The New and *Imporved FSA

One of the perks (perquisites being the original word) of this new job is the Vice and Virtue Flexible Spending Account, also known as a VVFSA or, popularly, a Sinning and Sainting FSA. We all get one. No other employer in the country (maybe the world) offers a VVFSA. They’re still working out some of the kinks of this innovation. As best as I can tell, this is how it works:

• Each employee starts with 1,000 Metaphysical Points (MPs) in their account.

• As with a stock exchange, the account value rises or falls in accordance with supply and demand. In this case, punishment and reward or good or bad are central to the algorithim.

• In any given calendar year, one’s account grows or diminishes in value as a result of the employee's contributed positive or negative impacts as determined by Human Resources (HR). (As of this writing, the impacts are confined both to the workspace and the hours of employment. However, remote work during the Coronavirus Pandemic has blurred these lines, and discussions are under way to amend the plan’s parameters.)

• Each employee is given a personal customized, confidential list of Positive Impacts (PIs) and Negative Impacts (NIs) at the end of each calendar year as an MP scoring sheet for the forthcoming year.

• The so-called cafeteria plan component of the Vice and Virtue FSA enables adherents to select in advance which impacts to be assigned a weighted value or which impacts to delete altogether in considering the MP annual total.

• The FSA essentially enables individuals to be reimbursed for virtues and charged for nonreimbursable vices as defined by HR.

• The “use it or lose it” feature of the VVFSA means that all 1,000 Metaphysical Points must be either spent during the calendar year or lost in perpetuity. The MPs can’t be rolled over into the next year.

• At year’s end, if an individual’s MP total is in arrears (e.g., in a state of moral depravity, beneath contempt, heinously solipsistic, Trumpian, egregiously GOP, sociopathically successful inter alia), HR will schedule an exit conference in the Tomas de Torquemada Conference Room in the sub-basement.

lockdown

They've locked down the toilet paper. It sounds like a line straight out of "Desolation Row," right after "they're selling postcards of the hanging." Same cadence and mood. In this case, who are "they"? They are the owners, managers, or maintenance staff of the building housing a coffee shop I occasionally frequent. (Let me get away with the oxymoronicness of "occasionally frequent.") I happen to know one of the owners of the building; have known him for decades. He confirmed my suspicion that the lock placed on the toilet paper dispenser seeks to prevent the theft of toilet paper. He added that they (a different "they" than in the first sentence) were losing a significant amount of "bath" rolls every week from the various "bath"rooms with public access. Permit me to clarify. The lock does not prevent you from taking a sheet, two-ply or whatever-ply, from the roll. It's not like that. If you were so inclined, or obsessed, you could unspool a stream of sheets, hundreds. You can still steal sheetly. In that case, you could steal one roll of toilet paper, and it would then be your choice as to how to surreptitiously transport it out of the restroom. Presumably, re-creating the roll shape would be both awkward and too visible. Without a cardboard tube as a core, would it even be possible? No, you would probably want to neatly fold layers of the thin paper, forming a book, as it were, which could be slipped into one's pants, underwear, briefcase, knapsack, or backpack. The toilet paper dispenser lock we are talking about is a lock on the receptacle or holder that holds in the roll. Typically, a second roll drops down by gravity when the first roll is depleting. Most likely, the toilet paper thieves were taking one or both rolls. Clearly, they were toilet paper thieves, not borrowers. Borrowed toilet paper that is returned? Ewwww. Gross. 

In some cultures, this wouldn't make much of a difference. The toilet paper dispenser would not be locked because there would be no toilet paper. Restroom "customers" would employ other means of cleanup other than toilet paper, a topic I'm not willing to explore right now. 

At first glance, toilet paper theft might evoke a response along the lines of, "Are you kidding? Locks on toilet paper? They don't even do that at Penn Station! What's next? Locks on water fountains?" On further reflection, you might think: who are the toilet paper thieves? I suspect it's homeless people. But that might be a biased conclusion, however tentative. We can't rule out needy college students, large families, sufferers of diarrhea, the mentally ill, hoarders, or eccentrics. (These are not mutually exclusive subgroups.) Whoever, he, she, it, or they are, can you blame them? The bathroom is in an urban setting. Users punch in a code to use it. Despite efforts to limit use, it gets a lot of traffic from a downtown urban population. Since "drugs" are often mentioned as a cause of civic woe (they don't mean drugs; they mean illegal pharmaceutical substances; again, another different "they"), we can pose this question: how much does a roll of toilet go for on the street? Is it enough for one to get or maintain a high of any sort or a purchase of that other drug, alcohol, or a single loosie cigarette? I don't know. 

