| Are temp services prostitution? | Letters to the Editor | |
Are temp services prostitution?
Viewpoint
by Todd Goodman
Columnist
I recently found myself in a familiar college situation. I was broke. I had nothing in the bank, nothing in the wallet, and both credit cards maxed out. God, my life sucks!
College is great when there is money to spend. You go out, drink a few beers, meet a few women and eat your meals at Macados. College life sucks when you are broke, period. At any rate, I decided it was time to stop hitting mom up for money. I was really abusing the old lady.
I decided to go and get a job. I had heard of Able Body staffing services, the one which advertises daily work and daily pay. I figured this would be perfect for a college student who does not want a structured job. Boy, was I wrong.
I worked my first job for them on Tuesday, September 24. The job began at 4:00 p.m., and was scheduled to run up to 12:30 a.m. By 5:00 p.m., I wanted to shoot myself. Money just isn’t worth what I had to endure. I knew it was going to be boring, but what I got was ridiculous.
A trained chimp could have done my job. The only requirement was the ability to count correctly to 12. I was counting out 12 dowel rods, and putting them and other various items into an undersized box. It got mundane very quickly.
Did I mention this was a production job? For those of you who don’t know, a production job is one where the employee must meet an hourly quota. The more you produce over the quota, the more money you take home each paycheck. This is a good system for a real employee, but it sucks for a temporary one.
I got paid five bucks an hour whether I busted my butt or not. There was no incentive to work faster! Here is what really pissed me off. Able Body made $3 each time I made $5, and they were not sticking rods into a box that was too small to hold in the first place.
I was pimped out by Able Body. The bad thing is that more and more companies are hiring through these staffing agencies. The only way to get on with these companies is to go to work for a legalized whorehouse.
After taxes were taken out, I made a whopping $28 for six and a half hours of the most boring work imaginable. I felt as if I had aged 20 years by the time I left, which was an hour and a half early. I told my supervisor that I was going insane and had to leave immediately.
"Will I see you again?" she asked.
"Not unless you run into me on campus," I replied. She took it very well.
When I walked into the factory, I felt as if I had entered Darwin’s waiting room. There were people in there who had not evolved yet. I will remain broke if that is the way I have to make money; either that or start selling drugs. Just kidding.
Having an education made me feel even more out of place. Factory workers do not as a rule, like young college kids. Ninety percent of the conversations I heard were about how kids today have it made. They also bitched about the government, which I had to stand on my sore feet and listen to.
Do you feel sorry for me yet? If not, you will. The meager $28 check I received did not even cover my phone bill, which I had counted on it doing. I vowed never to return to the aforementioned site, so I called Able Body to see what else they could find me. I am a slow learner.
This job began at 7 a.m. I was to report to Able Body by 6:30, move on to the job site, and carry concrete block. Again, working for peanuts, I started to question the meaning of life.
"What am I doing here?" was frequently heard.
There must be a better way for students to make extra cash. Campus jobs pay so little that taxes aren’t even taken out. However, I would choose a job on campus over the local whorehouse anyday.
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The Great Movie Conspiracy
Matt Bielejeski
Columnist
Like most freshmen new to the campus of Appalachian State, I decided to wander King Street looking for some nighttime entertainment. Taking the route that goes by Legends on Hardin Street, I noticed an economy movie theater. "Good," I thought, "A fun way to avoid doing the paper I’ve been putting off for three months at a low price." This discovery had possibilities.
As I continued on to King Street, no less than three or four blocks from Hardin Street, I came upon another low-priced movie theater. "Now this is too good to be true. I can see four different movies for just a dollar fifty each! College life is so great," I cackled to myself as I glanced at the marquee to see what was playing at this location. To my dismay, I found the exact same two movies that were playing at the theater on Hardin Street.
Hmmm. I felt like I was being played for a fool (nothing new, of course). Maybe it was some gag the theater producers did the first week of classes to confuse the incoming freshmen. Ha-ha. Good one. If it was a plot by the owners, I guess it worked. I felt stupid. Hee-hee.
Three weeks later, the movies had changed, but the two theaters had the same two movies playing again! By this point I began to get suspicious. I started asking people that I knew who weren’t freshmen what the deal was. They didn’t have much to say to me. It was just an accepted fact of life in Boone that they show the exact same two movies four blocks apart.
One wise person told me that the same company owned both of the theaters, so to save money, they just showed the same movie. What?!? I guess that makes sense if you learned logic from a Cro-Magnon man named Grok who purees freshly killed cow by thumping it against a rock. I don’t think so.
Also in my quest for the answer, I spoke to a friend of mine who is a member of A.P.P.S. During a meeting one day, their group leader asked the group if they had any questions about A.P.P.S. or Boone in general. She asked the question that I had so valiantly been searching for an answer to. The group leader replied that it was a phenomenon that he couldn’t explain. (I personally think he was under orders from a Communist regime not to say anything, but that’s another story.)
