Pacific Views

Something Awful

Yesterday I was listening to a Seattle area radio station when a caller asked the DJ to replay the tape of an on-air prank. I was in the car, so I couldn't take notes, but here's the gist:

The DJ calls a woman who'd recently applied for a job, pretending to be from the drug testing company she'd submitted a urinalysis to. He said that they'd found high levels of "REO Speedwagon" in the sample after checking twice to make sure. (You can be snide about her not getting that it was a prank right there, but what followed was distinctly unfunny.)

She goes on to tell the DJ how much she needs this job, that it's such a good job, and that she's been unemployed for six months. She swears she's been clean. Then she starts begging him to change the results. She asks if he's married, and in the space of about a minute goes from offering lunch, to a night out for drinks, to saying she'll sleep with him. She stated at the end that she would do "anything" to convince this guy to change her test results or let her retake it.

I can't imagine being cruel enough to a) play this on the air, or b) find it funny. But the larger point is that there wasn't a lot of this kind of thing going on three or four years ago. We've gotten to a point as a society where desperate people are willing to do anything to find work. To lie, to cheat, to prostitute themselves if need be.

This is the beginning of a slide into the kind of deep social corruption present in the nations of the former USSR. It can happen here, it could happen to our neighbors, it could happen to any of us hit with a long, unfortunate run of luck.

I'm not saying that to induce despair. Things are still pretty good here, and we can turn things around if we commit ourselves to paying attention to, and caring about, our society. Don't let this become a trend, just make it a wake up call.

Posted by natasha at August 30, 2003 04:16 PM | TrackBack