the frustrated work-rambles of yours truly

July 14, 2010, 4:11 pm
Filed under: daily, wah, workplace

(from a few weeks ago. location: dark place)

I never felt like less than until I went corporate.

White Collar

The thing about my job is that it’s a contradiction. It’s the safest way to collect a steady income and to protect one’s self from (even more) exuberant medical bills. Working for someone who will pay the bulk of your insurance costs and put the same amount of money into your account on the same days every month allows plenty of freedoms. Namely, nights and weekends. But I’ve also never had to worry about whether I’d be scheduled my forty hours or if there would be enough work to collect on. I appreciate that people allow me to do this every weekday.

That being said:

My blue collar life is opposite my white collar paycheck. I break my back to fake it and still, you’d think I was deliberately defiant. The mold is unsettling and restrictive. Daily, I overhear college recaps and achievable vacation dreams. Some parents’ biggest challenges is affording the three thousand dollars it will take for their daughter to pursue a high school sport she’s never tried. Or helping them choose the right university. I’m asked questions that I want to answer with, what makes you assume I’ve ever had the same privileges as you? Are you completely unaware of the people who live a life that’s smaller than yours? You’ve got the audacity to think I have a clue. Are you giving the benefit of the doubt? What a gift! Are you trying to include me? I never wanted this membership.
You can make someone sympathize but when it comes to empathy, only a fellow blue collar knows where to look.

You drive home south but I hang a left and go north, home to my rental because I was born in the mid-eighties and my generation lottery doesn’t allot for my age to own.
Your expensive midlife crisis may come prematurely, but at least you can afford it. I’m two weeks without the medication it takes to go a day without taking my car into an unforgiving center divider and I could give a goddamn about your designer coffee with a sleeve more in tact than my used Old Navy career wear. I can’t afford my fucking meds.

I’ve got insurance but I can’t cover the co-pay.
I’ve got the car with the grinding breaks and a slow start but I’ll wave to your award winner on the road and flash my financial burden of a smile that I’m still paying for at only twenty-four percent APR.

What does it feel like to know that you’ve got it covered if the bottom falls out? How do you feel pulling from a savings account that isn’t empty? In the last two days I’ve heard from as many people how terrifying it would be to have to ask for help. Help they know is there. They’ve never had to talk themselves out of a panic attack, wondering how they’re supposed to function when prime need x runs out.

I’m not upset. I’m not even bitter and I’m certainly not envious. I know myself enough to know this: I’d forget everything I am and how I got here given enough luxury. This is one thing I’m glad I can’t afford to do.

Salads and fad diets and open toed heels and religious forwards and celebrity gossip in place of your ability to hold up one half of a real conversation – none of this is me. But I work one desk over. Someone once welcomed me to the world of designer clothing when I commented on the stitching that hadn’t fallen out on my clearance brand name pants. What’s ever been wrong with spending a quarter of that excess on a quality sewing job from the sweet Korean lady up the street? Where she works, your suits hang to dry and watch mine get repaired. You splurge on a silk noose with a pattern and sometimes I buy the brand name cereal. I don’t know who Jimmy Choo is but I can provide him with excellent customer service.

Only one in a million will succeed with quality human interaction and decency as their specialty. The sad thing is that you can’t frame that in an 8×11. You’re not going anywhere for sucking it up and being sweet. You’ll never get the step on the guy who could afford that parchment paper and ink. You get to tread water and hope someone higher up the food chain listens to your work because they’ll never hear your voice. I stare at my superiors and I know where they’re from, where they came from and how small the chance is that I’ll ever come close.

A day late and a dollar short isn’t just clever. It’s a lifestyle for some and I know them by first name.
None of it is about the money. It’s the ignorance. It’s never having to wonder about circumstances that have been clouded over all your life. They’re all raising purebreds and supporting businesses like dog bakeries. What about donating a textbook every now and again? How about making real contributions and leaving deep footprints? Thinking about how not everyone, not even most people, have lived such a privileged life?
But if you weren’t there, you can’t see it.

-CJ