Equal Opportunity

Dateline:  November 15, 2015

Amazon.com, Inc. is advertising for seasonal workers to cover anticipated high volume service needs during the holidays.  Their advertisement for these jobs includes the obligatory statement that Amazon is an “Equal Opportunity Employer”. 

However, the reality of the situation may be sobering to quite a few.  The “Equal Opportunity” claim requires Amazon to accept applications from any and all comers; and all you need to apply for a position is a valid driver’s license! 

But the “Equal Opportunity” assertion ends with the application submission.  It does not require Amazon – or anyone else – to hire folks who are unqualified, or to hire on a first-come, first-served basis, or to hire randomly through some sort of lottery.  Employers will exercise the utmost discretion at their disposal in figuring out exactly who they hire for what jobs. 

• If you apply late or show up late – or don’t show – for the orientation or training sessions, you are probably wasting both your time and theirs.

• And you need not go to any trouble to apply if you haven’t gone to any trouble to make yourself useful anywhere else in life.  A positive track record is undoubtedly required.

• Persons with compromising drug dependencies will very likely not be hired.

• Persons with unfavorable recommendations will very likely not be hired.

• Persons without a High School Diploma or GED need not apply; those who can’t complete basic education requirements are unfit to handle a mainstream work environment.

• And if your primary skill is playing video games or connecting with “friends” and fancies via social media, you probably won’t light up the hiring scoreboard.

I couldn’t help thinking of the “conditional” egalitarian declaration in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: 

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” 

Our challenge, then, if we’re going to be competitive in a capitalistic economic system, is to become “more equal” than others. 

Thomas L. Friedman has taken some pains to point out that “Average is Over” [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/friedman-average-is-over.html?_r=0].

“In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to [never mind get you a foot in the door]. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment.” 

A look at competition from overseas immigrants “taking away our jobs” above minimum wage and manual labor is, perhaps, most instructive.  Increasing numbers of top medical and technical jobs are now being filled by foreign nationals.  Science labs are more than 50% populated by grad students and postdocs from Europe, Asia and the Far East – places where people experience huge “survival of the fittest” competition … places where people still value knowledge and self-actualization over pandering self-adulation and indulgence … places where “entitlements” can be hard to come by. 

Point to Ponder

As long as there is capitalism, there will be unequal opportunity and discrimination in the workplace.  Those most able and willing to deliver the goods

will be given a more-than-equal opportunity to do so. 

Final Pondering

If all we had to do was rise to our own level of competence, maybe it would be just enough to tip the scales of weighted opportunity favorably.  COULD we do it? … WOULD we do it? … At last account, it’s the only real hope we’ve got!  Let’s just DO IT!  Quartermaster