Saturday, January 14, 2012

A couple days back, I blogged about how things—perfectly good items still in working condition—have become disposable.  How we reject products that still have life left in them in favor of shinier newer ones that catch our eye.  Speaking with a friend earlier today about my father, I recalled how a company he’d worked for with unyielding loyalty the majority of his life had treated him with the same indifference. 

Back when major corporations began economizing by eliminating higher paid executives with more appealing younger individuals who were eager to please and sat much lower on the pay scale, my father, as did countless others, found that his long-term loyalty meant little in today’s it’s-all-about-the-bottom-line new business mentality. 

Rather than being able to cruise through his final few years of working, retirement my father’s end goal, he found himself faced with the option of an early retirement package that drastically minimized what he should have gotten.  Either that or he’d no longer have a job.  His company was eager to rid themselves of paying his larger salary to bring in a younger more inexperienced individual whom they could pay a fraction of the money.

As I recounted these events to my friend, I couldn’t help but recognize the gross parallels between how items as well as people have become disposable.  Doesn’t matter if either still has worth, is working well or has potential to do great things.  No.  People have become disposable to corporations who want to cut their overhead costs while items have become disposable by our “need” to have bigger, better and flashier ones to call our own.