After viewing the movie, Up In The Air, I felt that this was just another non- story no different than most of the American movies that I viewed in the last decade. When it was nominated for an Acadamy Award I realized that a story about a guy with no life who flies around the country with a list of people to fire from their jobs was not only plausible but acceptable to the viewing public.
Is it acceptable because we may have been conditioned to not ask questions? Questions like; Who the hell are you?Did somebody fire your guys?
Also, why would a company pay a stranger to fire its staff because of financial problems? Why would anyone want a job like that? And, why would anyone enjoy watching a movie about dysfunctional people firing people?
The answer could be in the work envirorment in which most of us earn our livings. We are made to feel that we have no right to be there and that our efforts provide very little in the way of positive contributions to the wealth of the company. They are doing us a favor by hiring us in the first place and that we represent a business expense and seldom an asset.
The few unions that we could turn to for help are weak or company owned. The government agencies that were created to protect the worker are controlled by a company owned Congress.
So movies like, Up In The Air, may be viewed by the American worker as just the way things are. Another slap in the face by corporate America. And don’t think that just because you have a college degree that you are not a worker. Most of the poor slobs being fired by someone who just walked into their building off the streets appeared to be college grads themselves.
So if some team of strangers comes to your place of work and tells you that you don’t need all that bagage of family and home and offers you the opportunity to get lost….call security and have them removed from the premisies. That is, if they haven’t already fired security!
