end of a season

Yesterday was my last day as a financial services strategy consultant.*

No more lucrative year end bonuses. No more free museum passes and theatre discounts. No more fancy four course dinners. No more platinum status at 5 star hotels with marble countertops. No more $3000 monthly rent apartments in the ritziest part of town. No more racking up crazy amounts of airline miles. No more dimmed window, white glove driver, black car services. No more living on company expenses. No more guaranteed top business school admission.

I have decided to leave the fast-track to success and financial stability.
I feel free.*

Two years and I could have paid off all my debt. Three years and I could have saved up enough money to go to graduate school. Four years and maybe I could even be fairly well off and probably able to get a good lucrative job in management at any financial services firm.

It would have been good. But what good would that have done me?

So I am cutting myself off from that which does not give me life, before I am wined and dined to death.

* I reiterate: often times the best choices in life are the ones you are most afraid are taking. I have the privilege of choice. (I was not born into poverty nor slavery. I was born into a loving and well-educated family). That choice is not be whittled away on choosing security over joy.

when words lose their meaning (3.5)

work/life balance

a snazzy catch phrase used by corporations to indicate that their employees are expected to work a lot. if the standard hours were 9 to 5, there would be no need to mention "work/life balance"

work - a word often confused with 'career'. work means exerting effort to accomplish something. but what? people talk about wanting to "accomplish something in their lives", to look back at their careers and note their milestones and achievements. but what do we accomplish in work? aside from using it as a means to an ends (a comfortable lifestyle, lining our nests and earning us prestige). aside from a game where money and goods get shifted around from one white glove to another. aside from perpetuating a system that sustains our status in the current hierarchy of privilege. (we're organization kids. we don't question authority).

life - in new york, life means some mindless form of consumption. an endless proliferation of restaurants, clubs, shows and events (accompanied by the frequent complaint of things not being good enough). it also means taking cabs to where you need to go. nice apartment. life means the frequent gathering of a diverse group of people, meaning an ethnically diverse group of upper middle class young professionals. life means taking a dance class, or picking up a hobby, such as a cooking (oddly enough, wasn't it once a neccessity?). maybe life means getting married and having kids and moving to the suburbs. what does it mean to live well?

a slash divides work from life - as though life begins when work ends. as though work can never be considered integrally as part of our lives. as though work is something we discard and leave behind us as soon as we leave the office. as though we're free not to question what we do at work, and the rest of our values, because work is something separate, divided, forever locked in a compartment away from life. (and yet we still seek fulfillment in work? instead of life? is achievement confined only to the sphere of career?)

balance - this firm has good work/life balance - you wake up at 5am to catch a 6:30am flight. you groggily walk into client site at 8:30am and continue working, eating lunch at your desk, until 8:30pm where you then catch a cab to some ritzy hotel where you then may order overpriced room service and eat like a queen while you watch images flash on a flatscreen tv. thus your week continues with a similar pattern, perhaps interspersed with dinner at a fancy restaurant then thursday rolls around and you fly out on a 5:30pm or 6:30pm flight on Thursday to arrive home at 8pm or 9pm. if you're lucky, it's earlier than when you'd arrive at the hotel normally. then on fridays you work in the office so you get to see all your colleagues who have been packed off to the four corners of the world, and by the end of the day if your work is done, you head over to happy hour. and yes, because you went to happy hour, you are happy. though you work like a donkey during the week, the alcohol makes you forget all about it. good work/life balance. is it not all relative? what does work/life balance mean?

*Note: This entry is not meant to be a bitter, personal lash-out against my experience at my firm. Compared to what is expected at the firm and what hours are like at other investment banks or consulting firms, my hours have been very good, and my job managers and colleagues have treated me well. The last part of this entry comes as an expression of disillusionment with the general industry expectation that a 55 hour work week + travel is normal and acceptable and allows for plenty of time to engage in other "life" activities (and that in some cases, it's okay to make your employees work 100 hour weeks). It is the general "spirit" of the industry, not the individuals (though individuals inevitably subscribe to and participate in this spirit) that I have found difficult. That and my persistent idealist confused questioning of "what does this all amount to?"

**Some say that by creating new products to meet customer needs, or by freeing up money in capital marketes, we're allowing for increased standard of living. But are we assuming that people are simple-minded consumers, that will be happier and more fulfilled the more they buy? Others say that increased business and competition will mean better prices and products for consumers. Do we just say these things to make ourselves feel better? I don't know. If you have real answers, please find me.

when words do not have enough meaning

perhaps we have a moment of silence in memory of victims because words are not enough.

yet whenever something like this happens, we seem to crave more words, more images, more video feeds, more opinions, more interviews, more information-- until our sudden consciousness of the brevity of life can be stored away as last week's news.


