Employing Humans for their Humanity

As one of many college students who have found themselves frustrated with the growing trend of mandatory meal plans for incoming students, I recently began doing some research on the circumstances of my own schools contract with Sodexo. Sodexo is one of many food services contractors, and the 22nd largest employer in the world. Hidden in the final paragraphs of an April 2010 Buzzfeed article by Alyssa Figueroa aplty titled "A Raw Look at Sodexo", one particular quote from a student worker really resonated with me. He had this to say about Sodexo:

“They just haven’t found robots able to do our job yet,” Alex said.  “I’m sure if they could they would.”

The manner in which the work is divided up means that every job is two shades away from complete automation. The people involved are not there for their human traits, but because the work simply hasn't been reorganized for full automation quite yet. 

The fact that only last year Sodexo agreed to abide by a living wage agreement, is one of many factors that illustrates the corporations attitudes towards workers. They tout these jobs as opportunities for workers, but in reality they are merely consequential byproducts of their quest. They are no more to the company than the sum of their mechanical contributions, and their pay reflects this. Wage theft, overwork, and frenzied scheduling are all commonly reported by the students and employees who work so hard to serve us our food. If the pizzas and taco meat could be prepared and presented through automation. 

The problem with employers who see labor in this way is that once the labor is outmoded, they have no pretenses in which to continue offering the opportunity of paid work to the unskilled, unprivileged, or uneducated. Because their income is guaranteed, it is also fixed. That means the only thing they can do as a business to improve profits is cut costs. And thus their modus operandi, even more so than non contractual income corporations such as Wal-Mart or BMW, is to cut costs. BMW can attempt to find more customers, or sell more food, but Sodexo would actually like to serve as little food as possible! They only care to secure the contract, and lower the cost of production.

Because of this, students can expect for the food to never substantially increase in quality or availability. Employers can expect for wages to continually be repressed. Attempts at unionizing have also resulted in firings based on individual workers' political stances. Quite frankly, there should never be a price on someones opinion, but holding a minimum wage job over a workers head for their political stance is certainly not appropriate. 

When students allowed for the school to purchase lunches from Sodexo on our behalf, we guaranteed them an income based largely on almost unconditional college loans. These should be going towards our education, but the company has found its way into these funds. And the moment they can drop all employees, they will. Furthermore, our tuition costs would be cut quite severely if we were not obligated to dine through Sodexo. 

This issue reaches beyond Sodexo though, because these trends are applicable to the entire economy. The more we financially support companies that hire humans for simply interfacing with machines, the more we will have to blame ourselves for the inevitable replacement of all but the most powerful jobs by those holding them. When Ithaca College guarantees four semesters worth of our food budget to Sodexo, the institution forsakes the community businesses that offer better wages, friendlier service, better food, and lower costs.

We should instead reward companies that honor the humanity behind every worker, which leads me to look towards local providers as better options. I am in no way against the impending automation of labor, but if it is ushered in by entities that have already forsaken their employees' human qualities, we will not be able to trust them to suddenly value them once they have no purpose for human's at all.

Because we cannot change how much we pay them, we can cannot effectively communicate what we expect of them. We are not their customers, we are simply their consumers. Employees are not valued contributors, but simple mechanisms. It's time we address this issue split identity faced us all.

Ithaca College Dining Service must seriously rethink the options around providing food options to college students. It is time our bubble behaved as a part of the community down the hill, instead of draining it of its resources and customers.

My previous articles have mainly dealt with contract law as it pertains to the distribution and quality of information, but here on campus, its much more tangible than that. In this case, contract law has filled our bodies with sub par food, our school with unhappy workers, and drained our wallets. If we opened up our doors to local vendors, who would offer more diversified work, better food, and more choice. 

We are not the Enlightened ones.

Today I realized I have been guilty on many occasions of puffery. For a long time now, I believed that my generation was "the one" who could solve todays issues. I thought this was rational, because we seem to be the first generation of human beings born into a digitally interfaced environment. It seemed logical, and lots of people agreed.

