Was I Globalized or Circumcized? (What It’s Really Like To Get Laid Off)

Was I Globalized or Circumcized?
(What It’s Really Like To Get Laid Off)

By James Boyne: OpEdNews.com

It was just another day. Drove to work, parked in the lot, entered the gleaming, beautiful, marbled lobby with the Picasso paintings, the modern sculptures and artificial water falls, and arrived at cubicle #127A at 7:55AM.

It takes an hour to drive to work. Sometimes as I am driving I try to count the number of cars on the other side of the Hutchinson River Parkway divider to see how many cars are going in the complete opposite direction of me. I wonder why all those people don’t move to where I live, and why I don’t move to where they live, so we all wouldn’t have to travel so far in opposite directions, just to get to a cubicle. By the time I have counted 1800 cars, my eyes hurt. Try counting cars going in the opposite direction someday. It does make one wonder.

I arrived at 7:55AM, and the phone rang almost immediately. My boss, who works two cubicles away, always calls me on the phone, even though I can see the top of his head from where I sit. Maybe I will get a 25 foot curly phone cord and when he calls, just walk in his cubicle #131A, and still just talk on the phone to him. I don’t think he would find that to be unusual. Maybe he doesn’t know people can actually talk face to face and move their lips and talk directly. Sometimes he calls me on speakerphone because he wants to make sure 100 other people know he is talking about something important.

He carries a very thin briefcase to work everyday. Once he left it open on his desk. I saw what was in it. A pen. That’s all. Just a pen. I’ve never seen him write anything with a pen. But I guess he likes to be prepared.

Anyway, this story is about President Bush’s “globalization”. I never really knew what the full ramifications of “globalization” were. I knew it meant that we were importing and exporting a lot of goods and services; and that it was a global economy and that that was good. President Bush, all the Republicans, and all the big multi-national corporations said that it was good. I believed them.

Globalization has something to do with NAFTA and the WTO (which I first thought were radio stations, but they are not), and the World Bank. One of these days I am going to look them up and see where NAFTA and the WTO are and what they do, and who runs them and how they make their money. They are spearheading the “globalization” effort. So is President Bush. And so are the ultra right, diehard, conservative, staunch Republicans of which I was one, until last week when I got “globalized”.

On the phone, my boss said, “Jim, can you meet me in the conference room in 5 minutes.” (I could still see the top of his head). I figured he wanted to give me a raise because of my great evaluation, or compliment me on all the comprehensive reports I had written, and all the money I saved the company, or that he wanted to assign me to an important new project.

We went down to the conference room with the big oak table and the $1000 aerodynamically designed chairs and the view of the skyline. The conference room where no is ever allowed to have a conference. It was just him and me. He had a big plain brown envelope. I figured it was my special orders for a new, high-tech project. I was wrong.

His opening remark was, “Jim, have you ever been globalized”. I replied, “ I thought I was “circumcised”, when I was born in the hospital because the doctors circumcised all boys when I was born back in the 40’s. I added, “Why, is it a requirement of Blue Cross/Blue Shield today.” He looked mad. He snarled at me and said, “I didn’t say “circumcised”, I said “globalized”. I told him I didn’t know what “globalized” was exactly so maybe I was “globalized and circumcised” at the same time and no one ever told me. Now he really looked mad.

He said, “ Jim, let’s get to the point. I am sorry to say that we are going to be “globalizing” you. I said, “Great, you mean I get to go on travel again to Pittsburgh”. He said, “No, the company is going global and you are going to have to go.”

“Go where”, I still insisted to know. “Home”, he said. “You no longer have a job here. You get to go home”.

“Wait a minute”, I snapped back. “First you ask me if I am “circumcised”, then you asked me if I have ever been “globalized”, and now you tell me I don’t have a job because I am going global.

He said, “No, you aren’t going global, the company is”. I asked why I couldn’t go along with the company and go global too. He said the company was going global to India but I was going global to “my home”.

I explained to him I only lived 50 miles away and that “going home” was hardly going very far around the globe. He said India it was too far for me. I asked how far. I said I’d go to India, it’s not too far for me. He never did like me to argue with him.

He said I couldn’t go to India because India already had a lot of people in India and that my work would be going to India to be done by Indians. I wanted to know why I couldn’t go to India and help the Indians do my work in India.

