You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News - Writers of Cracked dot Com [70]
If you work at one of the Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, South America, dear God why? There’s a saying in Colombia that “union work is like carrying a tombstone on your back.” If you spend too much time thinking about it, you’ll realize that saying makes no damn sense. Just trust that unions are generally frowned upon by the armed paramilitaries who rule the Colombian streets.
But it’s not like the unions didn’t have it coming. They’re always asking for things like fair wages and humane conditions for their workers, both of which can hurt the bottom line of global corporations thinking about housing their factories there. This in turn means less money for the Colombian government. Fortunately for global corporations, the Colombian government is corrupt as hell.
A great example of how economics works in Colombia is the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa, where five union leaders were murdered between 1994 and 1996 alone. In the most publicized case (meaning not really publicized at all, unless you count the Internet, which you shouldn’t), union executive board member Isidro Segundo Gil was murdered near the gates of the Coke bottling plant by paramilitary thugs.
Of course, Coca-Cola denies the assassination had anything to do with their policies. It was probably just a coincidence that a union organizer who opposed management policies was gunned down! Hell, machine-gunning someone is probably considered a sign of respect in Colombia!
In 2004, then New York City councilman Hiram Monserrate assembled a fact-finding delegation to conduct an independent investigation on behalf of his strongly Latin American constituency. After meeting with Coke officials, Monserrate’s delegation travelled to Colombia and spoke with workers and eyewitnesses to the unfortunate machine-gun accidents that kept befalling unionized factory workers who opposed the bottling company’s policies. After hearing both sides of the story, the delegation concluded that management had either looked the other way or actively employed paramilitary enforcers to murder union supporters.
The thing that seemed to push the delegation over the edge was the day after the murder, when eyewitnesses say the gunmen returned and forced workers to sign paperwork resigning their union memberships. For whatever reason, Monserrate’s fact finding delegation also seemed to take issue with the fact that Coke never bothered to conduct an investigation into a murder that was committed in a Coke bottling plant and that conveniently helped Coke’s bottom line.
Of course, we can’t say for sure that Coke deserves any blame for Gil’s murder. Those are just allegations, made against a giant corporation with way more lawyers than Cracked.com. So, really, you shouldn’t assume anything. Like the old saying goes, “When you assume, you just make an ass out of you and me and evil corporations that have rancid sucking wounds where their hearts should be.”
FIVE CLASSIC CARTOON CHARACTERS WITH TRAUMATIC CHILDHOODS
SATURDAY-MORNING cartoons offered children of the 1980s and ’90s hilarious gags, flashing colors, and lovable characters their age, some being brought up in environments so abusive they made even your crappy parents seem decent by comparison. Don’t remember that last part? You must not have been paying attention to the plight of characters like . . .
5. PENNY FROM INSPECTOR GADGET
Legal guardian
Inspector Gadget, the cyborg that would have resulted if RoboCop’s accident had also made him retarded.
Where are the parents?
In the world of classic cartoons, roughly 80 percent of all children are orphans. This is important because it teaches young viewers that someday their parents will mysteriously disappear from their lives for no reason and never be mentioned again. Penny was Gadget’s “niece,” but she looks nothing like him and shares none of his baffling incompetence.
The horror
Most episodes open with Gadget warning Penny that the mission