Failing to find a comprehensive answer to the elusive question, I decided to think of a few ways this atrocity to entertainment could occur.
They achieved this moneymaking endeavor by brainwashing each Appalachian State student as he or she goes to the cashier’s office to pay for tuition. What aliens would want with human currency, I don’t know, but like I said, this is a theory.
After I had come up empty , I decided to go enjoy "The Island of Dr. Moreau," playing at the theaters on Hardin Street and King Street. But which one do I go to? Heads, Hardin. Tails, King...
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Health and Fitness tour unhealthy
My Turn
by Daniel Bothun
Columnist
When walking to class on November 4, I saw that the Collegiate Health and Fitness Tour had come to our beloved campus. Maybe it was the giant displays, the bright colors, or the sight of something other than fluorescent orange tape on Sanford Mall, but I was compelled to take a look at it.
When I got around to going to this carnival, it reminded me of the movie "Something Wicked This Way Comes." Indeed, something wicked did come to Boone. Large corporations, hell-bent on making the most profit as they possibly can, came to Boone disguised as sponsors for this event.
Their presence, however, clubbed spectators over the head like a Louisville Slugger. Sanford Mall was littered with more advertising signs than Tiger Stadium.
The sponsors will claim, through altruistic reasoning, that the Collegiate Health and Fitness Tour is designed to promote health education and to promote a healthy lifestyle. I can see through this claim like a bottle of Clearly Canadian. The real purpose of this event is to cram as much corporate crap into our heads as possible.
Various companies set up booths throughout the area to promote their latest products. The Jeep booth offered an extremely generous $400 off the price of a new car for college graduates. Discover put up a booth, for the strict purpose of giving credit cards to us financially irresponsible college kids. Discover reps induced customers to join, offering a free T-shirt, which was probably made by 12 year-old kids in a Honduras sweatshop. Trojan offered free condoms, although my free condom will inevitably expire before I have the opportunity to use it.
As I gulped a drink containing several droplets of some foreign substance, I noticed the various games that people were allowed to play. I wanted to play some of these games, so I filled out a release form. I signed my name Thor Johnson, but the lady at the information center didn’t even bother to check the form nor did she care to. After being done with reading and signing the release form gobbledygook, I was ready to play.
I looked around at the various games, seeing which one I wanted to play. I saw an air-filled, trampoline-like basketball arena, where the people tried to sink a basketball in another person’s basket. It would have been more fun to watch if the arena was used to test drive the free condoms.
There was the convenient "Rock Climbing Challenge," which was basically a stone wall with some rocks glued to it. Why bother going to one of the mountains around here, when I can climb this artificial wall with strategically placed rocks that do not force me to put forth much effort?
There was also "Bouncy Boxing," which was a boxing ring with gloves that would have fit Fisto from He-Man. I didn’t bother playing this game either, while if I punched my opponent in the nads, it wouldn’t leave any crushed grapes. That is, if I landed a punch at all.
The "Plymouth Bungee Run" didn’t look any more interesting than the other games. In the bungee run, contestants put on a bungee cord and ran as far as they could before their cord snapped back and gave them whiplash. This game defies the original purpose of the bungee cord, which is intended to allow nutballs to jump off a bridge without killing themselves.
Of course, there was also the velcro wall game ripped off from the Dave Letterman show. I kept thinking that all this velcro wasn’t necessary, while people could jump up on a giant copy of Hustler with sticky pages and it would have the same effect.
I then decided to go to the Wellness Center booth, to receive an education. When I got there, it was just a few posters telling me how smoking, alcohol, and drugs are bad for you. I could have skipped reading these posters and still remained as ignorant as I was before. Some statistics from a survey were also posted there, but surveys are often inaccurate and cannot be relied upon.
After 45 minutes of being filled with wanderlust, I was ready to leave. I was tired of the crappy Seattle garage band college music played at a high volume, tired of the capitalist pigs’ propaganda campaigns, tired of pushy salespeople with bad breath, tired of the lame carnival games, and tired of the whole disgusting atmosphere.
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Much ado about safety
Here at The Appalachian, we are simply exasperated with students buying into the rumors that have been flying about fictional crimes on campus and how the newspaper and university administration are trying to cover up crime. It's just not so.
The Appalachian's policy on crime reporting is to report the most serious crimes such as assaults, rapes and drug violations as they occur.
The administration of this university is making many efforts to halt crime and to fairly, responsibly report it when it happens.
Beginning November 19, the Office of Student Development will run campus safety information as part of the "Backpage" advertising section of The Appalachian. We believe this to be a clear effort to inform students about crime on behalf of the administration at this university. In recent weeks, wild rumors of crime sprees have proliferated on this campus and the truth has been cast aside.
The fact is that our university administration isn't hiding anything. We don't have anything to be ashamed of. The addition to the "Backpage" is a very positive sign that the administration on this campus works hard to make sure students feel safe and that they are informed of crimes that do occur.