I am curious, but only mildly so, about the success or failure of this preventive gesture. Had someone been caught in The Act? Not the act of taking a shit; the act of making individual a bit of intended communal property. Wait! It's a unisex bathroom. Did you assume it was a male thief? Maybe not. Maybe female. Is there not arguably a greater female need for this product? Maybe not. 

As for preventive measures, could there have been a community forum to address this issue? (I almost wrote "tissue.") How about a pay-it-forward initiative? At one local coffee shop, customers can buy medallions for coffee or bagels. The medallions are placed on a wall, and people can cash them in if they can't afford it a coffee or bagel. Could something like this be done for toilet paper? (Why stop there? Consider how transformative this practice would be on a community scale for an array of social needs. Consider how radical this is.) 

What charge would the thief or thieves face if apprehended, red-handed, as it were? The penalty for conviction? I know: community service. 

Cleaning bathrooms. 

Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a free lunch

On Saturday, I not only had a free lunch but I was paid to eat my free lunch. I answered some questions as part of a research panel. Three questions, four tops. Over 100 participants in the audience. Fifteen minutes of my time answering questions from the moderators. Twenty minutes max. Myself and two other panelists. We were veterans of two earlier rounds of this research. $150 to wag my tongue. And eat food. We felt like kids in the plastic-balls bin. Oh sure, you can grouse that SOMEONE paid for this free lunch, some entity or entities that awarded the research grant blah blah blah. But that is ever and always the case. Someone pays. Of course.

It's a wide world.

are you sleeping?

I sometimes have this perhaps unhealthy hankering to make money effortlessly while I sleep. Or while awake but still effortlessly. I imagine: you do too. To a degree. So, if you are inclined to aid me in this dream, goal, hankering, vision, fantasy, or reality, these links will help you (no, none of them are spam or malware or anything like that; that's how the clever or amoral or immoral folks make money while they sleep):

http://bit.ly/1dGlbfp

http://amzn.to/1iP9Hd9

http://amzn.to/1fxLyWN

http://amzn.to/R67mQ7

http://amzn.to/SH5yPu 

http://amzn.to/Z3Wse1 

http://amzn.to/YSBIEb 

Thank you.

Pleasant dreams.

 

The Fruits of Their Labors

May all workers enjoy respite from their labors on this Labor Day. (The link provides a good precise history of Labor Day. We might subtitle this as "An Ode to Matthew Maguire" or "An Ode to Peter McGuire.")

Of course, not all get respite from work today in Labor Day America. I am at this moment surrounded by nurses, nurse's assistants, doctors, housekeeping staff, doctors, food staff, nurse practitioners, and a host of others who work today. Many others can't manage a day off or aren't allowed one: clergy, journalists, editors, newsroom folks, chefs, wait staff, servers, food service providers, convenience store clerks, gas station attendants, pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, toll collectors, police, sheriff's deputies, EMS personnel, the military, state troopers, maintenance staff, repair staff, taxi drivers, retail associates, software trainers, customer service reps, dispatchers, farm workers, rehab staff, entertainers, athletes, carnies, lifeguards, public transit workers, air traffic controllers, grocery store employees, artists, bloggers, on-air media staff and their support, power-generation staff, and countless others. Forgive all omissions.

I am grateful for the fruits of their (our) labors.

We are grateful.

And we should be grateful for the labor union movement.

It is fashionable to bash unions these days, especially from the right and from management types. The suits. The owners. Those in comfort in comfortable exurban enclaves.

And unions get bashed a lot in the health-care reform debate; they're a whipping boy. Sure, excesses have occurred, hence some imbalance, some resentment.

Imbalance? Resentment? Without the labor union movement, imagine the workers' life of the good old days, the less "socialist" days, the days of unfettered capitalism. So let us give thanks for paid holidays, paid vacations, 40-hour work weeks, sick leave, personal leave, and, um, health benefits. I'm sure all these benefits and more were called "socialist" and other words by those in power at the time they were proposed. Now we ALL benefit from these things, even union bashers, even management. (Incidentally, "socialist" countries led the way on Labor Day itself [we got the idea from Canada, and Europe was ahead in its worker reforms].)

