Why America Has Lost It's Edge

There was a time when the words "American Craftsmanship" and "American Engineering" meant something. Today, only Americans (and only SOME Americans at that) take pride in such phrases. I figured out why. It's not that the world passed us by. It's not that other countries just started doing it better. It's because America just doesn't care. We are, as a country, too full of ourselves. We don't care what anyone else thinks about us, which is an increasingly dangerous attitude, as everything in the world moves towards globalization. But most of all? We're just lazy.

I remember, just a little over 10 years ago, I would pull money out of the ATM and it would be faced. To those of you that have never worked a register, faced means that all the bills are in order (if they are different denominations, and in the same pile), and that they all face the same way with the same orientation. No bills face down, none upside down, etc. Now, though? You get money out of the ATM, and the bills will be faced every which way. When I was a store manager for OnQ (which was a division of Sam Goody specifically for small towns), if I tried to make a deposit that wasn't faced, I would get a call from bank management letting me know about it. Now, they don't care. They hand you bills that aren't faced. No one cares. At my job, I'm the weird guy, because I count the bundles to make sure the appropriate amount of bills are in them, and I face the bills. Some people make fun of me for it, others are like "That guy even organizes his money!" (That is no joke, by the way. I've over-heard a co-worker telling that to a new person that was in training.)

When banks don't care about proper money handling anymore, it scares me. I mean, I'm not talking about a restaurant that's sloppy with it's money. I'm talking about a freaking bank. Money is all they do. If your till is off by $.01 at the end of a shift, they make a big deal (pennies add up, guys). If they take so little pride in their work that, as a policy, they don't care about proper money handling, what does that say about the rest of the US?

I'll tell you...not much.

-Chris