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    Attention Must Be Paid

    By Michael Maiello on Sun, 10/02/2011 - 5:45pm | Politics

    Today's horrible story about a man's suicide after being fired from his job makes me think of Willy Loman, and the anxieties of power and employment that have always been part of American society.  In "Death of a Salesman," Arthur Miller broke with tradition and wrote a classical tragedy about an ordinary man.  This is something we take for granted now, but when Miller was writing, people in the theatre were  seriously debating whether or not it was even possible to write a tragedy with a prosaic protagonist.  Royals, world leaders, tycoons and superhuman types were, aping the ancient Greeks and Shakespeare, considered viable tragic figures.  You and I were not.

    This makes some sense.  The downfall of a king has social ramifications that the tragedy of your neighbor doesn't.  But that doesn't make the tragedy of your neighbor any less visceral.  It's probably best summarized by Willy Loman's wife Linda, who describes his descent into despair, madness and suicide:

    "Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person."

    Finally.  But we still don't really pay attention, do we?

    A 51-year-old man named Patrick Graves loved his family and worked hard to provide for them.  He received a harsh performance review and was fired.  I don't mean at all to compare him to Willy Loman, a fictional character drawn with the flaws of a tragic hero.  Real people are more complicated.  But this conflict between the individual and the economic system we share is what inspired Miller.

    We Americans are lucky enough to enjoy what are sometimes called "first world problems." So we sometimes forget just how darned harsh a system we've created for ourselves.  We get complacent and fool ourselves into believing that we have created, "the best of all possible worlds," where any problems that remain are, by definition, incurable.  I think we have a long way to go, and that we have to do better.

    The choice of suicide (forgive me, I randomly plucked up and reread this, this morning) is deeply personal but it us also a very emphatic commentary on the world.

    We expect you to work and to take care of your own and that if you fail, (even if you fail because of bad luck) that you will suffer and your loved ones will suffer with you.  As a new parent, I think it's the last part that really got to the vulnerable Mr. Graves.  Deep down, I think that most of us are more afraid of failing the one's we love than we are about failing ourselves.  I also think that's a good and decent impulse.  But it's an impulse with consequences that maybe we don't think about often enough.

    So, attention must be paid.  I'm not sure what to actually do about the problem.  But I think that attention must be paid.  These are our neighbors.  This is what they're going through. 

    Topics: 
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    A devastating story, Destor.  It's too easy to ignore the raw pain the victims of this failing economy are feeling when we're talking about victims in the millions. 

    This from Patrick Graves' 15 year old daughter:

    "Even with what he did - that doesn't affect his heart - that's just an action he made," she said. "I don't want that to be...the last memory of him or who he was as a person because that was not his life."

    I'm not sure what to do, either.  None of us do, really.  Our power might be in keeping the stories alive, and if that's so, we're obliged to do it. 

    These are strange and terrible times, so yes, attention must be paid.  Thank you.


    by Ramona on Sun, 10/02/2011 - 10:59pm

    We need pictures, lots and lots of pictures.

    During the Depression many photographs were taken. A picture says a thousand words. 

    Prick the Nations conscience. 

    In a nation of illiterates, a picture tells the story.

    Don't tell me, show me.

    http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm

    migmoth.jpg (49483 bytes)


    by Resistance on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 7:38am

    Thank you destor.  I think one of the problems is, ironically, that the pictures from the 30s that Resistance showed to us don't quite reflect the normalcy of the suffering in today's economy.  It is the fear in so many of losing their job while they try to go on with their daily lives and so they have a fear that is hidden from the camera.  And the folks who have lose their jobs often don't reflect what we see in the pictures from back then.  It's all hiding in plain sight.


    by Bruce Levine on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 9:03am

    "hiding in plain sight". Very true.  

    I was looking up the quote,  "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" by Thoreau, which I thought might be applicable. But then I read the rest of the quote "..and go to their grave with the song still in their heart." No song in the heart for Patrick Graves. And, definitely, no pun intended.


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 11:08am

    Thanks for this Destor. I have been in the 50's and out of a career position so it is difficult to read stories like this and realize that another human being didn't escape the self incrimination that can accompany unemployment. Over the last couple of weeks I've started to wonder if we are actually heading back into a 30's style depression.  


    by Oxy Mora on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 10:48am

    I read Miller and I thought:

    Daddy sells used cars to Negroes!

    And I could not understand how come every goddamn nite he came home drunk and as he got drunker he would use the 'n' word.

