Out to lunch

Monday: I harbour inner resistance to sameness: architecture; menu; fashion; housing; urban planning; design; trends—everywhere. In art, while repetition is used as a rhythm, a pattern to complement adjoining rhythms, it is not the thing in its entirety. When it becomes the thing in whole—beige— that’s when the mind dulls, gets underwhelmed as discovery and exercise in the figurin’ out process stalls.

I’m currently in a role that I volunteered to take on and have an option to leave whenever I feel that my contribution is no longer required; it’s an option that 7 billion people worldwide do not as easily enjoy—those whose work is in industries whose foundation is built on repetitive function. Par example, the recent interruption in the logistics and distribution industries highlighted the effect of disruption when one link fails in a mostly automated game.

So it’s week whatever in my supermarket worker experience and, yes, wherever there is repetition in a task the mind raises the boredom flag, which is akin to feeling thirsty and the brain shouting out for a quencher to head off dehydration which experience tells us that dehydration is definitely not a good thing and come to think maybe the analogy works better here than I thought and maybe the boredom signal is sorta like the mind saying hey, we’re not getting any stimulation and where we come from dehydration is called a rut and you know the old sayin’ about being in a rut eh? Apparently that’s something like how the getting along dialogue between mind and brain works.

Mind is the programming software that feeds the super-computer brain, and mind likes unpredicted new shines to its programs. Its happy place involves challenges and problem solving. In fac,t brain matter grows and the mind is keener when problem solving is part of an everyday regime. Another ‘come to think’ portends that the COVID program, which short- ends close encounters of the human kind, can leave anyone stranded in a limbo where the norms have been shelved and where the best way out is to heed the nudge to invent, reinvent and invent again. Let your mind solve a problem while you sleep and the well known phrase takes on real meaning. And that apparently turns out to be like eating your spinach for the sake of mind and soul, otherwise the step below boredom is inertia—and that definitely is a place no one wants to be at any time let alone now.

Whenever I feel it’s time to clean out the stale mental cupboard of same-old which in my case can generally occur weekly, the act of monkey mind kicks in: open oneself to the untried: respond impulsively to the moment; take down the familiar fences and break out to new fields without allowing the editor within to go on about never having done this before and failure and maybe I won’t like it or I’ll die and maybe…and maybe even worse some will think I’ve lost it and that’s okay because I really have, say yes to that cuz its a good thing to lose parts of you in the process of clearing space for new pages in the songbook. You know the story about how we grow new layers of skin every 27 days and that at every 7 years each cell in our body will have been replaced? So why the hell leave the grey matter stuck in park gear?

At the heart of this string of thought is a response to stumbling into the nature of repeated processes in addition to observing a workforce engaged within the similar web. And I’m still trying to get my head around it. Please don’t get me wrong, many enjoy structured work while thriving in other things. In reality it takes a lot of effort and mental tools to remain mindfully engaged in repetitious processes as the mind part of you seemingly will wanna head out for lunch while the other parts of you turn the dial to robo-mode or somewhere beyond my limited understanding of stuff.

The meatpacking industry was of the earliest to work on a repetitive assembly line basis. In 1860 in centres like Chicago or Winnipeg, workers punched out at the end of shift, the mostly male environment drank in the same watering holes as their fathers once did and then went home to a surrounding neighbourhood of company houses, one identical to another. Repetition fermented in the Industrial revolution: the firearms industry, clock making and finally Henry Ford’s efforts in the 1920s encouraged the process to evolve with the manufacturing involvement of makers of cogs and fixtures and machine tools which have since advanced to robotics and software that in many instances today requires one sole human being to inspect the finished goods at the end of the process, just to confirm that no robot along the way has an arm out of joint or a screw loose.

While not assembly line work, the grocery business, as in many other related industries, requires that everyone— from manager on down—fill in wherever a gap opens in the flow of productivity; yet the forum is mostly predictable, the pace and intensity demanding. You jump on an already rotating belt when you clock in and jump off when your time is up. But the belt keeps on turning.

Tuesday: So I’ve slept on it. I mean this whole thing about dedicated repetitious work. I wear the standard uniform while on shift and co-relate with others entering the store at the end of shifts wearing the uniforms of franchise outfits; fast food; building supplies and also care workers from everywhere. I now get it as never before. Over past months I have been in their shoes and witnessed the view from the other side. My uniform in reality is a theatre costume that has permitted me to play a role to help me understand what it takes to do the work.

I have learned about segments of the private lives of individuals in the workforce, some who have worked in the grocery business for decades and are content; some who struggle to remain; others, particularly at this time, whose careers or studies have been interrupted and have taken on part-time work to help maintain their families; still others whose responsibilities are as single parents or care for a child of special needs or an elderly parent. These are the many untold stories. Not only do employees remain steadfast at their work and while they do not receive employee discounts, they are also loyal customers. So it has been personally disappointing that a consortium of brand name, large corporate players in the grocery business opted to cancel a $2/hour offering they had extended to workers back in March. The ‘pandemic pay’ was part of the campaign to tout the workers at the front line who, despite businesses being closed everywhere for safety’s sake the grocery store worker and others continued to do what they have always done, and did it with care and at barely a living wage. Their responsibilities hadn’t changed, and were in fact augmented. And the population at large were for the better because of the effort. It is a case where crisis more than ever reveals the vulnerable seams within society and despite those seams being stressed, the fabric— those who do the day-to-day sweat—still holds.

The individual corporation’s CEO’s claim a coincidence that all the chains applied the ‘hero pay’ bonus in the same instance and again by coincidence they removed the incentive for their workers on exactly the same recent date. There is wage disparity. I am witness to the demeaning moral impact of the decision and am saddened by lessons unheeded by the corporate world— the pandemic has no best before date; the health risks remain; in the current season the more mobile population increases the demand on the workforce.

I expect that the grocery industry will undergo many a refinement and change. The best of change in my view is to recognize moral ones. This is no longer the industrial era and a focus on mental well-being and human dignity is the true cornerstone of a just society.