EN — LARRY ROMANOFF: A FLEETING REFLECTION…

  

A FLEETING REFLECTION…

By Larry Romanoff

I was a university student…

 

When I was a university student I worked for two summers at a large supermarket as a stock clerk and cashier. It was a good place to work. Most of the staff were about the same age and we got along quite well with each other. We worked together, visited, partied together. The manager was in his middle 30s, very handsome with a lovely wife, and he was a good man. We worked hard but we were treated well. Mistakes were overlooked so long as we tried our best. We had no labor union at the time.

The manager had high standards, especially in dealing with customers. If a lady wanted to know where the pickles were, we would probably have been fired if we had dared to say, “I think they’re in aisle 3.” We immediately dropped whatever we were doing, and took her to the pickles, and we waited there until she found what she wanted. To do otherwise was a mortal sin. No customer was permitted to carry their own groceries to their car; that was also considered a sin.

A young man in his late 20s or early 30s came to the store.

 

The second summer, a young man in his late 20s or early 30s came to the store. He was a union organiser from some large retail clerks union, and wanted to form a union at the store. He began circulating in the store, speaking to each employee, and asking them to begin coming to meetings. I wasn’t interested because I was leaving to return to school, and I didn’t like that man very much, so I declined his repeated invitations. But many of the other staff began attending his meetings, and soon all were attending.

 

He stayed in the city, continuing with the meetings, and within about two months the transformation of the working environment was dramatic. We were no longer a group of happy young people working together. The atmosphere became increasingly toxic, to the point where it seemed everyone hated the store, the manager, and the customers. The union man held a vote, and everyone voted to form a union. The same day, they voted to call a strike, and all refused to come to work – except me.

 

That strike was one of the most hateful I had ever heard of. The front of the supermarket had huge windows that were two stories high, and one night one or more of the employees came with large stones and smashed two of those huge windows, causing the store to close its doors. When it re-opened, one of the employees came on a Saturday night and cut all the power lines to the store, so that by Monday morning all the frozen food was thawed and had to be discarded, as was true for most of the fruit and vegetables, causing the store to close again at a huge loss. There were many more such unpleasant antics.

 

 

Eventually the strike was settled, with the only benefit being a trivial increase in our pay. But after that settlement, everyone soon quit. The atmosphere was so toxic that no one wanted to work there anymore, and so they all left.

 

I have for all of my life regretted not attending those union meetings. I would very much like to know what manipulative techniques that man used to convert a very happy workplace into a den of animosity and hatred that actually led to violence. And he did it very deliberately, obviously experienced at it.

 

Turning happy, loyal, obedient people into raving war-mongers.

 

I realised then that it is easily possible to find the buttons to push, to turn happy, loyal, obedient people into raving war-mongers. There are people in the world today who specialise in this, which is why we have the hate campaigns against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and others. Just as the union organiser wanted to cause a strike, these people want to start World War Three. They have done it many times before, on a local or worldwide level, and are very skilled at it.

 

If the manipulative techniques are exposed to sunlight, they lose all their power, but for that we need access to the media microphone –which we do not have.

 

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Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons)

His full archive can be seen at

https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at:

2186604556@qq.com

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Copyright © Larry Romanoff, Blue Moon of Shanghai, Moon of Shanghai, 2024