I reminded him that we had a lot of Native American Indians on reservations that could use work. “Why don’t we send the work to the native American Indians on the reservations”?, I inquired. He said they weren’t real Indians. I said they were the first Indians here. He said it didn’t matter. We needed real Indians from India. I said, why don’t we all just go to Indianapolis, Indiana. There must be a lot of Indianans who could do the work. I was grasping at straws.

He said the Indians in India would work for 35 cents an hour and never get sick. I asked how they could never get sick, and he said that if they get sick they get fired, and besides there is no health insurance there, and it will save the company billions of dollars.

I asked him who would get the billions of dollars the company saved. He said the Indians. I said, “how much of the billions would he Indians get”, and he said, “each Indian would get 35 cents an hour”. I pressed him on this point. I said, “who would get the rest”. And he sheepishly admitted the CEO and the Executive Staff and the stockholders would get the most billions. I asked who owned the stock. And he said most of it is owned by he CEO and the Executive Staff. I asked him if he was on the Executive Staff and he said, “Yes”, and I asked him if I could be on the executive staff, and he said, “No”.

I decided to push the limits of this logic. I said, “look, I’ll go to India and work for 35 cents an hour”. “No”, he said. I countered with “34 cents an hour”. “No” he shouted. I said, “my last offer--- I will work for 29 cents and hour”. He said it would cost too much to send me there. I said, “I will pay my own way”.

He said I was being “circumcised”. “No”, he said, he meant “globalized”.

I said I want to go to India. He said it’s out of the question. I said who is going to do all the work I did here; the supervisory work. He said a special guy from China was coming to do it. I said, all the way from China. He said yes. I said why all the way from China. He said because you are making $75,000 a year, and this guy from China will come and do it for $35,000.

I said, whose paying him to fly here. He said the company. And I said that doesn’t make any sense, here I will pay my own way and work in India for 29 cents an hour and you say No, but you are going to hire some guy from China, pay his way to fly here, and pay him $35,000. I said if you need a guy from China why don’t you just go look in Chinatown in NY. There’s Chineses guys all over the place down there. I said even up town, around 33^rd, nearly everyone is Chinese. There may be no one left in China there are so many Chinese in New York.

When I went to China once, I bumped into an American, and then we both started talking to another American we bumped into on the “Great Wall”. In New York you never see Chinese people talking to other Chinese people. Maybe they don’t recognize each other as Chinese. Or maybe they don’t know they are Chinese from China, and should say “Hi, how are ya, I bet you are from China!” “I’m from China too”. It’s hard to understand. It may be that they are really all just New Yorkers, and aren’t Chinese anymore, and as New Yorkers they better just get the hell to work on time or they will be “globalized” and some guy will be flown into New York from China to take their job even though they are from China too. I’m telling you, this is getting crazy. It just doesn’t make sense.

I asked my boss who would train the guy from China to do my job. He said the company was bringing in a team from the Philippines and from Saudi Arabia to train the guy from China. I said, “ You mean to tell me you need a whole team from the Philippines and from Saudi Arabia just to teach someone to do my job, and I have to go global and sit home.

He said it was a special team hired from a special Republican in-sourcing company. I said I never heard of in-sourcing. He said our company was outsourcing and the Philippine and Saudi Company were in-sourcing. I asked if they were “circumcised”. Or globalized, or notarized, or motorized, or authorized.

Then he said, “It all came down from the top”?. I’ve heard that phrase before. It means no one knows who did it, but its happening anyway. I said, “Cant we just go up to the top and ask them not to send any more of that down? He said, “Anymore of what down? I said, anymore of whatever it is they are sending down from the top. Why don’t we send some stuff back up, from down here”. He said it doesn’t work that way with “globalization”. It only comes down from the top.

I reminded him that in the year 1522 Ferdinand Magellan was the first person to circumnavigate the globe and that Ferdinand started this whole globalization thing and did my being gobalized have anything to do with that historic event. He said, “It’s possible. It all came down from the top.” I asked him if Ferdinand Magellan in 1522 had been circumcised before he circumnavigated the globe. He said I was missing the point.

He pushed the plain brown envelope toward me across the shiny mahogany conference table. I said what’s that. He said, that’s your resignation papers. I said I’m not resigning. He said, the company already resigned you. I said, you mean I am getting fired. No, he said, it means you are getting resigned. He said the word “fired” is never used any more. Today you are “globalized” because you got resigned.

