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Carol H Tucker
Passionate about knowledge management and organizational development, expert in loan servicing, virtual world denizen and community facilitator, and a DISNEY fan
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Be warned:in this very rich environment where you can immerse yourself so completely, your emotions will become engaged -- and not everyone is cognizant of that. Among the many excellent features of SL, there is no auto-return on hearts, so be wary of where your's wanders...
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what is work worth?
Today is the 4th day of the 36th week, the 7th day of the 9th month, the 251st day of 2016, and:
- Google Commemoration Day ((no doodle tho, instead they celebrated the start of the Paralympics))
- Grandma Moses Day
- Independence Day: Brazil from Portugal in 1822
- National Acorn Squash Day
- National Attention Deficit Disorder Awareness Day
- National Beer Lover's Day
- National Feel the Love Day
- National Neither Rain Nor Snow Day
- Salami Day
On this day in 70 the Roman army under Titus occupied and plundered Jerusalem. In 1695 Henry Every perpetrated one of the most profitable pirate raids in history with the capture of the Grand Mughal ship Ganj-i-Sawai and Emperor Aurangzeb threatened to end all English trading in India as a result. In 1776 according to American colonial reports, Ezra Lee makes the world's first submarine attack in the Turtle, attempting to attach a time bomb to the hull of HMS Eagle in New York Harbor (no British records of this attack exist). In 1896 the first successful heart surgery was completed by Ludwig Rehn, repairing a stab wound suffered by 22-year-old gardener Wilhelm Justus. In 1907 Cunard Line's RMS Lusitania set sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England, to New York City. In 1921 in Atlantic City NJ the first Miss America Pageant was held. In 1921 the Legion of Mary, the largest apostolic organization of lay people in the Catholic Church, was founded in Dublin, Ireland. In 1922 the Bank of Latvia was established. In 1923 the International Criminal Police Organization was formed. In 1927 the first fully electronic television system was achieved by Philo Farnsworth using a device called an image dissector. In 1936 the last thylacine [AKA a Tasmanian tiger], a carnivorous marsupial named Benjamin, died alone in its cage at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania. In 1970 Bill Shoemaker set a new record for most lifetime wins as a jockey. In 1977 the Torrijos–Carter Treaties between Panama and the United States on the status of the Panama Canal were signed, agreeing to transfer control of the canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century.
Labor Day always gets me to thinking about the value of the work that I have done. A half of a century after I took a part-time job in a bakery, I have not amassed enough personal net worth to retire or to provide an inheritance for my children – but that isn’t what I mean about value. There are no tangible results that I can point to – unlike the manufacturing industry, I didn’t make anything. See, I have always been in the service industries, mostly in retail and financial, and there isn’t really anything I can point to in the way of an enduring accomplishment. Frank saved lives – there is a least one woman who would’ve died on her 21st birthday in a car accident one night if he hadn’t been there and supported her broken neck until they could cut her out of the wreck and get a temporary cast on her. I have friends who were teachers and nurses – their work had a direct impact on others’ lives. Me? I waited on people and handled paperwork. In 51 years of work, I can’t think of a single incident where my labors made a real difference and yes, that really bothers me sometimes. When you come right down to it? I am and have always been a cog in the wheel – anonymous, interchangeable, replaceable, disposable. My role as a service industry employee has been to make things move easier, faster, effectively, accurately – and it is difficult to garner respect and/or appreciation for these things even from myself even as I reflect just how absolutely vital execution is to productivity, strategy, and goals. .
THAT is why the service industry salaries are so low, neither the 1% nor the business leaders think that service workers are really important – we are the cost of doing business. And to maximize profits, costs have to be managed, contained and reduced if possible. Once workers were considered a company’s most valued assets – now in this new service economy? Employees are seen as the largest liability – salaries and benefits – hurting the net income. Organizations no longer see their responsibility to stakeholders – all of the folks who have an interest in their success: the employees, the community, and the customers. Instead the focus is exclusively on the shareholders and making sure the investors get profits. As manufacturing and industry jobs wane to be replaced by service jobs, I am firmly convinced that change in the point of view has contributed substantially to the rapid eradication of the once robust middle class.
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