    But he hated sales.

    I mean he hated the entire concept of sales.

    And he hated his job and his life and his....

    All I remember from that novel was the quote:

    I'M WORTH A BUCK AN HOUR DAD....

    That was 1950.

    By 1962 I was making a buck an hour and until I was in 1972 I was still making a buck an hour. When a shirt was four bucks!

    I could not figure it out.

    Ignorance is not the problem really.

    The problem is ignoring what you already know.

    Life is not fair they would tell me.

    And somehow, that was supposed to make it all okay!

    the end

     


    by Richard Day on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 8:11pm

    In the workplace, I've never given much value to performance reports. Simply put, every manager will bend over backwards to find anything trivial to make a mountain of doubt in your performance. And that's because HR expects everyone to have sub-par performance ... not everyone is a top performer. What they miss is while a worker can be working at their top performance level, a co-worker can be putting out better work under the same level of stress to meet set goals. That doesn't mean the worker not working any less. They're doing the best they're capable of. It's the degree of difference that should be considered. Then again, perhaps HR should do their job and transferred the worker to another department where their abilities and performance level would be a better asset to both the department and the company. Of course, HR failed in their performance in that if an individual isn't performing their duties with in expectations, they should have be counseling those individuals to determine the cause of their lackluster performance and advising them what to expect in the future if they don't get themselves turned around. As the news article stated, Mr. Graves's poor performance rating was totally unexpected by him. So his firing for poor performance could have been a cover for the need of the company to subtly invoke a RIF (reduction in force) of employees to keep their profit margins in the black at the expense of employee wages and benefits. I say could have been because Mr. Graves was the only person identified ..there may have been more which the article did not go into. And firing for cause means Mr. Graves wouldn't be entitled to unemployment compensation ... another double-edged insult ...  puts the company off the hook. It would be interesting to see  what's really going on behind the curtains.

    Mr. Graves had the same problem as me ... defense and aerospace related resume, experience and work skills. Ever since 2007, the defense and aerospace industry has been idle ... hiring, especially field engineering, has virtually ceased because they read the hand writing on the wall that things were going to get tough in the future. It's so bad now, the roll back has found its way to the plants .. the heart of the military-industrial-complex no less. With the super congress poised to make drastic cuts in defense and aerospace, I'm not shocked or surprised. The congressional chiropractors have pushed the limits and are breaking the backbone of the american spirit all in the name of political austerity in the eyes of the GOPers.

    Mr.Graves is a victim of the political brinkmanship in Washington. As Rachel Maddow said ... "Words have consequences".

    By the way, in my opinion, if a business wants to reduce their expenditures on employees and benefits, they should start with HR ... they're overhead .. their efforts don't add value to the bottom line ... they sucks money away from the profits workers earn for the company. Perhaps they should be the first ones to be out-sourced to India. But I'm engaging in prejudicial hyperbole.


    by Beetlejuice on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 8:30am

     

    I think you may be underestimating the role and importance of HR, Beetlejuice. The department exists for two reasons:

    1. To encourage worker compliance, and conformity to corporate expectations, and

    2. To protect the corporation against the legal and financial costs of the corporation's manipulation of workers — their pay, their working conditions, their performance expectations, and ultimately the security of their jobs.

    A well run HR department does both jobs well. Terminations, in particular, can be dicey, but HR is endlessly resourceful. A poor performance review is just one of the many tools available to paper over corporate misbehavior toward employees.

    So these HR personnel are of great value to the company. On the other hand, outsourcing the department overseas is a wonderful idea! Now workers can be directed to take their complaints to an 800 number and talk to someone whose English is not only perfect but unintelligible to the average Joe, thereby increasing the stress and frustration of an already meaningless job and encouraging Joe to just say, "what the fark," and walk out.

    Problem solved.


    by Red Planet on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 10:45am

    So these HR personnel are of great value to the company. On the other hand, outsourcing the department overseas is a wonderful idea!

    If you have money. you can buy stock in those companies.

    Capitalism' goal ; make money ........even if it does mean, slavery.

    Who said slavery was a bad word, the slaves? 


    by Resistance on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 3:51pm

    I was driving the other day, and heard on NPR, that defense contractors were leaving San Diego and taking the operations to Tijuana, Mexico.

    Cheaper costs. Cutting our own throats.


    by Resistance on Tue, 10/04/2011 - 3:42pm

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