My plan with this blog was to use my personal experiences, up to a point, to springboard to larger issues.
Well, it's starting to get too much like a personal diary. So let me clue you in on what transpired when I went to work today, and then next time write Part 2 of my blog on Gallipoli/war.
Today's events are indeed instructive, otherwise I certainly wouldn't bother recording them here.
When I logged onto my computer this morning there was an invitation to a 2pm meeting with the executive who told me yesterday that I would be terminated if I didn't sign that certain piece of paper (see yesterday's blog entry), and the main guy from HR. This was the meeting where the ultimatums about the blog and the piece of paper would be laid out again, I'd say no, be immediately fired, and drive home.
Only I didn't get fired.
And the HR guy wanted to make that clear. He repeated it several times. Of course I know what I heard the day before but, just like something out of Orwell, those words were now expunged from history and I was never in any way fired and a pox on the house of anyone who says I was. Okay, cool.
I also didn't have to sign the piece of paper with the plans for my vocational rehabilitation. Weird.
In fact, the HR guy wasn't even prepared to say I couldn't blog about Harrah's or that there'd be any trouble in the future if I did. Each "incident" will be looked at in isolation, he told me. Alrighty.
The most interesting moment was when the HR fella told me that Harrah's primary concern was that my blog might "hurt my co-workers." This, of course, was nonsense intended to cause me feelings of guilt and I called him on it. I explained that my blog is all about helping people like my co-workers, not hurting them. But he knew that and so does his "superiors."
If Harrah's is so concerned with my co-workers, it might want to consider giving their sick leave back. (Harrah's cut out sick leave for us in early 2009.) Or seeing to it that we aren't worked excessively. Or being more honest with us. And on and on.
The only "co-workers" that my blog has called out are the ones who are lackeys of the brass and, in being such, actually help with the hurting. So, while they're essentially pawns themselves, they are complicit in the systemic exploitation of those "under" them and deserve criticism. They're motives are generally selfish and have been noted as such by those they've affected.
There was more dialogue to this meeting, of course. (Though the exec never uttered a word but made copious notes because that would surely shake me up.) And at the end I made a little speech and toddled off.
But I shouldn't make too light of it because, as I said, there is something significant here.
What I believe this illustrates is... the little guy doesn't necessarily always lose. Now that's a pretty important message considering how overwhelmed/intimidated we generally feel by our "superiors" at work, the IRS, the preposterously expensive legal system, Homeland Security, etc etc.
My sense of what took place is that somebody at Harrah's did the math and realized that firing me over a small-time blog that doesn't get a lot of notice, might well give the small-time blog considerable notice. They may have guessed that I'd be crazy enough to go to the ACLU, file suit, wave the First Amendment and work the media like a demon. If this was their guess, they guessed right. I may not be rich or beautiful but I fight as hard as anybody.
So it was easier to just damp it all down and make it semi go away.
It reminds me of something I learned once when I went to an activist camp back East. The instructor asked how you beat a giant. Nobody knew. She said: "You stand on their toe and gradually apply more and more pressure until they'd prefer to get rid of you than put up with it any longer." In a sense, I think that's what I did.
If nothing else, it gave me renewed hope. A bit of a boost. I don't really despise the honchos at Harrah's. They're people too. But they're people either unseeing or uncaring. My concern is for the masses who struggle and deserve a better life and a better work situation. I have no personal vendetta -- it's a commitment of conscience.
Okay, that's enough stuff starring me. I'm breaking for a few days, then I'll be back with LEST WE FORGET, PART 2.
Take care,
Adrian Zupp
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