Patrick linked to this essay this morning. It’s kind of long, but well-written, so it’s a quick read.
After I read it, I felt… weird.
I think that, by and large, the working poor are treated like shit in this country. There’s the government shittiness, which is one thing; and then there’s the social shittiness, whereby people of even marginally higher “class” (whatever that means) look down upon janitors, etc. as if they’re not even human. Who the fuck taught them that it’s okay to treat people like that?
An extension of this is my belief/concern/suppressed freak-out that the socioecomonic situation of the U.S. is teetering on very wobbly legs. On the micro scale, think about it this way - most of us are not as far from the janitors of the world as we might like to think. It would take one personal crisis (serious illness, losing a job, wrecking a car, etc. ad naseum) to knock us flat on our asses. This is something I’ve had in my head for years now, starting in college, when I’d see certain students acting so high-and-mighty. It kind of made me want to punch them in the teeth.
So, part of my response to Perrin’s essay is, “Right on! Tell it like it is.” I think he is spot on when he says:
[A] fair number of them treated my cleaners and me as barely human, somehow beneath them. My theory was that if a worker in cube 6798 identifies with George Bush, he must believe that he’s someone he’s not– so it’s easier to dump on the Honduran woman who empties his garbage and dusts his computer. I’ve had insurance company receptionists and bank tellers speak to me as if I were a twelve-year-old. Clearly, they needed to feel superior to someone, and these people laid it on thick.
There’s the whole Fight Club “you are not your job” thing, with which I don’t disagree; additionally, there’s just having the common decency to be civil toward your fellow human beings. Why do so many people think they’re “better,” on some nonexistant scale of human worth, than anyone else?
But let’s not get off on a tangent. That was my first response to the Perrin essay. My second response was something a little deeper inside, something close to guilt. Not for anything I’d personally done. But guilt on a more theoretical level, guilt that I know I shouldn’t have, because it serves no constructive purpose. I’ve always had this “Why should I be happy/successful/whatever if other people aren’t?” complex; here’s just another manifestation.
There are people who have fallen on hard times. There are people who won’t be able to dig themselves out of the lower socioeconomic class no matter how hard they try, due to personal, social, and governmental circumstance. I feel badly for those people, and angry that such a huge divide can exist in a country like the U.S., where “hard work” can supposedly help you accomplish whatever you desire.
But, does this mean that I shouldn’t continue to form goals and actively pursue them? That I shouldn’t “dream big”? Of course not; but knowing the answer intellectually doesn’t get rid of the deep pang of knee-jerk guilt. I guess I should just keep reassuring myself that personally, I have nothing to feel guilty for; and that there’s nothing wrong with trying to climb to the top - just don’t shit on anybody on the way up.
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7 Responses to "Dreaming big: good or bad?"
Something else was going on with this guy that I don’t think he explicitly stated in his essay. He seems to have sabotaged himself at every turn: telling his wife to quit her job, turning down good-paying work that was offered to him, and generally thinking that any kind of work that wasn’t writing novels or being on the lecture circuit wasn’t good enough for him.
So after all this sabotage, he finally gives in and moves to Michigan with his family (doesn’t it seem weird to you that his wife moved to Michigan without him? What was up with that?!). When he’s in Michigan, his only choices for jobs are getting into publishing or being a janitor?!?! I’m sure he probably could have found some other kind of work (temp work, maybe) that would have paid better.
Anyway, about his “thoughts” on how poorly he was treated as a janitor:
My grandmother was a house keeper and a janitor her whole life. She made lots of good friends from doing that work, but she also was treated in a patronizing way by a lot of people. Welcome to working in the service industry.
People who work in the mailroom get treated the same way (I know that from lots of personal experience). So do people who work in food in fast food restaurants. In fact, this kind of treatment is common to all people who work in any kind of service industry. You learn that people are often jerks, and you move on.
This guy just sounds like a spoiled brat who suddenly learned that work isn’t always laughing it up with Chris Matthews on Hardball or being the toast of a high powered New York cocktail party. Sometimes people are mean or jerky to you. Gee, who knew?
All I can say is: “Welcome to the real world, chuckles.” You’re way too smart to ever end up in this guy’s shoes. If you ever do end up like this asshole, I swear that I’ll eat my dirty gym socks.
I think it’s interesting to assume that janitors are all lower socioeconomic class or people who have fallen on hard times as well. My buildings have a facilities staff of 8 housekeepers, 1 mechanic (our handyman), and their manager. My staff and I speak with most of them daily simply because they have more of a pulse on what’s going on in the buildings than even we might (and we all live here. And in my discussions with them I’ve discovered that a lot of them are there because it fills up their time. The guy who works on my floor told me he just realized that retirement wasn’t for him so he looked for something for a few years that would keep him busy.
I think Joseph’s right about the service industry in general. People feel entitled and take it out on those that they feel is the barrier to that entitlement. All I know is that I’m grateful and somewhat in awe that a staff of eight can keep the buildings and their collective 18 floors as clean as they do for 563 college students. I, for one, can’t imagine looking down on that.
By patronizing, do you mean — thanking the woman who comes to change out the trashgcan garbage bag every night? ’cause I do that, and I hope to hell that I’m not seen as patronizing. I appreciate that there’s someone who is willing to do that work. Would I do it? I’d probably get around to it when 4-5 lunches of fast food remnants started to creep over the edges of the trashcan and make motions towards my feet and surge protector.
I think it’s important to say “Thank you!” to these service industry workers. They do things that other people won’t do, and they do it day-to-day — almost always without fuss or griping.
My office, in particular, has a horrid men’s restroom — Sigma Chi frat tower post rush night triple kegger horrid. I feel horribly when the three ladies who come in to clean up get to that part of cleaning the office.
Do I patronize them by feeling sorry for them? I like to think not. But I also do use the restroom that I find so rancid and nasty. But only for #1. #2 requires a trip to another floor. #2 is…just…too horrible to imagine on my floor.
I love ill-informed conclusions peppered with _my life_ commentary to butter up the belief that slides right into the original intention of the comment. I call this, the euro-reach-around. You simply go under the leg, thumb against the body, and whack away.
1. I don’t agree.
2. My real world examples that dispute the quotes/post/comments.
3. Some attempt at humour at the end.
Oh, and…
4. Enter CR or X.
You are not your Internets.
I wasn’t assuming that. I was simply stating that this is the case with SOME of them. Guess that wasn’t explicitly clear.
More later, must shower now.
First of all–does the person who does that site from Ann Arbor?
More importantly-your comment about how we are not our job–while I would love for that to be true, its not. Our whole society views your identity in relation to your job. Otheriwse stay at home parents would not receive so much crap and neither would blue-collar workers. Part of the problem is you have people are in school for so much of their lives to receive their position (usually white collar workers) that they can not help BUT see their job intertwined with their identity. However, I think it is less the job title, but more what you are putting into your job and what you take out of it that should be connected with who you are. I think alot of poeple have these confused, but obviously the Janitor from the story did not. During his job as a janitor he made a true friend, enjoyed be valued for his hard work and did it to be part of his family. What can be more honorable than that?
But good luck getting that to be a wide spread concept!!! I hate people (says the future social worker…..)!
(Hope this all made sense….i havent had a chance to finish my coffee so….and sorry for the rambling!)
Now it’s my turn to fucking love you woman! Dennis and I are pals and he wrote that in response to one of my bitches — well, he’d already written it, he jsut posted it for wider consumption because he knew of my frustration.