Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

At the End of the Checkout Line

Florence Haas
March 26, 2006
Palo Alto, CA

People have always been engaged in commerce, trading, buying, and selling — we have are ancient clay tablets about the sale of an ox. The marketplace is the “happening” spot in a town, where we enjoy meeting with people and exchanging goods and services to provide for our own needs and those of others. Ideally this exchange is for mutual benefit and all is well — but there can be riptides in the seemingly smooth flow of commerce. Who does not like a bargain and don’t we all shop for the best price? Yet some “bargains” can cost us more in the long run and cause unintentional harm to others or to the Earth.

If you can bear with me, I’d like to sing a song I co-wrote with Don Murdoch about a fictional employee at a certain company that shows the contrast of her life, based on the policies of a company assuring us of low prices, and the wealth they have amassed while not providing benefits to their workers, throwing that cost to us, the taxpayers.

AT THE END OF THE CHECKOUT LINE

She’s working to feed her children / Only thirty but feels old
No husband to help her / Share the heavy load
Her wages are the minimum / No benefits to gain
The company wants no union / Only profit is their game.

CHORUS:
    The folks who own the company / Have wealth beyond compare
    They don’t seem willing / With their workers to share
    And the only thing fine / Is their bottom line
    At the end of the checkout line.

Winter’s on its way / And her trailer is cold
She has few comforts / Her car is very old
They’re not on her side / But still she must
In the corporate domain / Put all her trust => CHORUS

She sees too well / Reflections of
Her limits in / The glass ceiling above
Reminding her / Of just what is so
Knowing she’ll never / be C.E.O. => CHORUS

She won’t find it seems / Her American dream
At the end of the checkout line. [2x]

— Words:Don Murdoch; Music: Florence Haas ©2005