I'm starting to get angry (Another rant from the ranks of the working poor)
Why am I feeling this slow simmer? This frustrating, impotent rage that I work so hard to repress? Well, it’s because I’m slowly learning more about the so called “real world”. I have lived a great deal, in thirty years, more than I once would have imagined that I ever would. At one time in my life, I saw myself as nothing, as nobody. My frequent struggles with post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety... just getting out of bed in the morning, or even learning how to drive a car, was what dominated my later teens and my twenties.
I worked sporadically. From one odd job to the next. One month I shoveled horse manure for a farmer, pausing every so often to dig out the large worms the farmer wanted for fishing. I moved fifty to hundred pound rocks with nothing but my own hands and a wheel barrel. I worked 10, 12, even 14 hours, under the table for five dollars an hour. I stacked firewood, I climbed up on roofs to hand people things, I cleaned out cellars that would leave me covered with filth and dust when I got home at night. In the winter I shoveled roofs and driveways... I remember nights when my back hurt so much I couldn’t sleep without taking some over the counter pain remedies.
I also worked at desk jobs. Telemarketing - selling “accidental death and dismemberment insurance” and trying to scare people, or to use their greed, to convince them to buy it. All you need do is lose an arm and you get fifty thousand dollars! Isn’t that wonderful? Unless of course, it’s not under one of the many stipulations of the contract you must sign. If it gets cut off by farm equipment, you probably get the money. On the other hand, if someone else is holding that equipment and accidentally slams into you...
I spent many months washing dishes for busy restaurants, cleaning out areas that should have required a hazmat suit. I cleaned urinals filled with broken glass, spent twelve hours on my feet scrubbing pots, pans, sweeping and mopping floors, cleaning windows... and I rarely complained.
As I get older, I am complaining more often. Not because of the work I do to survive - but because the compensation for it is so poor, so absurd, that I cannot understand how our society continues to function. I cannot understand why we have not already taken to the streets, in our millions, to demand unionization, increased wages, protection for workers rights. I cannot understand how millions of people are continuously being conned into believing that if you just work hard enough, you too can have the American dream.
When I was a boy, I heard of mythical, almost legendary (it often seems) tales of time and a half for working holidays, of breaks required by law. I read of labor practices, what was legal and what wasn’t. With every year, I have seen so many of those rules bent and utterly broken. Employees forced to work for months without a single day off - ten hour shifts without a scheduled break, neither the 30 minute unpaid, nor the couple fifteens that some work places offer. I have learned that there are exceptions to almost every rule to protect workers, limitations to almost every law. There are loopholes, tax exemptions, protections and supports for business owners, for employers, for our job creators. Yet it seems to me that there are far, far fewer for the average working person.
I don’t want to do it anymore! I’m not entirely sure I wanted to do it in the first place. Bills must be paid, one must survive... but the sort of people many of us are forced to work for? Let me give you an example.
The person who owns the hotel where I work has a couple hundred thousand dollar vehicles. He owns two hotels. He has a million dollar home - and owns many rental properties, which might best be called slums which are old, outdated, and very poorly maintained. He has been heard to boast that he has safes containing thousands of dollars that just sit around gathering dust.
Now that I have worked for him for a year, I approached him about a possible raise. When I started, I was told that after a three month review, if I did well, I would be offered a raise. I have often asked management if I am doing a decent job, and they have always told me that, generally, they have no complaints. For clarity - I earn eight dollars an hour, working full time.
“I cannot afford it” he tells me with a pained sigh. “The business just isn’t making enough money to make it worth my while. Perhaps if business picks up in the near future we can discuss this again. But, you know, I’m living below the poverty level right now myself, my yearly income is about thirty thousand dollars.” I stared at him in disbelief. But ultimately I capitulated, I shrugged, and went back to work, because shitty pay is better than no pay. Somehow, I don't think he understands what it's like to earn less than twelve thousand a year.
