Call Me Lame-y
Perhaps – and this is a big perhaps, given Banker & Tradesman’s audience – you’ve heard the song “Call Me Maybe,” by some girl The Teller never heard of before and is unlikely to hear of again.
It’s a cutesy pop song released just in time for summer and featuring the refrain “I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number, so call me maybe.” Or something like that.
The Teller has a background in overwrought college poetry, so to call the refrain of “Call Me Maybe” a lyric is, academically speaking, a stretch.
But it does lend itself to use in other formats.
For instance, the wanton and humorless folks at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) think the song is a great launching pad for an ad campaign, currently running in Boston, targeting Jaime Dimon – the slobbering, mealy-mouthed CEO of JP Morgan Chase.
Do you see where this is going?
That’s right, it’s “Call Me, Jaime.” Who knew commie janitors’ unions shared a pop tart’s songwriting team’s gift for off-rhyme?
Well they don’t. And apparently they could use lessons in incredulity and comedic timing, as well.
As the SEIU tells it, the whole stupid turn of events began when Adriana Vasquez, a janitor at JP Morgan Chase tower in Houston, decided to show up for Dimon’s testimony last month before the U.S. House Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Commission.
SEIU says Vasquez, who is on strike as a result of very poor wages, “confronted” Dimon about the situation she and her fellow janitors face in Houston.
His response, according to the SEIU, was “call my office.”
Do you see where this is going, too? Yes, very perceptive of you.
Vasquez called Dimon’s office about six million times and her calls have not been returned.
Oh, you didn’t have to stoop so low, Mr. Dimon!
But the SEIU must know he wasn’t serious. “Call my office” is a classic brush-off, and the SEIU knew that some variation of it was coming when it pushed Ms. Vasquez onto center stage. If she wasn’t also in on the writing and production of this piece of pop politics, SEIU should be ashamed.
The SEIU has foregone the opportunity to agitate for social justice (it says some of the janitors who work with Vasquez in Houston make as little as $9,000 a year). Instead, it is using Ms. Vasquez’s calculated misfortune in a schlocky and willfully naive ad campaign designed to keep its members and prospective members rabid yet under-informed.
The Teller can’t think of anything in pop music history that rhymes with SEIU, but we may recruit Ms. Vasquez for our own campaign aimed at the union: “Why Do You Build Me Up, Buttercup?”
