The corporate meatgrinder.

It's sad to see people chewed up and spit out by corporate America. I'm talking about the employees, here. The underlings.

There but for the grace of god go I.

I saw it happen to Linda, working as assistant manager at Regal Cinemas. She had health insurance, -- which we ended up needing -- but it was a horrible job, in many ways. She has a certain nostalgia for it, but I was there, man, and it was a meat grinder. (Same with her short stint at Barnes and Noble, which turned out to be about anything but books.)

I remember going to the movies the week after she finally quit, and meeting some of her co-workers, and turning to Linda and saying, "Do you see that look of panicked stress in their eyes? That was you a week ago."

She landed in her own bookstore, and is the mistress of her domain, and happy at it. And all those managers from Barnes and Noble and Regal, who in my opinion treated her unfairly, can go suck eggs. (That may be a bit mean-spirited, because at the local level they are all victims of the meatgrinder.)

Yes, owning your own business can be stressful, but at least you are charge of your own decision making. Yes, you can fail, but so can you lose a job. I read once that the worst kind of stress is having all the responsibility but none of the power to make changes. When you own your own business, you have both the responsibility AND the ability to make changes; stressful, but it has a different flavor to it.

What brought this up is reading another blog, (Rocket Bomber) written by a guy who works in a national book chainstore. He seems terribly put upon. He fantasizes about opening his own bookstore, but the fantasy is so over-the-top that it will never happen. I suggested once that he open a more modest endeavor and he slapped me down. (Admittedly, he had asked for no comments, so I probably deserved it. Still....kind of lost a lot of sympathy for him.)

It's strange to see someone keep their corporate meat grinder job year after year, and hear how he rationalizes it, and wishing he'd just take the chance and put that kind of effort into his own business.

I probably should be careful about advising that, though. It does seem like an awful lot of these 'dream' businesses fail. But I know what I would do.