Farmed Animals Can't Say 'Take This Job and Shove It'

Two unusual ways to quit one's job went viral this week: A flight attendant slid off a plane and a young woman announced her resignation via dry-erase board.

After a confrontation with a passenger Steven Slater, a flight attendant for Jet Blue,

grabbed the plane's intercom and made an expletive-laced speech, grabbed a beer from the galley, opened the door and slid down the emergency evacuation chute.

At the time of this post's publication, a Facebook page dedicated to him had almost 200,000 followers.

The second incident in which a woman supposedly told her co-workers and sexist boss she quit via dry-erase board turned out to be a hoax, but not until it had made its way around Facebook.

The popularity of both resignations shows how many people feel about their jobs (or former jobs). They feel disrespected, taken for granted. (By the way, this isn't why I found a new job.) It's a horrible feeling, putting in most of one's waking hours at a place where one feels unappreciated, perhaps giving years of your life to your employer only to be laid off.

Now imagine you could never leave that workplace, that you had to live there, in fact. That you had to depend on the very people you hated to provide you with food and water and medical care. It sounds like slavery, doesn't it? And there's more. Imagine being repeatedly raped and having your babies stolen from you after you gave birth. Imagine not being laid off, but actually being killed when you were no longer wanted.

This is the life of farmed animals.

Their lives are only as valuable as the money they bring in. (Any commissioned salespeople feel that way?) And often that money comes at the expense of the animals' lives. A "beef" cow or a male pig or a "broiler" hen is only useful after he or she has been fattened and sent to slaughter.

The worth of "dairy" cows is measured in milk production, that of "layer" hens in egg production.

Animal agribusiness doesn't consider the intrinsic value of each animal's life. They don't care about individuality or personality. To them these animals are objects, machines.

I'm sure most of you know what it feels like to be dehumanized, to be regarded as just another cog in your workplace's machine. It's awful. Now imagine how much worse it is for farmed animals.

For information on going vegan, please visit ChooseVeg.com.