The Invention of the Teenager

"NEWBERRY MILLS, S. C. The unguarded wheel and belt at the
left are sinister neighbors for little girls' arms, skirts and braids."
- Child Labor in the Carolinas, 1909

625 years ago, the English poet Chaucer, in his Tale of Milibee wrote, “Idleness is the root of mischief.” Later in Chaucer’s writings we find the first rendering of a more familiar idiom, “Idle hands are the Devil’s tools.” So it is that the persistent struggle to find positive paths for our youth is not new. What is new is that for most of history there was no such thing as a "teenager," and for that reason we should forgive ourselves for still not having gotten it right.

As late as the 19th century, say 1890, a boy who reached the age of ten could, on average be expected to live about another 48 years...in other words, at age 50, that same boy would be elderly, for he would face the end of his life in a mere ten years or so, at age 60.

President Lincoln, murdered at age 56, had for some time been referred to as the "Old Man," not as a euphemism the way we use the term today, but because he was in fact elderly, statistically confined to a life that would likely have ended in a few years had he died naturally. Only 130 years later, Bill Clinton, at 46 was the third youngest president in history. In 1787 Hamilton was 30, Pinckney 29, Randolph 34, Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” was 36, and Jefferson, 44---an average of 34 years old if you set aside the aberration of Ben Franklin’s 81 years (the average age of our national legislators today is about 50). By age 17 or 18 most of the Founders had completed their classical education. One cannot imagine an idle youth for those men.

It is then that the expectation of a carefree, dependent existence from age 13 to perhaps 20 years old was held by no one in 1860, my great, great grandmother’s day, as the 20 year old would already be nearly halfway through his productive life. The 20 year old in 2010 on the other hand, still has a few years to figure it all out. Today’s teenager may expect to enjoy perhaps another 50 years of relative comfort and security, while the youth of just a few generations ago lived the exhausting urgency of a hard life expected to last only about 55 years, much less in parts of the country. Until WWII, 98% of Americans lived in poverty. There was no rehearsal or really any preparation for adulthood for our ancestors; they did not have to be told to keep moving; to work hard; to seek elusive security, for there was no alternative. Our great, great grandparents had two options---work or starve, most often from a very early age.
We have not, as a society, figured out what to do with the years from age 13 to 19 since for modern teenagers mere subsistence is not a priority. When we hear the cry, "Kids these days!"---We’re hearing the statement of a problem, the profundity of which is barely understood or appreciated. Yet a plurality of our resources as taxpayers, professionals, laborers, and parents are devoted to the well being of our teenagers. While crime rates have fallen overall, youth arrests and incarceration are up.

If ever there were a “community” issue in need of collective attention, it’s the well-being, security, and happiness of our children. Every remedy, from school to ‘boot camp’ to psychotropic drugs has been dreamed-up to address the teenage years, and dire statistics regarding the success of those remedies make it clear we have not solved the problem. Having removed from most of the population the constant necessity of survival, we now find ourselves awash in teenagers who must choose productive use of their time while waiting to become "adults," at which time we expect they will begin behaving like contributing citizens, exercising good judgment, and meeting real-world obligations. Most times it works out ok.
The greatest prize imaginable should be offered for one who dares to propose a viable solution, for all of the medically, sociologically well-intended explanations have not, and will not likely solve the problem soon. Still, there is much we can do until we fully understand.

Bye, bye, Borders...

Glenn Stewart, July, 2011

Borders bookstores are gone, or quickly going as they liquidate merchandise and shut down their stores, 600 in all, including 500 ‘superstores’ and another 100 under the ‘Waldenbook’ brand. Tens of thousands of low-wage employees have lost, or will lose their jobs.

The bankruptcy of the second largest book-mega-retailer is big news. All the major media have run long, detailed stories for over a year now leading up to the final demise of the company. In several of the articles much was made of CEO Bennett Lebow’s personal injection of $25 million dollars to help the company last May. Border’s second-largest shareholder is hedge fund Pershing Square, whose manager, William Ackman, complained out-loud that Borders was his “worst investment ever.” Paraphrasing the last U.S. president to balance the Federal budget, “Mr. Lebow and Mr. Ackman, I feel your pain.” In fact, if it helps, I will hold your place in line at the unemployment office.

One article for example, devoted 130 words to Lebow, Ackman, and several other shareholder-loss scenarios. About the workers who lost their jobs, and did not have $25 million dollars to invest?---They wrote sixteen words: “All 200 closings will be superstores, and about 6,000 jobs will be affected, the company said.”

In my own book, Underlings, I write that things are getting worse for those who work at the bottom of the food chain, and further, that more and more find themselves in minimum wage jobs with virtually no health insurance, and no job security, as the Border’s bankruptcy reveals once again.

Most of those at, or below the poverty threshold are employed in low wage service jobs, most of them in retail, and represent a growing underclass. For the first time in our history, the working poor outnumber the non-working poor. Certainly over 50% of all American workers find they are ‘underlings,’ working for subsistence wages at the whim of corporate captains, whose raison d’être is stock-share value.

Underlings have always been dispensable. Only now, in a global labor market swelling with eager laborers, anxious to toil for about $2 a day, our own workers are fully disposable.

Border’s going down is not the stuff of national tragedy. But the tens of thousands of displaced workers, who will be added to the millions already extant, are a national tragedy of epic proportion. The inability of millions of parents to sustain their children is a condition created by the ‘smartest guys in the room,’ men and women like the Border geniuses, and the Enron and Worldcom criminals.

Having worked for Big Retail for 30 years, I can tell you what they did, and continue to do is not sustainable. The big companies have for decades squeezed workers on the front lines---those who represent the companies to the customers, until turnover has reached an industry average of 60%. For the eight years of the George W. Bush administration the minimum wage did not go up, and so neither did the wages of most American workers. Then the deepest, darkest recession since 1929 hit.

The employees are no better than wage slaves, and so are unhappy to say the least. The customers notice every time they see unacceptably long waiting lines, and disinterested employees merely going through the motions. Service diminishes, as do store conditions and the shopping experience overall. Brick & Mortar is doomed. But not because of technology, but rather because our large retailers do it badly.

The Border’s folks made a lot of mistakes, and squeezing employees was only part of the problem. Many companies treat employees horribly and do just fine. But if you think they are a permanent part of future commerce, just ask Circuit City, The Sharper Image, and yes, Borders. And is it any wonder they're extinct?

People are expensive, and must be employed in a way that improves the company. Exploiting people while expecting the best from them can be fatal to the future of the company.

Underlings: The Book Your Boss Doesn't Want You To Read

A Personal Story of 30 Million Retail Workers

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in

our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are

underlings.”

–Julius Caesar, I.ii

Glenn Stewart

For Elizabeth, my extraordinary daughter

who skillfully avoided becoming an underling

Underling, definitions:

un·der·ling

[uhn-der-ling]

–noun

a subordinate, especially one of slight importance.

Origin: 1125–75; Middle English. See under-, -ling

—Synonyms
menial, flunky, lackey, hireling.

Webster’s 1828 Dictionary

UN'DERLING, n. An inferior person or agent; a mean sorry fellow (Milton).

WordNet® 3.0 (2005)

n
1: an assistant subject to the authority or control of another [syn: subordinate, subsidiary, underling, foot soldier]

Merriam Webster’s

noun Date: 12th century one who is under the orders of another ; subordinate, inferior

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. usu. derog. a subordinate.

Webster’s 1913 Dictionary

Underling Un"der*ling, n. [Under + -ling.] An inferior person or agent; a subordinate; hence, a mean, sorry fellow. --Milton. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” --Shak.

Collins Cobuild Dictionary

(underlings) You refer to someone as an underling when they are inferior in rank or status to someone else and take orders from them. You use this word to show that you do not respect someone. ...underlings who do the dirty work. = minion N-COUNT [disapproval]

Soule’s Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. Understrapper, fag, servant, inferior agent, subordinate.

Moby Thesaurus

assistant, cog, commonality, commonalty, creature, dependent, employee, feudatory, flunky, follower, hanger-on, helper, hoi polloi, homager, inferior, junior, lackey, liege, liege man, lightweight, lower class, lower orders, masses, minion, myrmidon, pawn, peon, poor relation, retainer, right-hand man, scrub, second fiddle, secondary, serf, servant, slave, stooge, subaltern, subordinate, third stringer, understrapper, vassal, yeoman, yes-man

UNDERLINGS

What follows is a corporate response to the question: Why did the chicken cross the road?

