Miserable Worker

If you're not miserable then you must be mad!!

The world is one massive, stinking, miserable labour camp.

It is organised so that profits are made for the bosses and so that we (the workers/donkeys/slaves/ants/zombies/mugs) are kept in line. For if we fell out of line then that would threaten their profits. Everything in this world is judged in terms of its value in money. Nothing is worth doing unless it can make you money. The world is full of talented people who waste their lives stuck in a factory, office, or wherever it is they have to work. By the time you've given up all your time and energy to your boss, there's not much else you can do except watch TV, sleep, or get rat-arsed - and that's only after you've done all the chores that need doing around the house.

It would seem as if our greatest desire was to extinguish everything in us that is human and transform ourselves into an army of moronic robots. But this is not our choice, we have been beaten down and crushed until we obediently do what we are told to do, and we have become afraid to raise our voices about anything important.

We feel most like the moronic robots that we are becoming when we are at work. This is because this is the place where they make the most money out of us, and where we are most humiliated. (The second most place is in shops). They pay us as little as they can get away with, and make us work as hard as they can.

The work ethic is so ingrained in us that usually they don't have to try very hard to make us work at the rate they require. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, a couple of hundred years ago, bosses had no end of trouble trying to make their new workers (who came from villages and previously worked on the land) get down to some work. For example, after a Sundays revelry workers often would take the Monday, Tuesday and even Wednesday off. These days were known as St. Monday, St. Tuesday etc. and these unnofficial mass holidays caused serious problems for the bosses and owners who wanted to make big profits for themselves. So factories and other workplaces became more like prisons and overseers were chosen for the amount of cruelty they could display. Another method they used to make workers compliant was to give them absolutely no choice: land all over Britain and Europe was cleared of people and these people now had no choice but to go to the cities and find work in the new industries. Soon there started to be more people than jobs, and because it was now impossible to return to the countryside, or find any other kind of work, workers knuckled under and finally started doing what they were told.

200 years down the line and we are so well trained that they don't even have to wave a big stick at us to make us do what they want. We should be ashamed of ourselves. We have become little people who can only say: "Yes, sir. No, sir. Three bags full, sir."

Of course, it is probably true to say that most of us feel that we are not the scaredy cats that our ancestors would see us as. We have a multitude of excuses for why we go along with everything. These range from the cynicism of "keeping your head down", to things like: "I can't do anything else at the moment"; or, "It would never work"; or, "It's the other buggers who'll let you down". Power (that is: the government, the bosses, the managers, schools, the media, etc) has put us into a trance so that we have few thoughts of our own, they have shackled our imagination - what mugs we are to believe ANYTHING said by those who want to keep us working hard so that the rich and powerful can stay where they are now!!

Work is killing us. We should think about trying to salvage some of our dignity. You can't deny it: to varying degrees the workplace is a war zone. We should, just for the sheer mischief of it, if nothing else, attempt to escalate the tension, so that everyone can see the true, vicious face of management and bosses. Throw a few spanners in the works; while you're clawing back some of your own self-respect watch the buggers in charge become the rabid dogs that they really are.

Remember, it is perfectly honourable to lie to and cheat your bosses, they, after all are constantly lying to and cheating you, plus they have the power to sack you. Don't be a good slave, be a wise one.

With sympathetic fellow workers try to organise your sick leave for maximum benefit to you and maximum detriment to the company. Remember the old adage: There's no point being off sick when you're actually ill.

Remember, company profits don't get filtered down to you. Whatever your bosses are making they will still try to pay you as little as it is possible to keep you there. The company is screwing you every minute of every day, don't stick up for the company, or be proud of the company. Only real thickies will identify with their company, not surprisingly many of this sort come from what is called "the middle class".

These sad deluded fools think that what they do is important and that they are valued by the company, it comes as a massive nervous breakdown-type shock if they find out that none of this is true (if they are made redundant, for example).

If the bosses ever want to know what you think about the company and how it could be improved, always say that it is perfect as it is and that you couldn't be happier. If the company wants to know your opinions then it is only trying to get more ideas on how to improve efficiency and make everyone work harder. Whatever you say that has any relation to the truth will be used against all of you, to make you more productive. The company is not interested in your welfare, only its profit margins. Your bosses may seem like decent people (unlikely!), but if they had the opportunity (like their predecessors in the last century, or their counterparts today in other countries) they would love to make us work twice as hard for half the money and stop paying the taxes that go to frivolous things like the NHS. The only reason they don't do these things is because they know that running a totalitarian country is, in the end, more expensive and less efficient than a democracy and also that we would finally get rid of them if they pushed us too far for too long.

Our bosses are more afraid of us than we realise, there's only a few of them compared to the millions of us - luckily for them though we are usually so pathetically dim-witted that we let them get away with virtually anything. They must be laughing their socks off. We wouldn't know what day of the week it was if they didn't tell us.

This bulletin has been produced by a bunch of miserable workers centred around Manchester. It is not important who we are, it is enough to know that we have been pretty miserable for a long time now! and that we have discovered that our condition is common in the working class across the entire planet.

Miserable Worker 1 is available from the address below: