Useless employees, large and small Part 1

I found out earlier today that the business where I do most of my free-lancing fired a guy that had only worked there for about two months. It was a sound business decision. The fellow had no value as a worker in the low-voltage industry. This says nothing about his personal character, which was good, or his personality, which was incommodious. He was simply useless as a worker. It being a common objective of a business owner to make a profit by reselling an employee’s labor, it made no sense to continue employing someone whose labor produced nothing to resell. I point this fellow out because he serves as an object lesson. He lost his job because he repeatedly spent absurd lengths of time doing things he was not told to do in an attempt to do what he was told to do. And even those things he did, he did badly. I know of only one way he could have made himself more of a liability: if he had a company credit card and was actually spending the company’s money instead of just not producing any. Which brings me to the United States government…

If I were asked to find a common thread that runs through all the news articles I read, it would be a simple task…especially since I’ve already found it: There is a nearly universal ignorance of the governmental and political foundations of the United States among their citizens. See? If you had written that last sentence, you would have used the word “its” (or “it’s”, if you make the common error) instead of “their”. By the time we’re done, you’ll see why it should be written as I did.

But do me a favor, and don’t get anxious. I’m very busy traveling about, creating the impression I don’t have to work for a living. It’s back to Illinois soon, and the kids there will keep me happily occupied between packing my stuff to haul it all back to the East coast. In other words, don’t rush me… We’ll get there, eventually.