Everything is Fine

Relentless misinformation

permeates the fabric of logic

Propaganda

gives insatiable corporations

an excuse to create

ants

that march through the prescribed routine

Punching time

Hoping for enough scraps

to tide them through

to the end of the line

but the liars redraw the line

and move the bodies

so they can pretend

everything is fine

Image description – a photo of a small tree that has fallen and become partially submerged in the muddy water of the James River. Surrounding shrubbery appears unkempt and somewhat unhealthy.

What inspired this poem?

The broken system of unchecked corporate greed and wage theft in the US was weighing heavily on my mind when I wrote this poem. In a country with relatively few protections for employees, there is no real incentive for business owners and corporate executives to pay their workers a living wage or ensure that employees aren’t overworked. One particular tool of misery currently being utilized to lower employee pay is the customer satisfaction survey.

Though the original intent of the surveys was (possibly) to make businesses aware of how to improve the quality of their service, that is rarely how the surveys are applied. The results of customer satisfaction surveys are tied to frontline employees’ bonuses. In many cases, their actual pay rate can be contingent on their survey ratings. What makes it difficult for employees to consistently achieve good scores is the fact that the questions employees are evaluated on are often out of their control, which gives employers a way to sneakily cut costs without having to expend much effort.

The problems customers complain about on the surveys won’t be fixed— more people won’t be hired, equipment won’t be updated, prices won’t go back down, quality of the product won’t be restored, not until the business is financially ready to make the investment. But since employees are usually the scapegoats for bad management decisions and corporate cost cutting strategies, employees impacted by negative surveys will be the ones who have to apologize to the customer, grovel for forgiveness, give free merchandise or discounted services, and beg for better ratings on the next survey.

Every time I see a customer satisfaction survey in my email inbox, I’m disgusted that politicians have allowed businesses and corporations to design a system that keeps employees constantly in fear of losing their jobs along with their health insurance. It’s time to fight back against the corporations that have refused to pay proper wages while forcing workers to sacrifice their physical and mental health.