Happy Labor Day to all.

Say the Word . . .

Remember the Beatles song that had the lyrics "say the word love"? Although I didn't know it at the time, the song was arranged as a Gospel tune (perhaps faux Gospel would be a more apt description). In these waning days of the almost-eternal U.S. presidential election, we now hear several variations on this chorus (i.e., mantra); one of them is "say the word socialism." Hearing the word socialism, we are supposed to make a face of horror, like Macaulay Culkin in "Home Alone," scream, grab our wallet or purse, reach for a weapon of minor destruction (rifle or pistol), and call 911, not necessarily in that order. When we hear socialism, we are supposed to conjure up sepia tone images from newsreels of the Stasi and East Germany and the color gray (spelled g-r-e-y in the welfare state of the U.K. until Margaret Thatcher "cleaned things up" -- so goes the neocon mythology) or listless mine workers or assembly line drones or alcoholic couch potatoes living in cement blocks or Quonset huts or Swedes sitting around, well, looking blond and bored. Of course, if you mean distribution of wealth, a more genteel term, you have the uber-capitalist Adam Smith (no relation to Anna Nicole Smith, that I know of) backing you up as well as the entire history of the Internal Revenue Service code. You can look it up. No, the word socialism is pink-baiting, meant to scare, meant to bring fears of The Other (although Those Others in, say, European socialist countries did not start this mess), meant to thump one's capitalist chest. Well, um, comrades, the words capitalist and socialist -- whatever they said in the textbooks or dictionaries -- just got a rewrite inthe last several weeks. They mean zero, zilch, in traditional terms, unless you are pressing an emotional hot button. They mean n-o-t-h-i-n-g. Unless you are into good, old-fashioned political propaganda (but at least admit it and then enjoy the ride).

Oh, we have a word for that button-pressing: demagoguery. (I learned the word, long ago, from William F. Buckley, Jr., the recently deceased high priest of American conservatism.)

While we're on the subject, Catholic voters are hereby reminded that popes have repeatedly warned of the dangers of pure capitalism or pure socialism. That's my point: they don't exist. Except in Utopia. And I remind you that Utopia, as expressed in Thomas More's wonderful satire, is Greek for "nowhere."

There are some other choruses that we are tirelessly hearing. One of them is "lower taxes." It is trite. Do I want more money in my pockets? Of course I do! After all, I live in highly taxed New York State. Is our money wasted? Yes. Are there "earmarks"? Indeed. And everyone loves the bacon when it comes to their district. Then Congress is doing a great job! But I ask you: where is the end of that arc? No taxes? none? All money kept by solipsistic me me me me? People in California may recall Proposition 13 about 30 years ago. They got lower taxes. Then they cried because the library was closed two days a week or because health care was not available at a public hospital or the DMV was closed every other day, et cetera ad nauseam.

Now, "Say the word endum," um, sort of like addendum, but not quite.

A Dollar and a Dream (Or a Fraction Thereof)

Look, my goal here is to make money while I sleep. Isn't that your goal? I just checked, and so far this month I have made* $US 0.60 (as in, "sixty cents American," worth about 0.00000054338 euros) from my web store, laughorism.com. This revenue stream, or rivulet, or droplet, or spike in relative humidity, originates from my selling one Kierkegaard magnet and one Kierkegaard oval sticker, to the same person, in Arizona. (It's pending; if the buyer returns the goods, I lose out.) I guess I had better stick to my day job. Speaking of which, I received an unexpected work compliment today, which I received graciously, which is funny, because the absence of such praise is the seeds of discontent for someone like me. Someone wiser than me once counseled that it is virtuous to accept both praise and blame equally.

I ain't there yet.

*I didn't "make" any money. Revenue does not equal profit, not even in the microeconomics of micro amounts.

Pure Romance or Impure Holiness?