On the "Backpage," Student Development will report any crime that occurs on campus which is considered to be a threat to students and employees when this crime is reported to ASU Police. There will also be monthly crime statistics from our campus police as well as monthly disciplinary reports from the Office of Judicial Affairs.
Other items the reserved space may include are information on national trends regarding crimes at colleges and universities, campus safety program schedules, and on–campus services and reporting venues.
The space will not include names of victims or information which could personally identify them, nor will names of students sanctioned by Judicial Affairs be reported.
Clearly, students must realize that although Appalachian is a university like many others, it's not necessarily totally ruled by red tape.
Chancellor Borkowski's recent comments at the Safety Forum and his open letter to ASU students prove that he isn't going to allow students to keep spreading untruths about crime any longer.
The recent NOW sponsored March and Speak–Out Against Rape had stellar attendance rates. This shows that students, faculty, staff and other residents of Boone share the administration's concern for the safety of everyone on campus.
The Campus Safety Forum sponsored by several Freshmen Seminar classes, at Legends showed that students of all class ranks care about their safety enough to take action. It is encouraging that these students wanted to make a difference in what had almost become a rumor–run campus environment.
It's not difficult to synthesize information about all of these efforts and come to the clear conclusion that something is being done to promote safety on this campus. People are not only recognizing that it can easily happen, they are making strides by making themselves more aware.
No more dollar theater mystery
The owner of The Appalachian Theater on West King Street told The Appalachian Wednesday that the reason the admission price has gone up to $1.50 is to cover the recent minimum wage increase. She also informed us that the full price movie houses have also increased their admission to $5.75.
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More Ball Fallout
Letter to the Editor,
As strange as this may seem, I am writing this letter to the editor not in response to an article, but to another letter to the editor. In the Oct. 24 issue of the Appalachian, Denver Hill wrote a letter to the editor berating an article written by Jeremy Ball in response to the hate graffiti of the River Street tunnels. After reading Ball’s article, I was tempted to write to the editor myself, but for the exact opposite of Hill’s reason. I thought that Ball did a great job of presenting an objective viewpoint to the entire issue. I, too, thought of how false the claim that "God hates faggots" was, an addition made by the graffiti artists, not the Bible. Jesus Christ himself admitted that He did not come to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3: 17). And Ball did a very good job of calling those people on that hatred, in what I hope to be a very convicting manner for those responsible. He also, however, presented the true Christian view of homosexuality, not balking at calling a sin a sin, but he did so in a way that all Christians need to take note of--focusing above all else on the unbelievable love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Now, I found considerable holes in the logic Hill used in writing his letter. First of all, it appears that he misread the article, because Ball’s statements of forgiveness were not intended for those who wrote the graffiti, but rather directed to them in their thoughts about homosexuals. I also found myself chuckling at his allusion to a god who hates rape and loves rapist, a very clever attempt to play to our campus’ fears where rape has unfortunately come to the fore. What he doesn’t understand is that in God’s eyes, sin is sin, so that a rape is just as serious an offense as cussing, telling a white lie, or cheating on an exam. Praise God that those sins are forgiven, because if Hill’s logic holds up, rapists, liars, and everyone else on earth would fall subject to God’s wrath, something I don’t even want to imagine. Also, for someone who seems irate at the chastisement and belittling of homosexuals, Hill seems totally ready to "castigate homophobes" in a like manner.
Since you believe "the Bible is outdated" and are "sick of God as a solution to society’s problems," I am curious to see what answer you have for these problems. Judging from the anger and dissatisfaction in your letter, I don’t get the impression that your answer is working too well itself. I truly hope and pray that someday you find the true answer.
Ben Keisler
ASU Box 14286
Starling doesn't know diddily
Letter to the Editor,
Your October 24 article titled "You wanted the best... Oh well" struck a nerve and I must rebut. First of all Mr. Starling, you aren’t old enough to know who Kiss, Van Halen, or Led Zepplin are. These guys started the rock revolution (including the Beatles) and without them, the rock music industry wouldn’t be what it is today.
Unfortunately, students your age think good music comes from groups called "Geggy Tah" that want to "thank people for driving their cars." The video has road signs that say "Cool Trumpet Solo" and bar scenes that have the subheading "Bar Scene." How smart do you have to be to appreciate that? What happened to videos that make you think? Alanis Morissette has a video where you look at her face the whole time. Boy, that’s quality stuff.
These groups put one album together for the sake of one hit song, and they are never heard from again. (That’s probably because the album sucked too.) So who is really getting ripped off?
Before you trash groups like Led Zepplin or Van Halen, maybe you should look at how long they were popular or how many number one hits they’ve had. By the way, I would be careful about using the words "rock and roll" in the same sentence with REM. They should be titled RCM for "Really Crappy Music".
David Beaver
ASU Box 6967
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