Battle

So I had to do a complex work around, and it's still not clickable in preview.... let's hope the final product is better.

What I really want to talk about is that I made a stand today.

Today I stood against the idea that someone else owns me. Now, how is this a controversial stand? Do I not live in America, is there not a bill of rights that clearly states I am in ownership of certain freedoms? Wasn't the whole concept, in fact, of the revolution to overthrow tyranny?

You'd be right on all those counts. However, since the dawn of our country many persons and organizations have tried hard to get rid of the rights of the people. Many of the rights we have we are uneducated or misinformed about the truth about. If you ever encounter someone who owns you, first of all you must know they are wrong.

No one can own you without your permission. End of story. "What about slavery?" Terms and conditions people. They may enslave your body but your mind is free. Furthermore proper slavery is really illegal in this country. However we did invent something close to as nasty. Would you like to hear about it? It's called at will employment.

The concept behind at will employment is that you are working at your own will, and under limited conditions. This means you have no contract. It makes hiring and firing people go much quicker and it's part of what makes the modern corporation in America SO successful. So, if for example you decide you want to walk out of your employer right away, you can. If, in addition, your employer wants to fire you for no reason other than they do not like you, they can do that too!

Are you starting to see? No, we need to go down the logical path a bit more. Now, suppose you worked at a company that owns a drill factory. Your job is that you are the person that checks that the machines are working correctly, nothing going wrong, and that they aren't spitting out too many defective drill parts. Defective drill parts cost the company money for something that they cannot recoup, so that makes your job important, doesn't it?

You'd like to think that. However, your company believes that instead of putting people over people and letting people run the show, they are going to create policy and let the policy run the show. The people are just meat puppets for the policy. Remember, again, this is an at will employment environment. You as the worker have no voice or rights about policy changes.

Are you ready for our story to have some fun? I am.

So, one day you fall on the job and hit your head. You stand back up and feel kind of dizzy. Now your job is not one that can be safely performed while dizzy. So you go tell your boss.
Your boss blows his lid. How dare you! Don't you know how lucky you are to have a job? Don't you know how much we paid to train you? Don't you understand that if you go home sick it will cost the company money? Don't you understand that your human failings will reflect badly on your boss?

Because remember, a company is a machine to make money by selling products or services. It is not a machine to take care of it's employees, or even to make sure that it makes good products or services. Those are not things that such a machine can think about.

So your boss, and I think you should feel really sorry for the guy, has been forced to be a voice for the machine. He is forced to tell you why it's not good for the company that you are a person. He may even say something along the lines of that there will be consequences for your human error. Or that you might even lose your job. This is him trying to force you into working when you are injured. You want to know the best part, at least if we think about it from your bosses point of view? If he manages to talk you into working while injured and you don't get further injured and nothing happens to you for which you could file suit, he gets away with the verbal and emotional abuse. In fact it helps his career.

What's more if he manages to bully you enough, you'll forget that you even have human rights. The company owns you because you depend on them for a paycheck. You have LET them own you. YOU have sold yourself into slavery. Because if you allow yourself to be the subject of abuse, and you allow inhuman conditions because you are scared of them, you have become a silent partner to the human rights abuses in the right to work system.

Now, after he gets done verbally abusing you, there are two things you can do, and either will take ALL the power away from him. One thing you can do is quit. If your services are marketable, and you are in an uncomfortable situation you are fully within your rights to that moment say that you are ending your employment with the drill company and walk off. Another thing to do is to do what is right regardless and see what he will do to you. This is a relative of what I did ( I'm not going into details because it's not time). If he becomes abusive again, you can look him in the eye, say "I'm going to do what I did last time, the right thing, regardless of whatever you are going to do to me." He's just an employer. He's only your boss. He's not God, he's not the government, he doesn't own the mortgage on your house. He's not your wife, not your family, and you literally owe him nothing.

No man can own you. The problem with us is that too often we walk into handcuffs wrists out eager to be locked away with an uncontrollable monster. That monster is greed. I would rather almost anything than be enslaved.

Money doesn't own you either. You own your things, they don't own you. You can walk out on your things and live a perfectly healthy and happy life. If you put your love and faith and devotion in something that does not fade away, that won't betray you and that will never forget your needs and rights, then there is nothing these fake gods can do to hurt you. You are free. Today, this very moment. You just need to declare your independence.

Oh, and one more thing, about working at will:
Unless you are part of a stock option or shared ownership plan, the only interest you share in them keeping their business going is that you have a job. When you stop wanting or needing that job, you have no interest in what THEY do to lose the company money. You have no fault and share no guilt because you did not create the circumstances that are losing them money. You didn't build the building, you didn't start the business with just a few employees and a dream. You are work for hire. Nothing more. You do work in direct relation to the compensation you receive. If you are underpaid then quit. If you are mistreated, find somewhere or something that treats you better. No one deserves to live with something that hurts them, or undervalues them.

When you are attacked and put down you are being devalued. When you are strained past what is reasonable to expect, you are being devalued. When you are spoken to as if you are not free to have a mind of your own, you are being devalued. If your self esteem is lowered because people around you are telling you that you deserve this treatment, you are being lied to. No one deserves to be abused, and there is no amount of money or security that can make me be subject to it or dish it out.