Wage Slavery

I heard this term a long time ago, before it became the truffles on the entrée of current political rhetoric. It was one of those things that I’ve always lived with, but didn’t have a name for. Like Rape Culture.

So, if for some reason you’re reading this and you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a few definitions found on the Internet.

“Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person’s livelihood depends on wages…especially when the dependence is total and immediate.” (Wiki)

“Wage slavery is the state where you are unable to perceive choices and create courses of action different from the grind of the job.” Whywork.org

And just to set the tone for this post, here is a quote found on Whywork.org. “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” Norman Cousins.

I can’t speak for the politics of wage slavery. But I can tell you what it looks like, what it lives like, what it holds back and what it takes from you.

Just at this company I currently work at, several instances of harassment and insubordination have occurred that will not be responded to. I’m actually terrified to write this, in the thought that someone will make the connection of who I am, even as Nobody, and there goes my job. We all know what happens to people who speak their minds.

No one in my position can afford to speak their mind and lose their job.

I could walk you through a common month as a woman, wife, writer, and clock punching employee. Maybe that’s best, seeing how it all ties together.

Right now, I’m writing this from my last refuge. A nook in my closet/utility/laundry area thing in my human cube apartment. Which I have to be grateful for. It’s this or sitting on the corner with the very nice homeless man we called “Jesus” who was mysteriously picked up by Social Services and never heard from again. Watching it happen sent chills down my spine.

I’ve made this nook pretty badass. A fabric porch chair covered in blankets and some wiggle room, extra laundry baskets covered in blankets and I have an ottoman. I even have a giant plastic skeleton hanging right by me. Hell, I’m going to go to Wal Mart tomorrow and get a hanging jewelry rack for the closet so I can put my headphones, smart phone, and pocket tissues in. I’m sitting under the All and Clorox, so there is a bar above that. It’s going to be downright convenient. Fuck me, I even have a cup holder.

So, let’s start at the first of the month. I feel pretty good. As good as I can feel. But that’s for another day.

I get my first check of the month, husband gets his first two, and we pay bills that aren’t due for days, maybe weeks, because that would overlap with rent, which takes my whole second check. And I haven’t paid this little for rent since the nineties. Car, car insurance, cell phone, and the adjustments debtors have made to accommodate our downgraded lifestyle. I don’t have cable or internet access. I don’t have membership fees, or online subscription services, like Prime, Play, Hulu, or Netflix. So, groceries and gas, the errant soda at work, and that’s it.

Some actual things that have happened; I get yelled at by a customer, which happens often. Because people know they can do that now and get away with it. Except when I go to my boss (who has a Doctorate and 15 years youth on me) and tell them what I need to get this twat out of the line, they have a panic attack. So, I’m getting Retail Flu, misery at both ends. I can’t get my boss to help me, I can’t get this customer what they want. Everyone screams at me until they are tired of it. I tell them I’m going to the bathroom and take headache medicine instead.

Next week, I get yelled at by the other boss, in a manner which I like to call Saddle Up, where they ride your ass for at least an hour, either because they are unhappy, got a bad review, hate poor people, or today just decided to hate you. I’ve seen other people get saddled up, and it’s a lot like prison mentality; I’m so sorry but I’m glad it’s not me. However, this goes on, yelling at me in front of employees and customers for over two hours. Which triggers a panic attack so powerful I’m actually immobilized. What I want to do is leave. If someone had described this to me, I would have thought HR was already involved. But I get to ride it out, shoulders hunched, while what she wants keeps flip-flopping back and forth until I finally get to leave my shift.

Also, if the boss isn’t watching what I’m doing, and isn’t making the only other person watch the queue, I get screamed at for being busy. So I have to make sure and tell my boss to pay attention at work while I am doing work so the work gets done down the line.

A different manager actually dropped the N word. In front of a new black co-worker. When they left, I felt the need to apologize and say that I had never heard that word uttered by another employee here ever, which was the truth. They let it slide and ignored it for the rest of the day. I agonized over it after work. I could have reported it. Maybe I should have. The next day I asked what they wanted to do about it, do you want me to report it, if you want to report it I will back up your statement. The co-worker was way too cool about it, and it hit me that this isn’t unusual. The manager in question was blowharding about how many people he knew and was related to, and this was also true. The co-worker decided to let it go, they needed the pay more than morals. What made me feel sick was that I knew exactly what that felt like.

Right now, I’m waiting for the bills I’ve paid to clear, before I can do anything else with what’s left. What I’ve forgotten at the store, doctor visits, prescriptions, or new clothes for work to replace ones that have worn out.

Now I’m on the second half of the month. My second check is rent. No matter how early it comes, that’s what it gets written for. Nothing but groceries and gas happens on rent weeks.

