean real James Bond, Inspector Gadget-style snooping, with sophisticated listening devices and human technicians on the other end.

The truth is more prosaic and more frightening. Big Brother doesn’t need to listen without our consent — we give it away ourselves every time we scroll past the legalese on a new app and click “allow.” Real people aren’t monitoring us; algorithms are.

Not that consumers have much choice. Manoush Zomorodi, writing for Time magazine in 2017, notes that it would take around 76 hours annually to read the plethora of user agreements we are subjected to. Declining the privacy invasion means declining the app, and who wants to do that?

Some of the companies affected by Apple’s renewed emphasis on privacy are crying foul. They anticipate revenue streams and knowledge of our browsing habits will dry up.

Facebook is especially miffed. All those pictures of kids and dogs and quizzes about what your favorite dessert says about your personality add up to significant information for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to hock on the downlow.

But nothing Apple is doing is new or revolutionary. The company has just taken tools tucked away in the bowels of its operating system and made them more prominent. The fear among big companies is that more of us will use these tools to close the blinds.

I plan to start clicking “Ask App not to Track” more often than I click “Allow.” At least until it limits how much I can accomplish with a given app.

When functionality goes away, I might find myself back on the Great Data-Giveaway Train. I suspect a lot of other people will be riding with me. This is both a comfort and a caution.

As Izaak Walton says, “Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.” It sounds like the message on a fortune cookie, maybe with an ad for a travel agency on the back.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

You're phat if you read this

As if to prove my contention that I learn more from my students than they learn from me, every so often they teach me new slang.

In recent weeks, they have taught me “phat” (a compliment), “make bank” (to go to work), and “sheesh,” which can be an expression of appreciation (sheesh, that team is good) or a call-and-response, where one person says the word again and again in a high-pitched voice until somebody else says it back.

“Bussin” was one of this week’s entries. It means food that tastes really good. For example, the hamburger I had for dinner Wednesday was really bussin, although when I said this to my wife, she asked me what was wrong.

“I’m trying new expressions,” I told her.

“Stick with real words so people can understand you,” she said.

“You’re not so phat,” I replied.

The conversation went downhill from there.

Some of these slang expressions are just existing words pronounced in new ways. “Fur shur” is an example. “Exacary” is another. That one often precedes “disease,” I’m told. When you suffer from exacary disease, your face looks exacary like your butt.

Then there’s “secure the bag,” which sounds like it rolled out of a 1930s gangster movie on the running board of a black Cadillac. The meaning, “get the money” or “secure the advantage,” supports this. Working-class stiffs like me roll out of bed each day with a goal of securing the bag.

“Boring” is anything but. Apparently this now means humorous or entertaining, but my students say it is contextual. So if somebody calls you boring, it could be a compliment, but it could also mean that you are a traditional snooze.

In an attempt to be new-school boring, I listen carefully to each entry and promise to practice my new vocabulary when appropriate, subject to further research. According to the online Urban Dictionary, a few of my new acquisitions mean something other than the innocent definitions supplied by my students. Although, to be fair, some of the words have so many different meanings that no single one can be deemed definitive (pun intended).

I try really hard not to be “that guy,” the one who chooses to die on every grammatical hill. English is a living language, adept at absorbing foreign expressions and neologisms alike, like a fat lexigraphic spider enticing words into its web. The head-scratching slang of today is the standard, formal English of tomorrow — or maybe next week.

Kate Burridge, author of “Blooming English: Observations on the Roots, Cultivation and Hybrids of the English Language,” notes that traditionalists throughout history have attempted, unsuccessfully, to serve as language gatekeepers. These include such luminaries as Samuel Johnson (who warred against “nowadays” in 1755) and Jonathan Swift (who blamed language changes on “loose morals”). Burridge, writing some 20 years ago, notes that many complaints about language evolution have less to do with “genuine linguistic concerns” than with “deeper social judgements.”

The same could still be said today over objections to “they” as a preferred singular pronoun for people who do not identify as male or female, “undocumented persons” in place of “illegal aliens,” and speakers and writers whose tone deafness makes them prefer “China virus” over “coronavirus” or “COVID-19.”

It’s a fair bet that most of the new words my students are teaching me won’t survive until the end of the month, let alone make their way into general use. But some might, which is really cool, to use another piece of slang that is now part of the American lexicon.

Stubbornly barring the door against language growth is as misguided as it is hopeless. It’s certainly not phat, and it might even be a symptom of early-onset exacary disease.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

Don't let the 'but' deflect from the injustice

Police shouldn’t be shooting so many Black people. But.

When a denunciation of police brutality and racial injustice is followed by a major caveat, such as “that doesn’t give people the right to burn down businesses” or “that doesn’t mean it’s OK to loot” or “police have a tough job,” it isn’t much of a denunciation.

TV self-help guru Dr. Phil says that any statement followed by “but” means that you can disregard what came before because the speaker is about to say what they really think.

