By now, we have read about an iconic Jacksonville admin, who wished she had been an inmate (she types 120 wpm, retrained herself as a Medical Assistant, and still couldn’t
break the vicious cycle of not having experience, hence no first job).
And I hate to break it to her: it’s graduation season, with new blood ready to displace the old (Harvard grads are now asked to take the oath, very similar to med students with their Hippocratic one).
Back in 1989, when I was selling Voice mail systems, I saw alarming reaction from receptionists (who happened to be gatekeepers of the first degree).
And I remember Melanie at Penn State Agriculture Communication office a decade before that . Using university-issued IBM Selectric,
Melanie would type, use the white-out, manually roll up the page to spell check and have Mr Hatch, our boss, sign off after ABC double-checking.
Then she would fold, leak the envelope and run it through a postal machine or drop it in inter-campus mail bin.
It’s not how fast an Admin could type these days. It’s a structural change i.e. a confluence of efficiency-improving factors such as Global Supply Chain, DIY, automation etc..) Just like horse power is displaced by engine power.
And speaking of which. We are all guilty of having E-waste in the house (that computer screen, the old VCR, fax, land line phone, cell phones, and multiple remote controls and someday soon, servers, when virtualization and cloud computing take full effect).
Stuff that we didn’t even bother to bring to Good Will (good guilt).
Best Buy was trying a recycling program. But that is not nearly enough.
Between Wilkes Barre and Scranton, PA, back in 1979, I passed by a hill full of Pintos, Yugos and Skylarks.
Industrial waste.
How soon would we wake up and move from caring for pets to caring for people? From our private backyard to our collective junk yard?
At the conclusion of our 120-wpm admin displaced story, she was quoted saying ” I wish I were an inmate”.
That’s a one thing I don’t wish for her. She would have to cross the line to get there. Or someone has to push her.
And I think as a society in shock (Future shock), we have done so, by our everyday choices , which as Friedman put it, the never-ending loop of over-consumption and oil addiction (with displacement as collateral damage). Another journalist terms this “coyote capitalism” i.e. volunteer immigration for work (Filippino nurses in the US, Chinese construction workers in Africa etc..).
I think of Melanie often. She was a good admin, with people skills and emotional intelligence. But those “soft skills” aren’t hard enough for the cold and abrasive
options presented to us in recent years. Actually, those jobs (admin) will never come back. Puff, the magic dragon.
Historians have speculated that the Fall of Rome was due to decadence. But others have contended that Rome overextended itself with “all roads lead to Rome”
(eroded soil and aqua system). In short, energy crisis. This time around, if we had to push our cars to the gas pumps, at least, they are built smaller than
Detroit models hippies used to inch up in line for Woodstock 69 and Oil crisis 73. We should observe National Bike day (I am glad more people will stay home this summer due to World Cup).
Or build those Harley’s smaller, so guys like me could hop in and “born to be wild”. I rode a bike when in Vietnam, and it felt so good to face against the wind.
You feel in contact, in control and mostly, in danger. After all, we start our day with the help of an alarm clock, so should it be in our collective lives with a wake-up call or be displaced in this fast-moving century. Hot, flat and crowded century. A century when the Census temps just want to linger a bit longer
after the counting is done. Wait until 2020. I don’t think they will need that many bodies then, because the machine should be smart enough to take over. After all,
that’s the one thing machines are good for: automated computing, automated answering, and automated translation. Our protagonist in the story, even if she could relocate herself to LA for that P/T job as a Med Assistant, will soon be displaced by my friend’s EMR software. They already have a mandate for a change over by 2011.
Maybe by that time, she really wishes she wore orange jump-suit.
Thang Nguyen 555 