When you’re trying to persuade someone to do something they don’t want to do, there are two general methods available to persuade them: Rewards or punishment, a.k.a. “carrots or sticks.”
Lately, many of our state governments have decided the way to put people back to work is to cut off unemployment benefits and shred social safety nets. They’ve chosen the easiest and cheapest response but not necessarily the best method for achieving the stated objective of “putting people back to work.”
Those of us lucky enough to have held jobs that migrated to home offices and pantsless Zoom meetings are finding a return to cubicles and inflexible schedules challenging. The lucky few with the right resumes have simply left their old jobs for ones that allow them to continue work unchained from buildings and “core hours.” Others without that option have re-examined how much they’re really earning after paying for child care and other costs related to working outside the home. For some, the bottom line is so low that they’ve made career changes they never envisioned making before the pandemic began.
For others, the struggles of working through the pandemic under difficult conditions were just too overwhelming, and they fell out or were pushed out of their jobs. Now that they’re unemployed and finally getting a chance to heal, many of them don’t want to return. At least, not to that same toxic environment.
During the shutdown, far too many of us unleashed our pent-up frustration and anger at innocent victims doing everything from keeping our communities safe to serving us a Caffè Americano while we used their free wi-fi to work remotely from their sidewalk dining area.
We saw videos of people walking into retail stores demanding the right to purchase products unhampered by store policies designed to protect both employees and customers. Some customers even went to extreme lengths and physically attacked employees trying to enforce policies.
Other customers simply decided to register their disapproval of these policies by not tipping wait staff whose guaranteed wages are well below the minimum wage and who rely on tips to make up the greatest part of their wages.
Why tip someone for simply walking out to your car and handing your order to you?
It’s that same attitude of punishing those caught in the middle that’s driving the movement to fix the problem by cutting off unemployment benefits. Let’s make their lives so miserable that they have no other option but to take one of these low-paying and high-stress jobs.
If this doesn’t work, maybe we should also eliminate school lunch programs, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and make it easier for landlords to evict tenants. If we just make life difficult enough, those people will become desperate enough that they will have to accept whatever is available.
We cannot deny that it’s been rough out there for our small-business owners, who have struggled to adjust their business operations to accommodate the restrictions as well as staff shortages and still keep customers safe and happy. This has often led to a situation that a relative with a small business summarized as “twice the work for half the income.”
Small businesses are vital to a community, as the money we spend here tends to stay here. Also, local services, not goods produced, are the driving force for our economy. (As noted in the Michael J. Hicks op-ed, published June 24 on Page A6 in the Daily Reporter: “Since 1970, all the net job growth — actually, more than 100% — has gone toward the production of services…. One major engine of local economic growth is simply the consumption of local services.”)
We can cheer on our elected officials for using sticks to force people back to work or we can try something much more difficult but both kinder and more effective: We can view others as human beings who deserve respect regardless of whether they are stacking cans, delivering coffee or conducting board meetings in high-rise offices where decisions are being made that affect everyone’s lives.
On that alternative, many of us have been failing rather badly during the past year and a half. It’s time to pull ourselves together and treat others with the same respect and dignity that we want for ourselves.
Buy carrots. Throw away the sticks.
A lifelong resident of Hancock County, Linda Dunn is an author and retired Department of Defense employee.