I reminded him that we had an office in Miami where my skills could easily be used. He said no, that office was being outsourced with newly arrived Cubans by a Kuwaiti in-source company. He said President Bush just passed a bill that will prohibit all travel to Cuba but will let all Cubans who want to come to the U.S., come here, if they want to. I asked him what sense that made. He said it didn’t make any sense, and that’s why President Bush was doing it---and to enforce the embargo against Cuba. I asked him why we still had an embargo against Cuba. He said because Cuba is a communist ally of the USSR. I reminded him that the USSR didn’t exist anymore and Russia was now our ally. He said, well Cuba had missiles back in 1963 and there was a “Cuban missile crisis”. I said, “And that’s why I can’t go to Miami”.

He said its all part of “globalization”. I asked him how an embargo could be part of opening up business with the world and at the same time be part of “globalization”. He said, “I was making too much sense and I was only going to get myself in trouble”

He said, “Touch the brown envelope”. I said “Why”. He said “Because once you “touch” it it means you have been “globalized”. “What if I don’t touch it and I go back to my cubicle #127A and just keep working”. He said my cubicle had already been turned into “an environmentally attractive open space area with a tropical palm tree and a Picasso painting where my desk used to be.

I reminded him that I had been in cubicle 127A for almost twenty years. He said the company was planning on putting a monument to the Ten Commandments there, along with a statue of Charlton Heston to represent Moses, and also an Arab Imam would be there with a nice Persian rug who would pray five times a day. I asked him what all that had to do with revenue and profits and he said I was starting to make too much sense again.

He said that I would be physically removed from the shiny, glass building and escorted home, back up the Hutchinson River Parkway by the ten police cars in a slow speed car chase. He said that if I didn’t leave peacefully he would call the 4^th Infantry Brigade Division to come and get me and force me to go home to my wife and dog. I pictured my wife and dog watching me pull up into the driveway at 6PM with ten squad cars, with lights flashing, and sirens blaring, and the entire 4^th Infantry Division behind me. My dog would probably go and run under the bed and my wife would invite everyone in for cookies and milk.

I realized there was nothing upon nothing that could save my job. It was a done deal. They weren’t going to let me go to India and work for 35 cents with no benefits, and they weren’t going to let me stay and train the guy from China, and Miami was out because every last known human being from the island of Cuba was going to start swimming to Florida once Bush signed that new Cuban Embargo Globalization and Immigration Bill to promote free trade. I even figured that someday we would see Fidel Castro himself paddling in a little boat trying to sneak into Miami for a good job.

I asked my boss how he knew “globalization” was working and he said that because 9 million Americans were out of work, and 43.6 million couldn’t afford health insurance, and since Greenspans’s interest rates of 1% and the $345 billion tax rebate were all trickling down to the CEO’s of major corporations, that President Bush knew that “globalization” was working. “Besides”, he said, “President Bush and the Republicans have already raised $200 million in donations for their campaign in 2004 to fight for “globalization” so it must be working”.

So, I took my index finger and touched the plain brown envelope and that was that. I was transformed from a fully functioning, highly intelligent, productive American born middle management, middle aged employee, (3 years away from retirement) into a new member, (unemployed), spearheading the conservative Republican Bush Administrations policy to promote “globalization” through NAFTA, the WTO, the World Bank and CEO’s that make between $20 and $250 million a year.

I wondered if I could get a job like the head of the NY Stock Exchange, Mr. Grasso the little bald guy, who used to ring the “opening bell” every morning at 9:30AM. He made $140 million a year, and all he ever seem to do was ring that bell and stand with important people like the CEO’s of important companies that are now being indicted and going to jail. Then I just pictured myself working in Dunkin’ Donuts for $5.75 an hour with no benefits.

I asked my boss if I would get unemployment benefits. He said, yes, for 6 months. I said what happens after 6 months. He said after, 6 months you are no longer unemployed. I said but what if I don’t have a job by then because right now there are 9 million unemployed. He said, I wouldn’t be counted because I wouldn’t be collecting any more benefits, so that’s why the unemployment rate doesn’t keep getting much bigger, because eventually you aren’t counted any more. I asked him what sense did that make. He said it made no sense and that’s why they Government counts it that way, so it will always look better than it is.

He said, don’t worry you will have health benefits for 18 months, but you will have to pay for them. I said how much. He said, “Its pretty inexpensive, about $1000 a month in your case”. I said but my unemployment benefits will run out after 6 months. How will I pay for my health benefits for 18 months, if I didn’t find a job in 6 months, it didn’t make sense, to have one pegged at 6 months and the other at 18 months. I reminded him there were 43.6 million Americans with no health insurance. He said, yes, and now there will be one more, you.

