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MARC’s ANGle - Nowhere is this more obvious than in Southern California and especially Los Angeles County where government continues to grow more bloated, workers become less productive and more entitled and the ultimate result is in failure. Despite over a dozen visits by CPS to a clearly dangerous Lancaster home with countless documented red flags of severe and imminent danger, Anthony Avalos, a ten year old child, still died at the hands of his mother and stepfather, who have now been convicted. Blood is on the hands of CPS.
The CPS employees likely thought by documenting the abuse they were seeing, that was enough and they can wash their hands. Clearly it wasn’t and Anthony’s relatives claimed so. Herein lies a major problem with the “service” industry. They forget that primary key term “service” and continuously display their lack of care for results. For todays average employee it’s all about documentation and not true problem solving. This is why society falls apart and we have terrible outcomes like the death of this young 10 year old who had such a bright future ahead of him, despite his pain and suffering. I would love to have seen the great things Anthony could have done for the world, as teachers documented how positive he was despite the known abuse he experienced at home.
In no way I am comparing this grave event to my trivial consumer experience but parallels can be drawn, basically on the baseline of our workforce and it’s lack of ethic and care for their job, especially in the service industry. No wonder kiosk machines are replacing servers at McDonalds.
Yesterday, I had an interesting experience after my Prius ran out of gas on a desert highway with Air Expressway Towing. This is a company contracted with AAA to provide services. In this case, 2 gallons of fuel to get my car going to the next gas station.
While the driver Johnathan was helpful and claimed he understood the right thing to do, as he was a Prius owner himself, which was to ultimately get back on the road, we both knew that the Prius needed more than 2 gallons for the sensor to kick in.
I suggested I give him some cash and my credit card to go get a couple more gallons down the road about 5 miles, and we should be good. He refused and blamed it on company policy and that he could be fired. His verbal solution to me was that another driver would come in the next 20 minutes and they wouldn’t charge me for a second call. Guess what? It ultimately amounted to lip service, a common trait of a younger generation, more concerned with style than substance and getting out of an uncomfortable situation.
While Johnathan promised they would come in 20 minutes I waited in a precarious position off the Highway with barely any shoulder for an hour before I decided to call the company. The lady who picked up the phone was beyond rude. She said that no Johnathan worked there and like a broken record kept telling me to call AAA. When I addressed the verbal promise made to me, she started getting agitated and accused me of “yelling”. This is typical for young lazy workers who want to get out of a situation: gaslight and try to act threatened and act like the customer is some unreasonable person.
Ultimately I contacted AAA with this complaint, reported this deplorable behavior from the woman and the lies the driver told to me, putting my life in danger with no care for their job and actions. I hope these people will be terminated. But I question why were they hired in the first place and is this behavior standard operating procedure? The AAA supervisor confirmed it was when she tried to deal with the same lady at Air Expressway Towing.
But all this to say, many workers and “professionals” have lost their care for others and yet they are getting paid decent paychecks for it. America and our great societies were built from strong community connections: people there at each others’ time of need. If you go to work, it should be beyond a paycheck (it should be because you align with a bigger mission, no matter how small that may be). Remember, “we’re in this together”? Try caring about the person on the other line that is having an emergency. Try caring about a child you’re visiting that is in an unsafe situation, beyond the time you’re “clocked in at work”.
But the default reaction, especially on company time I’m seeing more and more, is “I’m uncomfortable because someone is in distress. I’m going to vilify them and remove myself from the situation”. Ultimately it’s because these people cannot handle their own emotions and they’re bringing that garbage to work and their professional dealings. In Anthony Avalos’ case, I don’t claim to know the case workers but all these people that touched the case and witnessed the abuse seemed to care more about protecting themselves than they did about proactively saving this kids life.
Now let’s look at the finance of things. We pour so much money into these government services, especially CPS and institutions like code enforcement or government control and they make a job and mission out of harassing people who break minor rules but the ones who are actually doing true evil are getting away with it? Something seems to be wrong with this picture.
Let me remind you that the public sector workers get paid more than many private sector counterparts especially in California. But yet the end result is worse than what you get from most private establishments. Now we also have an epidemic of NGOs and nonprofits getting immense funding to continue operations with no results or accountability, once again funded by taxpayer dollars redistributed to these entities. One can see how clearly inefficient things are when you look at the bottom line of results whether it’s something as big as the death of a child or small like the terrible service I’m receiving for a tow or fuel service.
Finally, it seems people, especially front facing employees, have become so selfish that their emotions take priority over real life emergencies of others. While mine was a minor case, Anthony Avalos’ was life and death. Every CPS employee that was there should have cared enough to save his life, become proactive, work within their system that they’re part of and to ultimately make something happen.
Not just throw their hands up and say “that’s not my job. I filled out the paperwork.” Therein lies a huge problem with todays society and many workers in general, from government to those in private establishments like Air Expressway Towing. No one should be entitled a job if they’re just going through the motions with no heart for what they do.
(Marc Ang ([email protected]) is a community organizer in Southern California and the founder ofAsian Industry B2B. He has written many pieces analyzing pop culture and it’s context in the world and politics. Marc’s book “Minority Retort” was released on November 9, 2022 through Trinity Broadcasting Network available on Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble and many more outlets. Marc is a regular contributor to CityWatchLA.)