Pure romance? Or impure holiness? You decide. (Why not both? I say.) You may've heard about the church organist and choir director in Wisconsin (as in WisconSIN) who got fired for selling sex toys (on the side, so to speak). Yep. She was, um, a sales consultant for Pure Romance, sort of an erotic Avon products company that throws parties in women's homes. Wow. How shocking. What next? Women who take pole-dancing lessons at home? Oh. Right. Already happening. The priest said her position was not consistent with church teachings. Presumably, it would be okay if somehow these toys led to procreation. Or increased bingo revenues. Or squashed child molestation lawsuits. You can't make certain stuff up: the dateline for the story? New Franken, Wisconsin, where it's okay to be frank, but not too frank, at least not sexually, and evidently not with plastic vibrating frankfurters. The woman noted the choice was not hard (would you like that in pink or black?). According to news reports, she said she began selling the erogenous enhancers after a brain tumor and treatment resulted in sexual dysfunction. The former organist (go ahead! make your own puerile penile pun!), Linette Servais, 50, reportedly said, "After I got over the initial shock [was it a short circuit!?], I prayed over this a long time. I feel that Pure Romance is my ministry.'' She said she helps other women with problems like her own. So, let me get this, er, straight. If we accept her story, and the priest's premise, the sin consists of, what, the profit motive? The pleasure principle? The Peter Principle? A schedule conflict with choir practice? What's she guilty of? After all, she could even say she's helping these women put the pro in procreation. Apparently, some choir members quit in protest. And I quote: ". . . some have gathered at her home on occasional Thursdays to sing hymns." Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"? I've got a few others I could name, but decorum (and former seminarian boyhood guilt) prevent me.

Excuse me. Gotta go. My phone's vibrating.

How's That Sit With You?

In Berlin, I have had the distinct pleasure of visiting one of Europe's most luxurious department stores, KaDeWe, short for Kaufhaus des Westens. Only minutes from the Zoo Bahnhof, KaDeWe is filled with upscale clothes, accessories, and gourmet food. And more! (As copywriters like to throw in there.) On the top floor, there are stations exhibiting fresh, exotic foods, including pastries, coffees, chocolates, truffles, and a cornucopia of lush delicacies. You can buy a cup of coffee for about 3 euros and sit by windows offering panoramic views of Berlin (well, para-panoramic: one side of the building). And when you purchase this cup of coffee, or strudel, or smoked salmon, you pay (dearly but you don't mind) a lovely cashier sitting comfortably at a computerized checkout register. Go back seven words in the preceding sentence. She (or he, as the case may be) is sitting comfortably. And the cashier presumably can sit all day.

Contrast that with our premier local supermarket chain, Wegmans, renowned for being one of the best places to work in the United States. In fact, it is currently listed Number 3 on Fortune magazine's list of best places to work, and was Number 1 as recently as 2005. (While I disagree with the explanation, the company's website even addresses the issue of the missing apostrophe in the store's name.) Anyway, Wegmans cashiers all stand up, all the time, unless they are granted a break or have a disability.

I've used two extreme examples, KaDeWe Berlin and Wegmans Inc., because each is a showcase, premier store. But I am pretty sure it is common in all of Germany, and maybe all of Europe, for cashiers to be afforded the pleasure of a seat. Just as it is common in the USA, not just at Wegmans, to see cashiers standing.

Can someone explain this to me?

I myself have stood at a register (a long time ago). It kills your back. And your legs.

Does it all have to do with some kind of Puritan work ethic in America, home of the union movement? Fear of presenting a slovenly appearance? Something about productivity?

Hard to fathom, especially if you are comparing the modern-day U.S. to the forever industrious and dutiful Germany, home of Max Weber and his "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism."

So, what gives?

Can someone give me any plausible explanation why Wegmans, as well as most, if not all, of its competitors, can't find it in their hearts to let the cashiers sit down?

Are there stores (grocery or otherwise) out there that let their folks sit comfortably?

What gives?

Weigh in, folks.

Stand up for sitting down!

Maybe we can start a movement right here.

Just in time for those Labor Day speeches.

Freegonomics: Food for Thought -- and Word Blenders

As you know, I like wordplay. The title of my blog declares it. (Of course, laughorist is a blend of laugh + aphorist.) So, when I read an online piece today about some folks in the San Francisco area who succeeded in complying with their vow not to shop for a year (with some exceptions), I was all set to declare myself as the inventor of the blended neologism "freegonomics."

Read on.

The news story made reference to so-called freegans, people who advocate minimal consumption -- with some going so far as to eat out of Dumpsters. (Please note: the former newspaper copy editor in me warns you that Dumpster is a brand name and should be capitalized when you read it in print or online.) The word freegan itself, of course, is a linguistic blend of free + vegan. (Turns out that some freegans are meagans, because they allow themselves to eat meat.)