Of course, property has value. Of course, businesses are owned by people, and those people don’t deserve to have their livelihoods damaged or destroyed. Of course, police officers have one of the most challenging, important and dangerous jobs. Of course, most exchanges between police officers and suspects end without violence. Of course. These things should go without saying.

When we say them so close in proximity to a statement of support for minorities who have been unjustly shot, killed, arrested, and harassed by the very people who are supposed to be protecting them, we take the emphasis off the bigger injustice and focus it elsewhere. It’s deflection, and it’s not helpful.

The fact that the nation has seen so many high-profile cases of police shooting Black suspects speaks to a real problem. A recent example is Daunte Wright, killed in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, by officer Kim Potter, a 26-year veteran of the force who allegedly confused her Taser and her service weapon. She has since been charged with second-degree manslaughter.

Wright’s death occurred about 10 miles from the courtroom where a jury was hearing the case of Derek Chauvin, the officer on trial for the death of George Floyd last year.

The Chauvin case has been plagued by a lot of “buts.” The jury will have to determine if any of them provide a plausible reason for Floyd’s death, over and above the 9.5 minutes that Chauvin kneeled on his victim’s neck.

Black Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be shot by police officers than white Americans, according to the advocacy group Mapping Police Violence. The group’s 2020 report notes that Black people were also “more likely to be unarmed and less likely to be threatening someone when killed.”

And while it is always appropriate to urge peaceful protest, it is also impossible to deny the sense of hopelessness that must permeate communities in a country where minorities are often arrested at higher rates, sentenced to longer prison terms, hired less often, suspended from school more frequently and subjected to greater poverty, all because of systemic racism.

Despite this, the vast majority of Black protests are peaceful, minus the few situations where emotions get the better of some involved or where opportunists see a chance to use chaos for their own ends.

Even non-violent protests are criticized. Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling for the national anthem was peaceful, yet still disparaged. Black Lives Matter, an attempt to call attention to discrimination, was followed by All Lives Matter, thereby showing that organizers of that last movement missed the point.

BLM focuses on an overlooked demographic; if all lives truly mattered, there wouldn’t be a need to say that Black lives do, too. It’s like criticizing an organization for calling attention to breast cancer because other cancers are also deadly.

Racial discrimination is a societal cancer. It needs to be rooted out. Discussions over when and how police officers deploy weapons of all kinds — guns and tasers — are vital. Mapping Police Violence notes some communities have transferred traffic-enforcement duties from police to “unarmed civil servants” and invited mental health experts to join police on some calls to help better defuse potential violence, among other solutions.

These are alternatives that must be prioritized, pursued and publicized, not merely trotted out after every new tragedy. It would also help if many Americans focused less on the aftermath of such events and more on the injustices themselves.

This means fewer expressions of sympathy watered down by “but.”

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

Even before 'cancel culture,' no star shined forever

Here’s a name many readers haven’t heard for a while, if ever: Jack Benny.

Benny was a star of vaudeville, radio and television, with a few movies thrown in for good measure. During a career that spanned decades, he was listened to and watched by millions of people. He and his writers helped to create the template for the modern sitcom.

Benny’s traits were so well known that they easily generated laughs. His character was cheap, played the violin poorly, and wore a bad toupee. Variations on situations involving these flaws were endless.

Similarly, Benny’s supporting cast had foibles, real and purported, that could be mined for comedy gold. Mary Livingstone, the female lead, often read letters from her less-sophisticated mother and sister. His announcer, Don Wilson, was overweight and often disparaged his boss. The orchestra members never passed a bar they didn’t lean against, leading to hundreds of drunken-musician riffs. His valet, Rochester, played by Eddie Anderson (the first Black actor to have a recurring role on a national radio show), was a long-suffering commentator on Benny’s stinginess.

The program’s central conceit was that Jack and his cast were rehearsing for their show. The actors played themselves, but with differences: Benny’s character was single, for example, because it led to more gags about dating, even though he and Livingstone were married in real life. The show was meta before meta was a thing.

Today, Benny’s star has dimmed. While reruns are available on satellite radio (where I listen) and the internet, fewer and fewer people recognize the situations, the skits and the genius as the years between his heyday and our time grow.

The same is true for many once-famous actors, singers, writers, athletes and politicians who may once have been household names but whose reputations, through no fault of their own, did not survive successive generations.

Where legacy and fame are concerned, most celebrities and creative folks have a shelf-life slightly longer than powdered milk. (Which is about 18 months, by the way).

All of which is a long-winded way of saying this: Cancel culture, which has become a political flashpoint in the last few months, isn’t worth the consideration we give it. Time cancels most people and works, with or without our help. Who is to say that what is popular today will merit more than a footnote in the history books 100 years from now?

It might sound ridiculous, but there is no guarantee that future music aficionados will recall Elvis with much fondness. Millions upon millions of copies of James Patterson’s novels are headed for landfills, along with smaller quantities of works by writers far more profound. Even the brilliance of a Shakespeare, a Bach, an O'Keeffe or a Morrison will not survive the sun’s supernova, which is too damn depressing to think about for too long.