He does not understand what poverty is. All he would have to do is visit the homes of his employees (several of which he owns and rents out to them) and see how they live. Cupboards bare of all but absolute necessities, toilets and showers that frequently break down, roofs that leak whenever it rains. Adults with and without children.
Perhaps he might speak with a couple of our employees in particular - a dishwasher and a housekeeper, both who have worked for him for over ten years, both of them still earning the minimum wage of 7.50 an hour. Perhaps he might speak with the young mother of five who works the front desk and earns eight dollars an hour like me, despite having a four year college degree, a disabled husband who can no longer work - and having just lost her state aid because she has employment.
Has it come to the point where the rich not only don’t care, but think that THEY are part of the impoverished masses? Are they truly so ignorant as to how we all live that they not only have no compassion, but not even the slightest understanding of how we live?
I despise this man. With a passion. I’m beginning to despise those who enable him... so I’m beginning to despise myself.
At the end of the day, the person I am the most angry with... is myself. There must be a better way to live, a way towards an independent financial future, with security, with some kind of happiness and fulfillment. I do not want to work for the next ten years, only to be able to save up enough money to one day afford to rent one of my boss’s slums.
I’m beginning to think that I would rather live in a tent, than continue to work for this man or the thousands of "job creators" like him. The more money I make him, the more I do for his company, the more I realize that I am enabling, I am encouraging this very state of affairs to continue.
I want to raise hell - to blast all over social media all the things he is guilty of. Of course I cannot do this, I cannot name names, give dates, or specific details without risking lawsuit or possibly even prison time. I wish I had the power, or the knowledge to form a union, or to find some way to improve not just my own lot, but the lot of the wonderful people I work with.
I'm sick of it. I'm sick of rich assholes and I'm starting to hate myself for working for them. I have never seen wealth as a crime or sin, not if it is earned in a decent, honest way. I know there are people of wealth who are wonderful people. Most of us though... we are required to work for people who have neither compassion nor respect for those of us who work the hardest.
I wonder if I could convince the occupy movement to come occupy the hotel I work at?
The point in posting this is both to enlighten and to encourage unity. I know I share this forum with others like me, who work as hard, or harder, who have many of the same issues. I think it's time for the working poor to unite. Let's stop washing windows for people who don't pay us enough to buy a ladder. Let's stop running around for rich assholes when our shoes are falling apart. Let's do something about it. Even if it comes down to a general strike, to halting work and business in this Country until the oligarchy is forced to notice us and to recognize our demands. A minimum wage that is a living wage. Health insurance for all. A social safety net that actually catches people.
Our right to live, to grow and to thrive... our right to life, liberty - and the pursuit of happiness, is far more significant than the so called "Right to work". The benefit, the survival and upward mobility of the many is a far more noble and worthy cause than the expanded wealth and privilege of the few. All great leaders in history have known this.
We're the ones who build their homes, who maintain them. We keep their business running, the food served, the dishes washed and the floors swept. We're the ones who plunge the toilets, who cut their meat, slice their bread, serve their sandwiches and hamburgers. We are the ones who fight their wars, who suffer the results of their shortsighted, ignorant political policies, the corruption, the legalized bribes, every cut to our infrastructure and social safety net. Now we suffer too, with THEIR supreme court as well as with THEIR corporate government.
Class warfare is already here. Let's fight back, damnit. Everything falls apart without our work - and we can and should demand better compensation for it. If we don't, it won't be long before there is nothing left to do but work 80 hours a week for room and board. I want a better Country than that, a better life than that - I DESERVE it. So do all of you. Enough is enough. To quote an American patriot... "Give me liberty or give me death!" The death of hope suffered by so many of the working poor, can be far more terrible and inflict far more suffering than even physical death. It is the death of dreams, of ambition, of life as opposed to survival - and of liberty itself. A death of a thousand needles, until one day, cancer ridden and dying in our beds, the insurance companies stop paying for our care.
Everything is up to us.
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