* for the Virginia Tech shootings that took place today
** i am shocked. i am sad. i feel helpless. i wish i had something more than words, because i know they bring no comfort to those who lost loved ones today.

when words lose their meaning (4)

I'm sick of postmodernism*

I don't want to sit around having discourse on hegemony, disapora, mimesis, hybridity, fragmentation, semiotics, dialectics and identity construction. I don't want to keep asking questions that do not have answers. I don't want to keep asking questions for the sake of asking questions.

I don't just want to talk about justice, love, truth, wholeness and life. (I don't just want to talk about justice as an equality of potential contingent upon cultural and historical positioning, or love as a consummation of libidinal impulses, or truth as a negotiation and production of reality through texts, or the definition of a lifestyle of wholeness as a totalizing normalization of certain codes of behaviour that creates the category of the deviant, or life as the perpetuation of social practices, simultaneously constituted by and acting upon the biological form as a medium of transmission.)

I want Justice, Love, Truth, Wholeness and Life.

I'm sick of postmodernism.
Disguising itself as the champion of the oppressed, the vindicator of critical thought and the herald of intellectual honesty, it quickly disintegrates into complacent consumerism and words that don't mean anything anymore.

It is a poor substitute for Justice, Love, and other things that I desire.**



*Thoughts and brief academic catchphrases inspired by The Rise and Fall of Literature.
**That is, when I'm not too busy desiring other things such as a nice haircut, a comfortable apartment with hardwood floors, a new pair of shoes, and a plasma screen TV.

(When everything is said and done, nothing is really said, and nothing has been done that has not been undone).

real choices: stop before you shop

20 hour workdays. regular beatings. child labour. indentured servitude. rape.

Details
The children are forced to work 12-14 hours a day, with some shifts going 20-hours. In all of September, these child laborers got just one day off. For the grueling long shifts, they are allowed only about four hours of sleep on the factory floor before being awakened and put back on the machines, sometimes collapsing from exhaustion. Their wages are as low as six cents an hour. They are routinely slapped or beaten if they don't meet their production goals, make mistakes, or even take too long in the bathroom. - "At the Western garment factory, which made fleece jackets for Walmart, there were 14 or 15-year-old kids working 18 or 20 hour shifts," he said. "They worked from 8:00 in the morning until midnight or until 4:00 a.m. And they did this seven days a week. They did not get paid for first four months of 2006, they did not receive one cent in wages. They were working as slave labor. When they passed out they were struck by rulers to wake them up. There were four girls who were raped by management." - "You're supposed to say that this factory is closed on Fridays and that no one works here at night. If anyone tells the buyer otherwise, then the company will fire them.” - He admits factory workers sometimes do have to put in extra long hours, for instance when deadlines are looming and fabric deliveries are late. They have little choice, he says, meet the deadline or American companies could take their business elsewhere. - "We used to start at 8 in the morning, and we'd work until midnight, 1 or 2 a.m., seven days a week. When we were in Bangladesh they promised us we would receive $120 a month, but in the five months I was there I only got one month's salary and that was just $50." - Hazrat Ali, 25, who worked from September 2004 to March 2005 at the Al Shahaed factory, said he sometimes worked 48 hours in a row and received no pay for the six months. - "If we asked for money, they hit us," he said.

Culprits
Sears. Walmart. Kohl's. Fila. Victoria's Secret. Express. Ralph Lauren. DKNY. Calvin Klein. Banana Republic. The list goes on.

Hope?
This is the garment industry and how most of your clothing is made. I'm not one for sensational accounts, but the injustices involved in making our clothing has angered me a great deal.

When we buy without questioning from stores that outsource to sweatshops, we are participating in these injustices. The ignorance and complacency of the elite (because by the fact that we have computers and are literate, are the elite), is causing the suffering of the masses.

Plenty argue that sweatshops are a necessary step towards development in third world countries. Or that without these factories, these workers would be worst off. But how much worse can you get than this? These workers' lives could be substantially different with a hardly perceptible impact on cost. I am seriously angry! It's times like these when I can begin to understand why God's anger burns against the violence on the earth. There is no excuse for these abominations. Workers can be paid more without actually cutting into profits. There are better ways to "globalize". American retailers (especially the large ones) need to put more pressure and oversight to ensure good working conditions in sweatshops. And as the end customers to these products, we're in a unique position of power to pressure retailers to action.