The fickle and happenstance nature of fame and reputation is a point I make with my students (too often, as it is something of an idée fixe with me). Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote for a popular audience in the 1800s and died under a cloud of scandal and mystery, somehow transcended his era and is still read today. Herman Melville found popular acclaim, yet it wasn’t until he wrote “Moby Dick,” a novel that was ignored during his lifetime (except by readers who used it as an example of why he should return to writing travel memoirs), that he achieved literary immortality.

Most of these writers’ contemporaries, justly or unjustly, more talented or less talented, are forgotten.

When conservatives worry about the Far Left canceling some of Dr. Seuss’ racially insensitive work (nevermind that it was the writer’s literary executors who made that call) or municipalities pulling down statues of Confederate heroes (an oxymoron, that), they forget that time has a way of making its own harsh judgments.

It’s a valuable lesson for progressives, too. Percy Shelly’s sonnet “Ozymandias'' captures the sentiment — the “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” and a shattered head are the only remnants of a narcissistic world-builder's statue. The rest of his great works have been swallowed by the desert.

While Jack Benny was no Ozymandias, he was in his own way a cultural force to be reckoned with. Today, he’s just one more reminder that we have no control over, as the musical “Hamilton” puts it, “who lives, who dies, who tells your story.”

Or even how long that story is remembered.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

Keep food-shaming in the family

I was in the drive-thru line at McDonald’s when I got the call that, to quote Don Henley, “I didn’t want to hear, but I knew that it would come.”

It wasn’t an old, true friend of mine, but rather my adult daughter, who has taken it upon herself to guide my culinary choices. Her check-ins come at such inopportune times that I wonder if she has attached a tracking unit to my car. Maybe it pings based on proximity to fast food.

Rather than admit that I was lusting after two regular burgers, two fries, and a soft drink (my go-to order from the Golden Arches), I pulled out of line before answering. Then I drove to a nearby sub shop, where I ordered a meal about half as artery-clogging and half as tasty.

Such is life with a Food Shamer.

To be fair, my kid is looking out for me, much as I did for her when she was a small fry. And I need looking out for. After years of staying on the wagon where fast food is concerned, I’ve fallen off in a big way.

I blame it on teaching. A few months ago, after a night of parent-teacher conferences, I ordered McDonald’s on my way home. Those succulent burgers, indifferently wrapped and carelessly tossed inside a bag with lukewarm fries, scratched an itch I didn’t know I had.

I was like a reformed drinker shocked to find himself ordering a rum and Coke. Or Sylvester in that old Merrie Melodies cartoon, supposedly cured of his addiction to birding but suddenly back on the Tweety trail.

My wife, the snitch, informed my daughter, who took it upon herself to fix her father. Or maybe to punish me for all the times I grounded her growing up.

Hence, the phone call on the very night when she knew her mother was going out with friends, just to “check in” and see how I was doing.

Meanwhile, a perfect gastrointestinal storm was brewing on other fronts. I recently overheard a group of students talking about their fast food jobs, and one mentioned how busy Burger King is when coupons are released.

“Coupons?” said I. “I didn’t know Burger King had coupons!”

Oh, yes, came the explanation. A Whopper value meal for only $5, or two Whopper Jr. meals for the same price. And they are also available on the Burger King app.

“Wait a minute, Burger King has an app?” I sputtered. (Sometimes, it’s a toss-up as to who teaches whom.)

I wasn’t going to download any fast food apps — too intentional — but the universe, in the form of the United States Postal Service, sent me an alternative that very day. The coupons under discussion were waiting in my mailbox. All that was missing was Leonard Cohen singing “Hallelujah.”

I tucked those money-saving missives away, waiting for an opportune moment to deploy them. It came about a week later. My wife wasn’t feeling well, and our planned meal — a completely healthy entree, for the record — didn’t make sense just for one. I was on my own.

Like a public official sneaking into a strip club, I made my way to the BK, placed my order under cover of darkness and drove home on back roads to avoid detection.

I almost ate the Whopper meal in the car, but because it was cold in the garage, I came inside — to find my wife on the phone with the little Food Shamer.

“Guess what your dad just brought home!”

“Fast food? Dad, who ARE you?”

Aaargh. I ate it anyway, telling her that when I am old and institutionalized she can control my diet six ways from Sunday and I will have no say. But until then, I am going to periodically indulge in my fast food obsession.

In the last week or two, she has instituted a reverse-psychology strategy by bringing me fast food coupons and making guilt-inducing comments like, “If you’re going to ruin your health anyway ... ”

I now have two flyers from McDonald’s, both with tempting offers. I haven’t used them. Maybe her strategy is working.

I wish I could end this with a heartwarming coda about how I have learned restraint and she has learned to love me despite my flaws. But this is the real world, not some fairy tale.

Maybe I’m cured, but probably not. One of these days, when I grow weary of healthy options, I will transgress again, likely with hunger gnawing at my stomach and coupons clenched in my hand.

Because cheap, superfluous calories are a heady brew, and a daughter’s love is a small price to pay.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter