Every so often, to bolster my bank account and ingratiate myself with certain higher-ups in the state bureaucracy, I work as a civil service exam proctor, doling out tests to candidates seeking employment with the New York state government. It’s probably the closest you can get to getting paid to sit on your ass and do nothing. After the candidates have filed in and you’ve checked their IDs and passed out the tests and answer sheets, you can just put your feet up and read a book for the two, three, or eight (yes, EIGHT) hours it takes for everyone to finish. Then you organize everything, file the paperwork and you’re done. It pays pretty good too – $9.50 an hour and up, depending on where you are and what you’re doing. The only problem? The tests are given out on Saturday mornings, which means you’ve got to behave yourself on Friday night and not show up visibly hungover.
Anyway, last Saturday I was on the job again, sacrificing part of my weekend to help keep the gears of government turning. The series of tests we were giving out were a Very Big Deal for some reason, necessitating that we show up at 7:30 in the morning (a half-hour before we usually report to work) to get briefed, and there was also an afternoon session that wouldn’t end until around five. After getting jawed at by our supervisors on why these tests were a Very Big Deal, I got my assignment and went to set up my room. The candidates started arriving around 8:30, but strangely enough, after more than an hour, my room was still empty. I told one of the supervisors, and this is how our conversation went:
Boss: Well Ferd, a whole bunch of people who were scheduled to take that test haven’t showed, so how ’bout you take the rest of the day off?
Ferdinand Bardamu: You don’t want me to come back for the afternoon tests?
B: Nope, we’ve got too many people and not enough candidates. You’ll still get paid for five hours.
F: …Okay, thanks. See ya next time.
Yep. Despite only working for two hours, I got paid for five hours of work. With taxpayer money. I was torn between being relieved at getting to go home early and being pissed at having gotten up at seven on a Saturday morning for nothing.
While driving home, I turned the radio dial to the local NPR station. The newscaster was talking about government workers in Britain protesting recent austerity measures that would cost them their jobs, as well as French protests against THEIR government’s plan to raise the retirement age. I laughed. My idiot co-workers and the rest of the retards working for the wretched government apparatus in this state have no clue what they’re in for. The money that’s funded their waste, their greed and their uselessness is gone. Austerity is coming to Albany, Sacramento, Boston, Annapolis, Springfield and every other state capital in this country no matter who gets into power and no matter how loudly the public employees’ unions gnash their teeth.
I personally don’t care that much. I survived just fine before getting this job and I can keep on going no matter what happens. But my office is full of people for whom the public teat is all they’ve ever known. Life without the easy money that comes with being a government bureaucrat is unthinkable. The mass protests are coming. It’s just a matter of time before America is on fire once more.
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Metropolitan DC is going to be a very interesting place to live when that happens. We’re a company town and the biggest company in town is Uncle Sam.
Not quite. Two or three states are in the black (MT, ND, WY if memory serves). Yes, cutbacks are coming to Helena, Bismarck, and Cheyenne, but as long as the energy market holds, not enough to riot over.
Yesterday, Fox had a special about the Republican Contract With America in ’94. I recall distinctly the uproar about the fake ‘government shutdown’, where all them non-essential fed workers didn’t work for a coupla weeks but got paid for it anyway.
I can only imagine what will happen if it shut down for real.
EW, it’ll probably be a repeat of the “Days of Rage” from the ’60′s.
The “Days of Rage” will be nothing compared to what’s coming. What is now nearing the moment of fruition is the consequence of the entire country living in a decades-long illusion of false prosperity. We are about to witness our very own “Humpty Dumpty” moment, and remember, “All the Kings horses and all the Kings men…”
Once this egg hits the cold, hard ground, unlike the 1960′s everyone is going to be caught up in this. Millions upon million of jobs in every sector, whether public or private will vaporize overnight. Dystopia will be the order of the day, societal collapse will be upon us and with it the death of feminism. All those worthless jobs of shuffling paper and keyboarding in all the worthless data will vaporize overnight as the real costs of the Duopoly’s “New Economy” of non-production finally set in. When you do not produce tangible items, in the end you shall have nothing.
Outside of the ruthlessly efficient instruments for the Empire that enable our giant international killing machine, America produces little more than paperwork, that paper being little more than a fig leaf that masks our ineptness manufactured from pulp. When wet it becomes worthless. That’s why women are currently so important to our totally unproductive economy – they shuffle paper. That’s what we/they do.
The skies are now darkened with the chickens coming home to roost. The old adage of “When pigs fly” has some bearing here, for at least chickens have wings and have learned how to fly. Perhaps instead, they are ravens…
Christ, what kind of test takes eight hours? I’ve done high-level language certifications in less time than that.
Hot French chick O-Face. Sweet!
The Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam is 4 hours in the morning and then 4 hours in the afternoon.
This collapse can’t come soon enough. I can’t wait to start raping, plundering and pillaging like my Viking ancestors did. Patriotism is for the weak. Fear, instability and uncertainty is the krypton of feminism.
@Jjs: do not, post-Crash, attempt to “Rape, Plunder, and Pillage” in my part of the world. The local Committee of Public Safety will speak to you in a language you can understand. Back on topic, I once worked for the Survey Research Center at UC Berkeley, rigging public opinion survey data for a couple of liberal profs, and it just hit me: that was a gov’t job….no wonder it was such a wad of corruption.
@CompassionateFascist, not if a Genghis Khan leader-of-men type rises out of the ashes of a post-apocalyptic America and forms a marauding army of brute conquerors.
“The local Committee of Public Safety will speak to you in a language you can understand.”
________
By the way, what happened to the “Compassionate” in CompassionateFascist when you wrote this veiled reference to mob justice?
@Jjs: “a Genghis Khan….”; yes, if that happens, we’ll have to join forces. On point #2, well, all libs are by definition “compassionate”, and we just had 8 years of Dubya and “compassionate conservatism”. So I thought I’d give Compassionate Fascism a try….hard to say what it’s going to be like, but I think we are going to find out.
Good post at Mangans today:
http://mangans.blogspot.com/2010/10/california-is-broke.html#comments
Massachusetts is a mess.
I shudder to think of the effect in Springfield.
Long time coming, frankly.
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