A few thoughts:
"If the American retailers paid only 25 cents more per garment, the total in Bangladesh would be $898 million- more than eight times current US aid."
Or as Dov Charney, head of American Apparel, a garment company that pays its workers double minimum wage + benefits, once mentioned: "My labour cost in LA is about 60 cents a T-shirt. In a prison in China it's zero cents. But when you're selling T-shirts for £18, what is 60 cents? It's nothing."

On the bright side, there has been some news of progress, though abuses continue. If anything, this shouldn't excuse us from forgetting about it, but should rather give us more hope that there are huge improvements in this generation that can be made, and that our actions are all the more important. It may not happen overnight, and it may require a long, patient effort, but changes can be made.

Action (please consider it!)
Any or all of these will be of help (You may not do any of it perfectly but it's better to have 10,000 people who are imperfectly committed and vocal than none at all):
1. Don't shop at places that use sweatshop labour. There are a list of reputable retailers at the bottom of this entry that I will eventually add to my sidebar. (On a personal note, Mariya and I have been commiting and trying our best to not buy sweatshop made clothing. If you'd like to join us, in encouraging one another and giving each other ideas about cool places to shop, please post a comment or email me :) ).
2. Spread the word. Raise awareness. Post this on your blog. Write more blog entries.
3. Write letters. Call customer service lines...especially to the larger retailers that have more bargaining power. Get involved with activism groups.
4. Buy Fair Trade or union made clothing. That way you can actually support third world development.
5. If you're a college student or lacking in funds, and can't always afford the slightly higher prices that these stores offer, try Goodwill or the Salvation Army. Great prices, always good finds. And even better: they employ people who were formerly in prison, or are disabled, giving them an opportunity to work and earn money.

Places to shop
American Apparel
Zara (Here's a cnn article on their business model)
Moo Shoes (Vegan and sweatshop free!)
Goodwill
Salvation Army

More articles on the topic
Dateline NBC: Human cost behind bargain shopping
JORDAN: An Ugly Side of Free Trade - Sweatshops
Children Found Sewing Clothing For Wal-Mart, Hanes & Other U.S. & European Companies
A quick overview of different companies and their ethical practices
More articles found here at the National Labor Committee:
http://www.nlcnet.org/news_room.php


*Note: This is not to say that I'm some super ethical shopper. I have my ignorant and complacent moments too. I walk into the store and see something that looks pretty and feels good and I forget about the lives, or the loss of lives that went into the making of that garment. Or, I find myself desperately in need of underwear, and feel like I can't bite the budget to pay more. My attempt to not buy anything made in sweatshops has been recent (the past year), and it's been and still is a process. Though one thing that I have found encouraging, is the longer I do it, the easier it seems to become, and I am looking to get involved with more letter writing/activism.
**Something else to consider, though please don't use it as an excuse for buying from places that use sweatshop labour. (If enough of us do it, then they will have to change. The question is -- will enough of us care enough to change our habits?): "One misconception is that the sweatshop problem can be avoided by not buying from a few major brands. As Hearson notes: 'It's not about the big bad guys any more. Now it's more about moving the entire industry. The difficulties are structural.' Instead of trying to achieve a level of purity in their personal purchases, he argues that consumers need to pressure companies they patronize and large buyers like universities to make more concerted efforts to raise standards--for example by participating in initiatives such as the Ethical Trading Initiative in the UK and the Workers' Rights Consortium in the US. As one important aspect of this, corporations must make a commitment to help employees improve substandard factories, rather than 'cutting and running' when abuses are reported. 'We have to recognize that a company that is doing well on the issue is not necessarily sweatshop-free,' Hearson says. 'It is one that is acknowledging the problem and engaging with worker groups and other stakeholders. If we want improvements across the industry, it's not going to happen overnight.'" from http://www.democracyuprising.com/articles/2006/fair_trade_sweatshops.php

when words lose their meaning (3)*

It's funny how sometimes investment bankers or consultants talk about being afraid of "getting used to their lifestyle" and not being able to change jobs later.

What kind of life is there when you work 80 hours a week?**

*to be continued
**And what does all this work amount to? Some company's stock price may go up by 3/4 of a cent. A lot of rich men might be happy.