Human Conflict Journal Entry #1
May. 4th, 2004 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lykomancerI have to keep a response journal for my spring class and, quite simply, I find it easier to face a blank LiveJournal box than an empty Word file, and since this is a journal project, I'll just write it out here and transfer it into Word for printing.
(To those of you I see on a daily basis, most of this will be repetition/regurgitation. I reflect best sometimes by bouncing ideas off of you guys, and therefore, my little muses, you get to hear most of this before it gets written down.)
I think it's funny... I was sitting around out on the Mall in the sunshine discussing Nickel and Dimed with some friends, and I came to the realization that a college graduate sometimes leaves one's alma mater with more than just a degree. They also leave most of the time with a couple thousand dollars of debt dragging behind them. I've been taught to believe that the raise in pay one can achieve with a degree makes this initial setback worth it, but it's still a scary realization.
I suppose I am being harsh on Ehrenreich and the reviewers of her book. Thinking back now, I remember that I once dated a kid from a middle-class family, and it was only than that I realized that my background-- one which I had thought to be the utter image of normalcy-- was that of working poor. That, to me, was normal. But it shocked his parents when I told them that I had never eaten lamb, refused to pay more that twenty dollars for any article of clothing and wore jeans that looks as though they were held together by a single well-placed stitch and a prayer, that I counted dimes out to pay for lunch at a casual diner. That was just me though, not my family, which would have been more of a culture shock to them. My boyfriend's mom took my out for a day of shopping and dropped well over a hundred dollars on me for, apparently, the hell of it, and she seemed unnerved by my continual protests and guilty gratitude.
One thing that my boyfriend never understood was the working-poor pride, which seems to be a common thread among the hard-working, underpaid people of America. Working-poor pride is the dignity of paying for your own meal even if it means rolling pennies to do so, instead of letting your friend cover the bill like they say they can. It's the motivation that makes some people walk in the freezing cold instead of begging a ride; it's being able to go out shopping and not buy anything and not let anyone else buy you anything, and feeling extremely guilty if someone does anyway.
Working-poor pride is an emotional structure in place to keep the blue-collar workers from feeling like mooches and free-loaders, even at the expense of common sense. It keeps many people from applying for food-stamps or any kind of government aid.
Of course, that's fabricated from the same crap as the Horatio Alger myth and the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" story (I'm pretty sure that's a Mid-west colloquialism, by the way, I'd never heard that before this year). Pride, as Scarlett O'Hara pointed out, is fairly useless when you're starving, and besides that, Scarlett is another example of that "you can do it if your really try" American mentality. Her last words, in both the book and the movie, are the verbalization of an indomitable spirit that can face anything and survive... but Scarlett doesn't live now, coming from a broken home and forced to work at some menial, body- and spirit-breaking job as soon as she's able.
I think it would be a safe bet to say that waitresses spend about an hour of work-time per three-month period of work crying in the breakroom/bathroom/in their cars. I don't think I know anyone who waitressed for any period of time that this isn't true for.
Right.
God, I'm so tired. It's only eleven-- not even quite that. I need to stay up so that I can get back on my normal sleep cycle (cause then I'll stop being tired all the time).
Bleh.
(To those of you I see on a daily basis, most of this will be repetition/regurgitation. I reflect best sometimes by bouncing ideas off of you guys, and therefore, my little muses, you get to hear most of this before it gets written down.)
I think it's funny... I was sitting around out on the Mall in the sunshine discussing Nickel and Dimed with some friends, and I came to the realization that a college graduate sometimes leaves one's alma mater with more than just a degree. They also leave most of the time with a couple thousand dollars of debt dragging behind them. I've been taught to believe that the raise in pay one can achieve with a degree makes this initial setback worth it, but it's still a scary realization.
I suppose I am being harsh on Ehrenreich and the reviewers of her book. Thinking back now, I remember that I once dated a kid from a middle-class family, and it was only than that I realized that my background-- one which I had thought to be the utter image of normalcy-- was that of working poor. That, to me, was normal. But it shocked his parents when I told them that I had never eaten lamb, refused to pay more that twenty dollars for any article of clothing and wore jeans that looks as though they were held together by a single well-placed stitch and a prayer, that I counted dimes out to pay for lunch at a casual diner. That was just me though, not my family, which would have been more of a culture shock to them. My boyfriend's mom took my out for a day of shopping and dropped well over a hundred dollars on me for, apparently, the hell of it, and she seemed unnerved by my continual protests and guilty gratitude.
One thing that my boyfriend never understood was the working-poor pride, which seems to be a common thread among the hard-working, underpaid people of America. Working-poor pride is the dignity of paying for your own meal even if it means rolling pennies to do so, instead of letting your friend cover the bill like they say they can. It's the motivation that makes some people walk in the freezing cold instead of begging a ride; it's being able to go out shopping and not buy anything and not let anyone else buy you anything, and feeling extremely guilty if someone does anyway.
Working-poor pride is an emotional structure in place to keep the blue-collar workers from feeling like mooches and free-loaders, even at the expense of common sense. It keeps many people from applying for food-stamps or any kind of government aid.
Of course, that's fabricated from the same crap as the Horatio Alger myth and the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" story (I'm pretty sure that's a Mid-west colloquialism, by the way, I'd never heard that before this year). Pride, as Scarlett O'Hara pointed out, is fairly useless when you're starving, and besides that, Scarlett is another example of that "you can do it if your really try" American mentality. Her last words, in both the book and the movie, are the verbalization of an indomitable spirit that can face anything and survive... but Scarlett doesn't live now, coming from a broken home and forced to work at some menial, body- and spirit-breaking job as soon as she's able.
I think it would be a safe bet to say that waitresses spend about an hour of work-time per three-month period of work crying in the breakroom/bathroom/in their cars. I don't think I know anyone who waitressed for any period of time that this isn't true for.
Right.
God, I'm so tired. It's only eleven-- not even quite that. I need to stay up so that I can get back on my normal sleep cycle (cause then I'll stop being tired all the time).
Bleh.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-05 08:30 am (UTC)I didn't realize that "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" was a regionalism. Interesting.
If you want to look at it another way, though -- pride is a good thing, to a certain extent. However, it doesn't necessarily have to humble the recipient of kindness to be a recipient. When I was in high school and had friends who were really poor, my covering their meal or offering a ride wasn't because of pity, or whatever. I did it because I know that I'm inordinately lucky, and I felt like the only way I could make up for that, the only way I could not let my relative material surplus corrupt me as a person and become who I am instead of just something about my circumstances, was to offer help. Like, if I had an advantage, I should do something with it instead of just using it for myself. It was an act of redemption on my own part and had very little to do with my friend, and others in simliar circumstances, who I've spoken to about it, have agreed that this is often the case.
Just a little insight into my head ;)
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 09:29 am (UTC)And my roommate hates it. She grew up in a lower upper-class family all her life, she's in a place to help me without hurting herself at all, and I refuse to let her help more than she already has, which is to give me a place to live and not be upset that I have to back-owe her rent from a few months because of my joblessness.
I think it would be a safe bet to say that waitresses spend about an hour of work-time per three-month period of work crying in the breakroom/bathroom/in their cars. I don't think I know anyone who waitressed for any period of time that this isn't true for.
Haven't done waitressing, but customer service? Check. Specifically in the fast food service? Check. Is this true? You can goddamn well bet. That sort of job breaks your damn soul because of the way people treat you. They keep forgetting that's a real person who's probably struggling enough as it is behind that counter. And then they get treated like shit. Behind that counter, you see how people really are. And 'better' people wonder why we don't accept help. It's called "knowing people too well to trust that outstretched hand to not slap us later."