So what do I do now. He said, you go home and watch Bill O’Reilley rant and rave about how good President Bush is and how great “globalization” is and how we should boycott products from France, Canada, Germany, Russia, Cuba, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and China because they all won’t stand behind us when we want to attack one of them. I said what sense does all that make. He said it made no sense and that that was why Bill O’Reilley was so popular, just like Bush----because it all made no sense.

I asked him why Bush ever got elected. He said Bush didn’t get elected. I asked him why he was President of the United States of America, then. He said, it didn’t matter, and I was bordering on making too much sense once again, which has always gotten me into trouble.

He said I should take my brown envelope and leave immediately by the storage elevator in the back of the building. He said I could send in the papers next week and to be sure to get them “circumcised”. I think he meant “notarized”. He said that everything in my cubicle #127A would be sent to me by FedEx.

His last words were, “Jim, it really doesn’t matter whether you are circumcised or globalized. The end result is the same. You get the same strange feeling that you got cut off.”

So I left. I felt I was part of the new worldwide “globalization” effort---good or bad, right or wrong, up or down, right or left. It was here. In the brown envelope there was a CD so I popped it in my CD player in my car on the way home. It started off by saying “Welcome to the Globalization effort. Thank you for doing your part”. It had nice yoga type meditation music on it. That was a nice touch. Two days later I got a nice Hallmark card from the company that said, “Congratulations On Your Globalization” ! It was signed by the CEO and had a nice photo of him, his wife, his two sons and daughter and his dog, standing next to a big bank vault full of money. They were all smiling. The caption under the photo said, “Thank You Jim For Doing Your Part For Globalization”!

I tried to listen to Rush Limbaugh too on the way home that day, but he was either worn out from saying so many great things about Globalization and President Bush and the Republicans or he may still be in that “rehab spa” he went to for illegally buying and taking 4500 OxyContin in one month. Maybe he will have to wear one of those law enforcement ankle bracelets so he can be tracked for the rest of his life. I’ll never listen to him again for the rest of my life, and I’ll never listen to Bill O’Reilley for the rest of my life, and I’ll never vote Republican or for President Bush for the rest of my life. I have been globalized.

So, I go home, at 6PM, my little doggy was waiting at the door with her tail wagging as usual. She still loved me. My wife was there waiting, as usual. I kissed her and I said, Guess what, I have good news. I was globalized today”. She said, “I thought you were globalized when you were born, when you were a little baby”. No, I said, that’s circumcised. I was globalized today. “Well, she said, Congratulations, lets walk the dog, and then we’ll eat diner.

I turned on the 6:30 PM Nightly News and President Bush, was speaking at some place in the pouring rain, wearing a baseball cap and a leather jacket. He said he was all for work, and work was good, and he himself liked work, and working people were good, decent people, even if they were out of work, and that he would go get the workers, and “smoke ‘em out and bring ‘em ta justice”. And President Bush, said that “everyone deserved ta work, dead or alive”, and he said “work can run, but it can’t hide”. He said, “we will win this war on workers (I think he meant to say terrorists) no matter how long it takes”. He said he liked work so much that he was going to his ranch in Crawford, Texas and take a month off in order to work.

President Bush said he had a new Iraqi work program called “Iron Hammer” and if the terrorists didn’t stop working on killing us, then we would kill them, and put them out of work. It was an impressive speech

And he said the Iraqi people were happy now. That we made ‘em happy cause we freed ‘em and gave ‘em freedom and now they can work. (On the other news channel they showed 5,000 Iraqis all fired up shouting “Death to America”, “Death to the Occupiers”). And President Bush said that he wouldn’t stop until everyone in America was fired, or rather, fired up, about work. And that he would get the whole world workin’. Even if we “have ta smoke ‘em out and bring ‘em ta work”. When a reporter in the audience asked where the workers were, Mr. Bush said, “bring ‘em on”, dead or alive”.

So get ready. America is not interested in America, American’s or the American economy. It is interested in the whole damn globe. Get ready to get globalized.

So that was my day.

James Boyne dboyne@aol.com is a freelance, satirical writer. He has several other articles on www.opednews.com , most notably, 36 Reasons To Vote For Bush ; and President Booosh: We Are In A Pickle ; Whoops! Billion Dollar Cancer Drug Found To Spread Cancer and Hasten Death; "So Rush Just Wanted A Rush"; and Bush: The Greatest Liberal of the Century. This article is copyright by James Boyne, originally published in OpEdNews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this entire credit paragraph is attached