Sunday 11 May 2008

What's wrong with capitalism

I don't want to give too much away about my job, but I work in a kind of Call Centre involved with money. Usually smallish amounts (£500-£2,000), but occasionally largish amounts (£12,000-£500,000). Calls are distributed by hand among our four-person team and a commission of £1 per £1,000 on top of our minimum wage applies.

Got it? Don't worry. You only need the gist.

Now, before we began, the issue of the larger amounts came up. 'I know,' I said (literally). 'Why don't we pool all the amounts over £10,000 and split the monies equally between the team?'

'Pah!' was the response. 'Where's the sense of competition? The hunger?' (etc)

I went along with the team. We're all new, see, and what do I know?

On day two (Tuesday), it came to pass that I had a run of large calls (about £600,000 worth).

On day three, I was told there was disquiet among the team. Talk of me, somehow cheating the system. Of being, perhaps, in cahoots with the hander-outer. Or just being some kind of Crook.

Day four was a day off, which I spent stressing about how to handle the situation. As far as I could see, we had very quickly discovered the Fatal Flaw of the capitalist model. In just two days, it bred fear, greed, discontent, malice, stress and nameless other amounts of negative energy (tsk - imagine what would happen if it was applied on a broader scale).

On day five, I re-proposed what I call, simplistically, the socialist model: The all-monies-over-£10,000-are-split-equally idea. This time, the rest of the team went for it and peace has been restored.

Good job, too. My first call was for £240,000 worth. That wouldn't have looked very good at all.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Capitalism appears to be preventing blogging . . . .

the devolutionary said...

I can't work it out. Is that sarcasm or cynicism?

Anonymous said...

It's wantingablogupdateism

Anonymous said...

did the parcel arrive?