This is when my medical professional doctorate holding boss decides they are going to tell me that I don’t actually have food allergies. They like to argue, no matter how I try to remain calm, it just seems to piss them off more. I tell them to stop, they say they can just keep going. The only reason it stops is because they’ve become distracted with something else. This is actual textbook harrasement. But I’m too scared to do anything about it, because even though “retaliation” is against the policy, law, whatever, they always manage to find something. Panic attack, bathroom break. I have my phone on me, desperately wanting to walk out, report this, something. The best I can do is ignore them, but they continue through the day, offering to buy me food at some place, offering to buy lunch some other place because “that’s the only thing we can eat together” and making remarks about Easter candy, because “it’s too bad you can’t eat these.”

The month starts over again. This time the manager throws a fit because you are helping someone on the phone too long and not doing your job. Even though it’s an insurance company investigating a customer for fraud. They actually put their hand on the phone, and it’s just a reflex before they make it look like I hung up. Now it’s a zoo around me, because my “peers” are watching my boss go ape shit, me talking on the phone, and covering the phone to try to keep my boss calm. When the call is finally over, I get accused of mishandling the call and not doing my job.

Panic attack. Bathroom break.

I watch the bank account to make sure rent clears before we pay anything else.

I can do nothing about any of this. Because my survival depends on every cent I get. I haven’t gotten to property tax, income tax, vehicle tags, or professional license renewal fees.

I have to take the fits of rage, harassment, being singled out, and customer abuse because if you have a job, you have to hold on for dear life to it.

So, what does this have to do with writing?

Time and Money, dumbass.

Everything plays second fiddle to the J.O.B. I think about writing all day long. A good idea, a scene, a song for the mood, a quote, someone who inspires a character (this also happens in a good way, okay?). After a day with panic attacks, it’s all I can do to come home and lay down. After being the intermediary for managers who do not want to deal with the filth that they perceive our customers to be, and be assured, they do, I am out of social chips and my mind is exhausted. The amount of sleep I get depends on my schedule.

Why does this make me a Poor Angry Writer? What gives me the right to want to write all day and “not contribute to society?” If I didn’t have to worry about getting the necessary education requirements or having health insurance, if my only worry was tapping keys, researching sites, and reading books, what could I possibly contribute?

Well, there is always tutoring and volunteering. My time would be best spent explaining Shakespeare to high school kids, illustrating the metaphors in nursery rhymes for elementary schools kids, or helping middle school kids traverse the lingo in a textbook. Adult literacy. Senior reading groups. College level editing guidance. Or, >gasp<, running a non-profit book store of my own, with a for-profit business on the side. Resumes. Complaint letters. Editorial essays. Wording an obituary. Strategically phrased formal request.

Heaven help us all, writers are fucking useful.

Except when you keep them useless.

Money

The only free thing about writing is thinking.

Everything else costs. Even just a legal pad and pencil. Let’s assume you have Time. All that’s left is Money.

The time you spent on all those short stories are going to need exposure. That’s tech costs to maintain your own social identity through internet, computer, and phone. It’s become impossible to be seen as anything without the constant warm companion of a smart phone. A tablet is better, but only as a companion, not a replacement for your usual equipment.

So you’ve put the time in, arranged some words together, and now…now you’re ready to be seen by the Global Reader. Now your costs start racking up.

Books on writing, DVD lectures on writing, subscription sites, Plus Memberships; all these costs to help build your knowledge base. Of course it would be so much better, since you have Time, to do field research on your subject, which entails purchasing a service or someone else’s time for information. If you haven’t had the cops called on you.

Remember those conferences, workshops, classes, and webinars you signed up for in advance? They are not free. They may hand out three to five bullet points on the introductory page, giving you a taste to get to you to come in for the hard hit of knowledge. Contest fees suck many dry, and believe it or not, a couple publications still only accept snail mail submissions, a reminder of the good old days of when your expenses were paper, printer ink, envelopes, and postage.

Money can afford you to be seen at these events. Where you make your first impression. It was once described to me as speed dating. Rapid intimacy, but both of you have already made your judgment in the first few seconds anyway. Now they have “open mic,” where you get up on stage, like a tagged cow, and moo for everyone to judge at once.

Now, since you have Money, you’ve been subscribing to the essential magazines of the trade. Plus, putting in an order to the publication your submitting to is *always* recommended. These magazines still tell you to tailor your inquires to agents. Study who they like, what kind of books they are passionate about selling, and for fuck’s sake spell their name right. Copy and Paste has made that brainless.

“Open Mic” cuts through all that bullshit, into a whole new world of bullshit, where you have just paid an entrance fee, and no doubt a reading fee, to get up on stage and show that you are an attractive extrovert who occasionally writes.

