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‘Mystery Meat Slave Bus’
Brad on His Ride Home from Work
© 2016 James LaFond
AUG/9/16
Brad lives and works in two very bad araes of a city in the Eastern U.S.
You shoud have seen what happened on the bus. It’s an express bus that you have to buy a pass for. You don’t just slide your card. We had some cops come on and pull a guy off because they are checking everone’s passes. On the commuter trains they do that all the time. The transit cops came on checking passes because they heard someone snuck on—people are trying to sneak on and not pay. The cops usually take the bus driver’s side. It seemed almost like a World War II movie, where the Nazis are checking people’s papers. The guy next to me, some Spanish or black or mystery meat guy or whatever, started saying, “This is almost like being on a slave ship.”
I look at him as if to say, “Are you serious? You paid to get on the bus. Nobody paid to get onto slave ships.”
So the bus went on its way and I’m free to start my seven day shift at the Hospital—talk about slavery. It’s like all of the labor laws over the past hundred years were never passed. Of course my black, female supervisor gets a week off for stress. But I’m a man, I can’t have stress.
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Jeremy Bentham     Aug 10, 2016

“A general should be attentive to discover the turbulent and seditious soldiers in the army, legions or auxiliaries, cavalry or infantry. He should endeavor to procure his intelligence not from informers, but from the tribunes, their lieutenants and other officers of undoubted veracity. It would then be prudent in him to separate them from the rest under pretense of some service agreeable to them, or detach them to garrison cities or castles, but with such address that though he wants to get rid of them, they may think themselves employed by preference and favor.” – Flavius Vegetius Renatus, “De Re Militari” (On the Military), 378 A.D.

I suspect that the reason Brad’s supervisor was allowed to take a “stress” vacation by her superiors is because THEY were the ones who were stressed-out. Stressed-out by her performance, or lack thereof. Thus they wanted to be rid of her, even if just for a week. To confirm or deny this suspicion, merely answer the question: did the section work more efficiently and with less drama, even though shorthanded, while she was gone, yes or no? Brad on the other hand may be too much of an asset for the chain of command to countenance being without him even for a short time. If so, it sucks to be you Brad. But as there is seldom much you can do to remedy the injustice of it all in such circumstances, then “embrace the suck!” Don’t waste valuable time and energy feeling sorry for yourself. Use the situation to your advantage as best you can. Hard work and ability are still valued even if they are frequently not rewarded in full and equal measure these days.
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