“Deregulation of the chicken's side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market. “Acme Consulting,” in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), Acme helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and experiences to align the chicken's people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework. Acme Consulting convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along with Acme consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and successfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes.

The meeting was held in a park-like setting, enabling and creating an impactful environment which was strategically based, industry-focused, and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and aligned with the chicken's mission, vision, and core values. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business integration solution. Acme Consulting helped the chicken change to become more successful…”

The above, from Wikipedia, would be hilarious were it not so close to reality. As it is, ‘tragic’ is a better characterization because people are getting hurt every day, partly as a result of such dribble. Is it any wonder then, after reading the ‘chicken’ parable, that millions of vulnerable human beings get lost, set-adrift in the corporate profit calculation?

The truth is that the approach employed by the imaginary consultants to move poultry from point A to point B, is the same as the corporate approach to managing human beings, in reality.

Some phenomenon are best described by presenting a direct opposite, like light and its companion darkness, or sound and its counterpart, silence. As such, Underlings might be described as the ‘other side’ of the brilliantly conceived book, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell.

In Outliers, Gladwell dissects those components necessary, and almost always present when someone of exceptional ability rises above the rest in station, income, revealed talent, and access to other ‘outliers.’ Specifically, he describes a culture in which the game is rigged in favor of a very few exceptional people, and as a result, he concludes, many exceptional people never get a fair shot; their potential contributions are never fully realized.

The Outlier has his cross to bear, no doubt. The outlier, like the underling, faces a wall of money, privilege and entrenched interests. In order to illustrate the ‘wall’ many exceptional people must scale, Gladwell cites Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, an outlier who enjoyed extraordinary advantages.

Gates had ready access to computers when he was in high school, at a time (1968) when most colleges did not have a computer lab, and few adolescents had any awareness of computers at all. Gate’s fortunate circumstances, Gladwell states emphatically, cannot be separated from his later success---“His father was a wealthy lawyer in Seattle, and his mother the daughter of a well-to-do banker…[they] sent him to Lakeside, a private school that catered to Seattle’s elite families.” (2)

Certainly others, even if only a small number of ‘outliers,’ possessed Gate’s aptitude, but few enjoyed his financially secure family and access to the best tools and training imaginable for success in the computer world. Outliers persuades us that indeed, upon closer examination, “we owe something to parentage and patronage…the people who stand before Kings may look like they did it all by themselves…but in fact they are invariably beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities…” (3)

Underlings on the other hand, is the story of the great mass of those who endure subsistence wages, lack of access to education and health care, and a frighteningly insecure old-age. In other words underlings, in contrast to outliers, work not to excel, but to live.

Where the relatively rare breed of ‘outlier’ whom Gladwell chronicles are passionate about their work, and are demonstrably extraordinary in some way; underlings blend into the crowd by virtue of their extraordinary numbers. Hardly passionate about their work, underlings toil day after day, year after year; at below poverty wages, unable to escape the emotional weight of untenable circumstances, which offer little prospect of improving, and indeed seem only to get worse.

(excerpt)

If only there were no Walmart… “…If a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass every time he jumped…”---my Grandpa Stewart on the subject of ‘wishful thinking’

I want to relate my experience to the experience of millions who’ve done what I’ve done, that is, spent many hundreds, or in my case thousands of hours working in a retail store of one kind or another.

The statistics reveal a diminishing workplace in every area---and my experience bears it out---pay, benefits, working conditions, job-security---all bets are off, the elimination of those components that insured long-term, loyal employees are gone. Pensions are now 401(k)’s (which lost 40-60% of their value in a matter of days in 2008); only 30% of employees get any kind of healthcare insurance at all (down from 60% only 20 years ago), and the “full-time” employee, in retail at least, is nearly extinct.

Walmart brags about the fact that they provide employer-subsidized health insurance to part-time employees---what they fail to mention is that the part-timer is not eligible until he or she has been with the company for two-years, and even then, most often at subsistence already, cannot afford the premiums. Costco has a shorter eligibility time, but has recently doubled the employee contribution (read: payroll deduction).

Still, it’s fashionable to compose invective against Walmart for all kinds of abuses. I however have a slightly different take on the matter. My view is that Walmart is not the cause of the employment disaster in the United States, though heir size and impact makes them a leading conspirator in the damage to the American worker. I say ‘conspirator’ because Walmart is only one of the big-eight discount retailers who dominate the marketplace, and is only marginally worse than the ‘best’ of the group overall. Let me explain.