Or, just self publish. Cheap enough. Be your own PR Champion. Listings on sites, advertising purchases, social media bumps, and now the Executive Memberships.

It would be a whole lot easier to just buy an all-in-one package of self publishing that includes hardbacks, paperbacks, PR material, and other Oscar Night Swag Assortment.

For twelve thousand dollars. Or thereabouts.

Then there’s the rest of us.

After we scratched the minutes away, sneaking in an Evernote here, jotting before the shift starts there, dodging family, friends, and foes to make that precious ass-in-chair time, we have something. Prospecting here and there, with finally enough gold to take to town, the large hand of Capitalism stops what momentum was built up.

No entry fee? No payment. Exposure!

You can forget all that other shit. Because your next sigh of relief will be when your rent check clears, lunch money has been supplied for the week, and there is a birthday coming up. Deadlines are the dreaded  expensive Christmas shopping of the poor writer.

Chin up! So many authors were discovered when they were down on their worst luck.

I once garnered a little hope from a YouTuber who has surpassed popularity and gone right into firmament. Just an average guy, doing his average thing, for the love of art. Until I looked into his career and saw he already knew people from his work on a popular broadcast, and came from a middle class family who saw him through to a completed college degree.

We can discourse about socio-economic boundaries and inherent wealth, but we all know, those who have money can have whatever they want. And those who want to write, money makes all these things possible.

The only currency the rest of us will be dealing in is love of writing. And because we, as writers, have told the world that the only salve to our soul is the written word, once more, we are encouraged with wisdom:

The only thing standing in the way of you is you.

Time

Time is the only thing a writer has to forcibly take from others in order to practice their art.

Time is one of the two primary factors that seem to writers an advantage over other writers.

Already I can hear you countering. Of course you need time, you can’t write a book on an hour a day. Or thirty minutes. Or ten. Or five. It takes ass-in-chair time. To get anything of quantity out, just write.

Oh, the uplifting messages about Time. Just do it. No one is stopping you but you.

Well, first-time mother with six months maternity leave and a husband whose job will carry the bills on his salary (not pay, salary) if you could just give up those lattes, recycle a few items, scale down in the level of beauty product you use…you just take that time that freed up and write…I don’t know, whatever you want apparently.

Oh, fully pensioned recent retiree, now is the time.

Or even better, get a divorce and marry someone who can support you while you write.

Because you have a lot of expenses coming. But Money is another matter.

Write lots of short stories, you need those for contests. Get that novel finished, you can’t email an agent with unfinished word count. Writer’s conferences, workshops, classes, webinars. Writer’s groups, reading groups. Laptops, smart phones, apps that help you optimize every second of this time you are so preciously spending. And the editing. Plus reading. Not only your own work, out loud to your many groups is recommended, but as many other authors as you possibly can.

Then there are the rest of us.

Grateful for the hours we can get so the week to week we live on will clear the checking account. Jobs like that pay, and they take a price on your body and mind. Everyone gets to treat you exactly how they please, because you are just grateful to have that two-week paycheck. If only it were a reliable salary.

After you’ve slung fifty pound tubs of leaking shampoo around all day as fast as you can, after you are screamed at by an addict, and then berated by your boss who will neither confront nor comply with said addict, after you pick up the work load of the co-worker with a legitimate medical condition who manages to put together a pretty outfit and somehow “work around” the stack of work she is not expected to finish, you are just irresponsible if you don’t make time to write.

Oh, if you have kids and/or a spouse, any sort of extroverted life, sick parents, or any other life obligation, well, it’s just your own fault for not making time for everything writing demands of writers other than writing.

The only thing standing in the way of you is you.

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I debated about starting to blog again. I debate about lots of things. 
I have vitriol in my veins that seems to get more caustic by the day.
I write because I always have. No matter what, I always will. 
How is it that I only "see" writers who have time to write, have already broken past the tar sealed roof of corporate capitalist control, and landed, injured or not, into a nice desk chair, with time to write.
I refuse to believe that I'm the only person our there living inside writing everyday, but comes home physically exhausted from a low pay job. That I'm the only one that's one paycheck away from being homeless, but I think about Shakespeare analytically. I can't be the only worm trying to escape the apple.
No one told me which books to read, or how to start, or encouraged an education. In my demographic, college is a luxury, and you leave the fucking city to get it. 
I have found out all I have accumulated on my own, because no one was there to mentor. Not even the angst teenager way. No other writers escape the woodwork where I live. I don't live in a grocery desert. I live in a cultural desert, and the oasis that can be found is far, far away. In time, money, and achievement accumulated.

I can't be the only intellegent, poor, isolated writer...

Because now, finding other people like me, it's the last chance for sanctuary I have.