We are the first to begin to use adaptive media, and the concept of "sharing" something essentially limitless in number. We have succumbed entirely to the notion of documenting everything and sharing it willy nilly. We have adapted quickly to the merits of crowd-sourcing, and volunteerism too. And yes, we are the first to tune in to twitter when we want news from any situation in the first person, and it's nice to stay connected with old friend through shared media. But we made the mistake of assuming that all this sharing means everyone always wants to see what matters to us, from our point of view, all the time. Sometimes, for an authors words words to have content, they have to speak to what's important to the audience, from your point of view. To discern and sympathize with your intended audience takes foresight, creativity, and conscious effort, and so of course, aimless ego flourishes instead.

We're also the first generation in a long time to be this thoroughly qualified, while facing such low guarantee of work that reflects our skill. There is no promise in the job market, and traditional middle management jobs and accounting positions are some of the most likely to be compromised as management, work and production become increasingly automated. To add to the perfect storm, we've been shackled with debt for our degrees, and are facing no genuine prospects of a career or stability: the fundamental benefits promised to us by "a degree". That means that the bulk of business majors, and many other fields as well, will have to embrace an entrepreneurial spirit, or face a low salary performing undervalued work.

So we are "special" in a sense. We are under special circumstance, as evidenced by the inverse levels of employment, debt, education, and technological advance.

I think in a mix of indulgence and distraction, social media has become a sort of maelstrom of content with no intended audience. It could be due in part to being so desperate to prove that we're as special we were told we were and that everyone should care about us. And it will hurt, as we try to find our place in society where work is scarce, and yet we feel educated and competent. By our parents standards, we are moving slower, despite what our "fast lifestyle" presents. We are getting finding steady jobs, married, buying homes, and having children much later in life. All of these foundational aspects of life "as it has always been" have been removed from us, and financial independence has not quite come for many many young individuals. Debt however, comes too easily, as educations are in high demand and seem like a valid, and necessary investment. They cost us all quite a bit, for this very reason. But now they are high in supply too, so they haven't grabbed the same compensation they once did in the job market, which is already flustering, and cluttered with older workers trying to recover their retirement funds and mortgages after the wool was pulled over their eyes leading up to 2008. What this means is that we are sitting in the crosshairs of a lot of economic tension, with good kids often being sold terrible educations void of and critical thought or value for exorbitant rates, paid for in thousands and thousands of dollars in debt.

I think that as capitalism runs its course, and the entire globe becomes familiar with its face, we might be delivered, or spat out, rather, to the point where we can support and educate ourselves on the human necessities, without the notion of having to prove your worth to "those more qualified". If we treated life a little bit more like the game Monopoly like many capitalists would say they do, I think we'd see drastic improvement.  Once everyone has guaranteed income from the start, and when passing "Go", or 1 year, and once we all take part in overseeing the bankers moves, then we can finally all play.

But as a whole, we are far too indulgent and distracted by social media and the entrapment of the internet for this idea of total unconditional support to work. As a generation, we have to collectively decide on how much is enough, because if we don't, we will be supporting each others reckless consumption at the encouragement of those in positions of authority. I don't know if we ever will reach a consensus ourselves, but maybe our foolish behavior and its meticulously and narcissistically hash-tagged documentation will reveal to our children one day how silly it really all is.

In short, we are enlightened in our mechanical ability to throw web, but not in our ability to aim it.

Maybe our children will reject our aimless and noisy lifestyles like we rejected out own parents' fads. But then again, maybe they'll ironically embrace and reinterpret them, again just like we did. Either way, I just hope that our children will learn to appreciate the value of introspection, so that they can find out who their true intended audience really is, and what they really need.

We tend to think that we are the Sol Actor, the center of the universe, and that the world is the audience. But the truth is, from the first person point of view, we have a play with 7 Billion actors. We all need a role, we all have a role, and when all of us are starts, just like Sol, none of us are Stars. We all have our place and purpose, but rarely is it ever in the center. The target is always moving, and so when we have something to say, it stands to reason that we should at least have a target, or someone in mind that we are saying it to.

We have become too overwhelmed and distracted by the capabilities of our new tools to truly consider ourselves the enlightened generation. It's consumed us in many ways. A freshman down the hall just yelled "Hashtag Ithaca, hashtag Ithaca!" as I type this.  But I do believe our children will be the ones who refine these tools and take these habits and channel them into more refined hobbies and tastes. In this case, I'm sure whatever they come up with will have amazing implications for information distribution and organization. It's up to us to foster the creative, thoughtful, and generation ahead of us, and do what we can to prevent debt from ensnaring them like it has so many of our own peers.