Never Settle

I usually don’t make New Years resolutions, but my goal for this year is to try to blog more frequently. I recently started a new job, and due to the constant stress and strain from the demand imposed by my previous employer, I rarely had the time, or the energy to be able to sit down and document my thoughts. That and I find venting through my Podcasts much easier than actually having to form words and use correct grammar (darn that English language.) So here’s my attempt to put more effort into trying to become more ‘social’ in the year 2011.

Like many individuals there are things that bother me in my daily routine. I’ve gotten better at letting the little things go, but there are things that frustrate me and I’ve been neglecting voicing my opinion for fear of hurting someone’s feelings. It’s always a fine line of what negatives thoughts to publish in one’s status updates. Facebook = Nice, Twitter = Negative.

So as I turn the corner and begin a New Year  (and turned thirty-five) the goal has been to focus on producing positive change for the world. Positive change sometimes means that you can express a negative thought as long as you back it up with a realistic solution.

For the past year I’ve been working diligently to find a new career. Working in the healthcare industry was not only depressing, and frustrating but also downright aggravating. I was doing work I simply didn’t enjoy and what I saw showed me that there are legitimate reasons for overhauling healthcare in the United States.

Oh the verbal tones as I was told numerous times by numerous individuals that I “should be happy to have a job in this rough economy”. At thirty-five my image of the world is a bit jaded these days. It didn’t matter that corporations did everything they could to raise the bottom line, even at the expense of their employee’s sanity and well-being. I see now how these behemoths are continuing to find ways to make our lives more difficult while they themselves continue to make record profits while gaining more control over our lives. Constantly keeping us at our wits’ end. Corporations are not for anyone but their stockholders, and they lie and steal to maximize profits while posing with a happy face indicating they are ‘for the people’. It’s really all about the bottom line, and it doesn’t matter whom they will destroy to achieve their goals of making money.

And don’t get me started on how these corporations treat our foreign friends. Treating these people like second-class citizens huddled into tiny rooms that are against fire codes, with their only gratification being free coffee. Our outsourcing counterparts deserve better and I blame the governments sacrificing human decency to make a profit instead of enforcing better workplace laws to protect everyone.

So it is very important during these turbulent times that we choose to not let the negativity adversely affect us, and that we hold the offending corporations and our government to a higher standard. We must demand better treatment by the businesses that employ us; otherwise we’ll soon slip into the nightmarish world of Gattaca or 1984.

This isn’t the way businesses should be run, and human beings shouldn’t work nor exist this way. Thank goodness for what’s left of the already disappearing labor unions. When did we decide that not having four walls and a door was an effective way to work? Why do we let ourselves be herded into small cubicles with no privacy, no ability to concentrate, noisy and sometimes unsafe environments and then accept that half of our pay goes toward high medical insurance premiums? This year I realized it doesn’t matter how much you get paid, but how much you take home. When did we allow these businesses to make going to work completely miserable even if you enjoy what you do?

So after a year with my hopes constantly being ripped out like the hearts of individuals from Raiders of the Lost Ark, I finally landed a wonderful position that not only treats their employees well, but treats their employees great! Within two days of working there I started wondering, why can’t corporations attempt to treat individuals in this matter? Especially when they are surrounding themselves with immense wealth and power.

The picture is clear. The corporations who neglect to treat their employees badly may make a profit, but will not get 100% from their employees. These are the same companies who continue to resist governmental regulations, unions and anything that makes the workplace safer and better for the common man. When they can’t meet their financial goals dealing with these provisions they take their jobs overseas where the laws will allow their employees to be mistreated even more.

I start the New Year, and a new wonderful position with a company that treats their employees WAY above average. I’m trying not to be jaded and want to be more positive towards the future, even if this is extremely hard to do at times. I ponder the great things that have happened within two years and hope that once again this is not the world overlords just letting us have our way, but the true will of the people. I’m hopeful the my niece’s generation will grow up in world that understands you don’t have to be the loudest to get your point across, you just have to be willing to listen (and blog about it).

As for the healthcare industry and corporations in general, I hope that ‘we the people’ can force these monopolies to ‘shape up’. While we may never escape the confines of cubicle land, we should at least expect our treatment to be much better than what we are currently receiving. We should demand other nations to do the same.

As we start the new decade ‘Never Settle for Less.’ We are intelligent and hard working individuals and we deserve better from our government and the corporations that run it. We can be better people. It doesn’t have to be wrapped up in the false verbose of ‘hope’ but in true actions of the individuals.