This past loooooooong weekend, as I was driving to work on Friday and Saturday afternoon, I got to contemplating what it means to be a low wage earner. My weekend didn't start until 8:30 on Saturday night, and by then most of the rest of the world was swimming in beer and evil intentions; joyously so. Although I cannot whine too loudly because I had Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off (yeah I am still wallowing in the satisfying respite of my weekend).
On Friday, July 1, I was passed by approximately one million cars heading in the other direction. People gleefully fleeing work, laughing uproariously in their cars, tossing empty beer cans out the window, going home, going to the lake, the Cape, to barbecues and happy mayhem. I expected this and have experienced it before; I have been a low wage earner for 5 and 1/2 years now. Still it plays on the mind. Driving in to work at 12:30 on a warm, sunny afternoon when everybody else is scampering towards temporary freedom is difficult. Although I was smiling; just cruising in that kind of weather with the windows down makes me a grinnin' fool.
Saturday caught me by surprise because as I got close to work I sat in traffic on the highway for a few minutes. It was close to 2:00 on Saturday afternoon on July 2 and people were still flocking like lemmings to well earned and desperate escapes.
Many of these lucky people are those we like to call professionals. People who have salaries and paid vacation time and paid sick time and lots of wiggle room generally to be irresponsible. I know, I was one of them once. These lucky folks get paid for the holiday, can extend the weekend and get paid for it, call in sick whenever the hell they feel like it and get paid for it.
Low wage earners have no options. You don't go to work, you don't get paid. And we typically work nights and weekends, or at least hours that are outside "the norm." No paid sick or vacation time, no paid holidays, much less control over our lives.
General wisdom says professionals are more educated, they have more responsibility and they deserve more. The truth is they are no better than the hourly workers they supervise, they only think they are. More education does not mean they are smarter and it definitely does not guarantee that they work harder.When I was a white collar guy, I got to work late on a regular basis, took long lunches, played on the internet when I should have been creating spreadsheets, called in sick whenever the spirit moved me. Didn't affect my pay, although it might have impacted my phoney baloney "career." Is this the definition of professionalism?
I always got along with the people in the warehouse or the factory and had a real hard time taking the professionals seriously. I also hated the condescending attitude of the cubicle dwellers towards the real workers. That's because I wasn't really a professional, I only played one on TV.
I have seen both sides of the fence because I have worked both sides of the fence. My eyes were opened wide the first time I got laid off from an accounting job and took a cleaning job out of desperation. My family was always unreasonable, they were forever demanding food. When I began emptying trash cans at night I noticed the late working professionals treated me like dirt; some didn't acknowledge me at all, others talked to me like I was Jethro Bodine. When I was wearing a shirt and tie, just one week before, they would have treated me with respect. This behavior only confirmed what I already knew but it still pissed me off. Since 2006 I have been solidly entrenched in the world of hourly wage earners, primarily as a bartender. I was forcibly ejected from the professional world in 2005 by a corporation that consolidated, and since then I have felt so much cleaner after scraping all that slime off my body.
Here is what I have learned. Many professionals are phonies; they hold their subordinates to higher standards than they themselves are evaluated on. They enjoy turning petty issues into monumental transgressions; it gives them a feeling of power. I can't tell you how many times I have witnessed warehouse workers being reprimanded for being two minutes late from lunch by the same people who take one and a half hour lunches and return with beer on their breath. I was working second shift for a book distributor; one night after dinner they shepherded us all into a conference room to tell us drinking on the job was grounds for immediate dismissal. I found this hypocrisy amusing. It was even more amusing because me and my buddy Mike were drunk.
Low wage earners work hard and have to fight for dignity. Professionals get soft and are automatically given respect because they have a degree. I have a B.S. in Accounting. The only impressive thing about that, is that I earned it through a haze of pot smoke and alcohol consumption.
Hell, the world ain't fair, I know that as well as anybody. But it would be cool if we could achieve a little more balance in the work place. A little less hypocrisy and pomposity, and a little more team spirit.
It will never happen. At least I am free from cubicle hell. The only thing that disturbs me now working in the booze emporium as a low wage earner, is the very real possibility that I might break a bottle over the head of some wine snob who treats me like Jethro Bodine. That would feel really good.
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