Walmart and the others are a bit like a contractor who builds inferior structures---when the storm hits, even a small storm, the inhabitants of the shabby-buildings are in danger. Did the contractor cause the storm? Of course not. Did he know it was coming, and that the security, indeed the lives of those who live in his buildings depends upon him?---You bet he did.

Don’t get me wrong, Walmart, Mr. Gladwell might say, is an ‘outlier,’ for they have taken exploitation of the most vulnerable workers in the U.S. to a high-art---if only because they employ over a million people, their ‘sneeze’ omens a plague for everyone. Long after the giant’s sneeze has passed, the rest of us are left with a near-fatal infection.

The national retailers have built a workplace, like the contractor’s inferior dwellings, which is proven to be dangerous for the inhabitants. The results of a below-subsistence wage, lack of health care, and other assaults on the average worker, are predictable, provable and quantifiably-tragic.

The government inspects structures to determine their habitability. Who’s checking in on the demise of the American worker, and thus the American economy?

But again, Walmart didn’t invent exploitation, they merely revived it from another century, and then applying modern technology, nearly perfected it to a level of insipient evil that would make the “Robber Barons” blush. Target, Sam’s Club, K Mart, Kolh’s, Dollar Tree, Costco and others---all are guilty of making virtual chattel out of low-wage workers.

While Mr. Greenhouse provides a detailed account of how, even why, the American workplace became meaner and leaner, my hope is to discuss my personal mindset in the face of an environment in which the disposability of human beings was becoming more apparent each day. I had been, for 30 years, part-and-parcel of a system that places the well-being of employees far behind stock-share valuation in order of importance.

The increasing-disposability of the employees, far from an unintended consequence, is the only possible consequence of the current retail paradigm. Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary and a professor at UC Berkeley, in his Supercapitalism, makes clear there is no other logical choice for corporations other than that which increases profits and enhances shareholders. The best the large corporations can do now is pretend to care. “The soothing promise of responsibility can deflect public attention from the need for stronger laws and regulations”---but he warns us not to be fooled---“those ‘laws & regulations,’ naturally anathema to companies, are the only way worker rights and the interests of the Nation will ever be truly served.” The capitalism for which Reich coined a name---Supercapitalism, refers to a new era of gargantuan trans-global corporations that will bend only to an equal force (bottom-up democracy?), the appearance of which seems unlikely.

The sluggish democratic capitalism of the past 60 years, and the accompanying striving for fairness and justice is passé. The offspring is faster, infinitely more profitable, and considering there is no need ever to see or touch actual money, Supercapitalism resembles more a video game; a virtual world where entire pension funds can be ‘deleted’ with the click of a mouse. It’s more fun, more lucrative, and less trouble. What could be better?

We are in an era in which all effort is directed to return on investment, which means increased share valuation. In the present era, Reich tells us, seeming to sigh, “They [corporations] cannot be socially responsible, at least not to any significant extent.” (9)

The plan was, and is, to cut payroll, not to save companies from failure. The ‘plan’ is to implement a new, improved profit model. And in that model, the employee, ironically like the glue that binds a model, is invisible. In the new world of market valuation, where companies rise and fall in cyber space at the speed of light, the employees too are virtual; they are no more flesh and blood than the symbols on the screen are hard-currency.

One who works in the netherworld of retail, where there is no Union, no lobbyist, no professional association, no organized advocacy at all, knows something is not right. Many of us who worked, or currently work in the present retail paradigm, have known instinctively that we were, in a very real way, working against our own interests. Ironically, we also knew that much of the time we were working against the best interests of our customers as well! (Remember: the institutional shareholder is 1^st, regular shareholders 2^nd, Company executives 3^rd, customers 4th, and bringing up the rear is us, “employees”--- 5^th at best).

Never, over decades as a supervisor for several of the best-known national retailers, was I ever tasked with the project of increasing employee satisfaction, or reducing turnover. As my payroll allocation was cut to the bone, I was in fact tasked only with increasing productivity and sales. Additionally, the company would inevitably, seemingly at random, go on a campaign to improve “store conditions.” With less payroll, and thus fewer employees, the revenues were required to increase, and the appearance of the store was to improve. We were, to use a phrase that has lost all meaning due to misuse, “To do more with less.”