Well, I cannot claim to have coined the term freegonomics (the link here to the word is actually a thought-provoking essay by columnist Lucy Siegle in The Observer back in February 2006). A simple search of "freegonomics" indicates that several others already beat me to it, by months if not years.

Even if I did not coin the term, I feel the concept raises issues worth considering. When I was in college, during the Vietnam War, I remember a philosophy professor, John McNeill, challenging our class at LeMoyne College with respect to those who protested the war. He said something like this:

"A Franciscan movement could end this war in 90 days. But you can't do it. If everyone from, say, the ages of 15 to 30 disciplined themselves to the point of buying only necessary goods, you would be able to get anything you want from the government in no time. The economic effect would be huge, and you would be able to stop the war. But you don't have that ability to sacrifice."

Something like that. And I suspected then, and now, he was right.

There's little doubt that consumption (is "overconsumption" a redundancy about redundancies?) in capitalist (well, in all societies) involves abuse, destruction, waste, and greed.

But couldn't the same be said ever since Adam and Eve (easy on those apples, kids)?

I don't disagree that we (we in the U.S. and the so-called developed nations, as well as we who pollute the air and foul the rivers of a booming China) are ravaging the planet. But on a macroeconomic level, if "we" all were to cut back even to a sensible minimum of consumption (a sensible minimum, however you define it), does that impoverish thousands, if not millions, of suddenly jobless people?

I am neither a microeconomist nor a macroeconomist. I tend to be quite frugal (some would say cheapskate). I am not an extravagant buyer. When clothes are given to me as gifts, I feel sheepish (well, that's true for anything made of wool - HAHAHAHA).

I don't know what to conclude about any of this.

Just some food for thought.

And, speaking of word blenders, as opposed to food blenders, even Wikipedia (the source of many definitions above) is a blend of wiki (Hawaiian for fast) + encyclopedia.

You can look it up.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

Saint Ersatz

Unseemly (and unsightly, some would say) as it seems, Pawlie Kokonuts (a.k.a. The Laughorist) played the part of Saint Nicholas yesterday. (This is either a new low, or a new high, depending on one's honesty or perspective.) The appearance marked the Feast of Saint Nicholas, December 6, at a local church event.

It involved Yours Truly donning a long, white robelike article of clothing, cardboard bishop's miter, wooden staff, and red velvety cape that weighs about 127 pounds. I did not wear a beard (except for my real goatee, trimmed very tightly today incidentally) or in any way try to disguise my so-called normal visage and appearance. And no ho-ho-ho's.

If you children don't behave, I will either spank you, or show you pictures of this episode.

In all seriousness, I tried to -- in a quiet way -- make a sort-of anti-Santa Claus statement.

The youngsters gathered around in a circle before me, and I crouched down to chat with them. Here are some of the things I told them, or tried to convey (whether based on facts or legends, I didn't get into; it doesn't matter):

• The real Saint Nicholas, from present-day southeastern Turkey but under control of Greece in the 4th century, loved the poor.
• And he showed it. When his wealthy parents died, he gave his whole inheritance toward helping the poor and lonely and troubled and suffering.
• The whole bit about putting little gifts in stockings or shoes was based on the legend of his anonymous gifts to poor girls.
• He loved children.
  
• He loved them whether they were naughty or nice. He loved them. Period.

I don't deny I am flawed and filled with many contradictions. (After all, last month I managed to read these two books, though not exactly simultaneously: The Pornographer, a novel by the late Irish author John McGahern, and Praying Like Jesus: The Lord's Prayer in a Culture of Prosperity by James Mulholland. The former was ultimately dismal and only occasionally erotic, sort of like the movie "Alfie"; the latter was a challenging indictment about the misuses of Christianity in the world's richest nation.)

My point is: somehow I juggle these disparate tangents of self, these self-delusions.

But yesterday's event, and my little research leading up to it, underscored how Western society, and most especially the United States, has perverted everything Saint Nicholas stood for. We call it Christmas and Santa Claus, but ain't it really Capitalism and $anta Claw$? (And I'm not naive: an immediate cessation of this nonsense would cause economic hardship to many; the tamped-down economic activity would shed thousands and thousands, if not millions, of real jobs.)

Well, it explains, just a little, why I'm such a holiday curmudgeon.

Laugh. Or....

Else.