Raisins and Watermelons: An Analogy

I've never been a fan of raisins. There's just something about a so-called fruit that is all shriveled up and looks like dead bugs that has never appealed to me.

Over the years, raisins have become analogous with things that I have found annoying. I find it particularly annoying when a situation calls for bold, decisive action ... and in comes Mr. Stay Puft to handle it. You know what I'm talking about. You need someone with big cojones to handle a situation, but you're left with someone with little raisins that just doesn't get it done.

For example, perhaps you work for an organization (or any "body politic") that talks about a culture change.  You hear things like "Heads will roll." "Things are really going to be different around here once we get through all of this." You dare to dream that things will improve, and 6, 12, 18, 24 months later, things certainly have changed.

The really good people that were doing most of the work are gone because they either got laid off or because things just stopped making sense and the instability and bad decision-making was palpable so they went somewhere else. The same knuckleheads that were on top before are still on top because all the "hard actions taken to improve the bottom line" really only ended up getting rid of (or punishing, or taxing, or denying benefits for) the people at the bottom who made the least money, but hey, we can't cut our senior management fat cats, can we? Someone has to be around to tell whoever is left what to do. If you happen to still be there at the bitter end of it all, your reality is probably such that you're doing three times the work you did before, AND you've had to take a 20-30% pay cut without getting an end-of-year bonus of any kind and no hope of even a cost-of-living raise for the next 3 years.

Another obvious example is our elected representatives, and I use that term loosely because they certainly don't seem to represent the majority of the people. If you've paid attention to the media, any media, for the past few years, you've seen loop after loop of the some Cowardly Lion-in-reality vowing to "fight 'em with one hand tied behind my back" ... only to see him cower behind fill-in-the-blank and make all kinds of excuses about why a-b-c didn't happen. Think Wall Street bailout, tax cuts for the wealthy instead of the lower incomes, healthcare (nay, insurance) reform for everyone, and the war(s) that will never end, to name a few.

Once again, they sold us watermelons and delivered raisins. It's the classic bait-and-switch, over-promise/under-deliver technique, and they're laughing all the way to their cash registers/golden parachutes/EOY big bonuses with our wallets, and our grandchildren's credit cards.

The people who have stuck it to us have watermelons. We need to "fight fire with fire", or watermelons with watermelons, so to speak.

I say it's time to write a few prescriptions for testicular enhancements for some folks. Let me get out my prescription pad. I won't even charge for it.

Just please, no more raisins.