The Squawker Reflects: Never Getting A Good Job Destroys A Life

<"And So It Begins...

Carnival Of Bills"/

The Reckoner>

If you never make any real money, your whole development and maturity is affected.  I look at the middle class women with their paid off homes, expansive families and gardening hobbies, new cars and never-ending road trips, and realize I am not even seen as mature in my lacking of those things. In my middle age, I live like a regressed twentysomething stuck in a small apartment, tooling around

In some ways, the pattern was set in my twenties, when the Reckoner and I tried to start over in Chicago, only to flee after three years, after the City of Big Shoulders beat the crap out of us both. He stayed home and worked on his magazine writing, while I went off to a horrible job, essentially babysitting troubled teenagers. 

They called us "family teachers," but looking back, I'm not sure what anybody learned from the experience. Most of my memories of that job are the endless tedium of trying to make sure they ate properly, keep them from running away successfully, or trying to killing us, or kill themselves, which happened constantly.

My other memories are of the tiredness I felt, and the never-ending anxiety of dealing with bosses who always threatened to write you up. I remember coming across a pile of them involving me, that they never put in place. 

One of the abandoned writeups focused on my hygiene and my appearance, even though they knew I often struggled to afford decent food, let alone the shiny professional wardrobes that they apparently could buy for themselves, without blinking an eye. Oh, wait, I forgot. Most of my supervisors still lived with their parents, who bought them those things. Never mind.

Another one talked about the bald spots on my head, that I couldn't cover up, because of the thyroid problems that I'd begun to have. I wasn't able to do anything about them then, because I lacked insurance. In Illinois, if you didn't have it, doctors wouldn't see you, period. (Medicine as a business -- you gotta love it!) The girls made me fun of me, calling me "baldy head." 

I was getting deathly ill, feeling I was like dying on my feet. I was in and out of the hospital, and spent every hour sleeping at home. There was no energy left for anything else. I was covered in sores, all over my body, and felt like the Grim Reaper was about to snatch me away. 

My lungs seized up every other minute, to the point where I'd throw up every morning. I'd hide it at my work by crawling upstairs to the bathroom, tapping my secret stash of inhalers to get through yet another never-ending shift. I really wasn't sure, from day to day, if I'd ever see tomorrow. 

I got back at them when I left, though. That was after about a year of weekend night shifts, which I wasn't given a choice about working. Take them, or you wouldn't be working there anymore. Well, what the hell could we do? By then, we both wanted to flee back to Michigan, but there weren't any decent jobs there, either. We felt stuck, abandoned by a system that had left us high and dry.

The only silver lining came when I applied for disability, and finally got it, after spending six months on SSI first. I could finally quit my horrible job, leave those horrible kids and horrible supervisors behind, and we both could focus on our next goal: getting the hell out of Chicago, once and for all.

I remember when the moment came, which the Reckoner and I laugh about, to this day. I called Friday afternoon to tell them. No, I explained, I wouldn't be coming in. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. No, I wasn't giving two weeks' notice. My health wasn't allowing me to work anymore, so the point was moot. 

No, I didn't want to say goodbye to the kids, nor anybody else. Why bother? Sure, I'd gotten along with a few people, but I wasn't leaving with any fond memories of it all. I couldn't think of any good times, because there weren't any. Even now, I wished I'd just up and left. I couldn't handle it anymore, and I didn't want to try.

We both talk about those negative experiences all the time, and how they affected us so deeply, and so badly. (For the Reckoner's work life, see the "Jobs To Nowhere" series on this blog.)

"You know what the problem was all along?" the Reckoner asked.

"What's that?" 

"Both of us just let way too much crap go when we were younger. It's that whole 'sunk cost' thing -- you're already up to your knees or your chest or your eyeballs in the BS you're dealing with," he said. "So you struggle a bit longer, hoping see it through, and work it out. Only it never happens that way."

I could only nod in agreement. "I still think about that a lot, too," I said. "Imagine if I'd had a decent job that paid decent money. Both of us could have accomplished a lot more. Who knows what would have happened? I often felt bad for you, because you worked so much, I didn't feel like I had you."

The Reckoner flashed a wry smile. "Well, even though I enjoyed the last job, I never felt like I had any time off. Because when I did, I spent most of it recovering from work," he laughed.

I knew the feeling well. How many times in the past did I find myself thinking, Imagine if I'd had a real job, one that paid me real money. Imagine how that would feel: not having to scrounge, not having to scrap for everything I got, not having to worry about essentials like health insurance and prescription co-pays, not to mention a real life, in a real place to live (an apartment that's not a boarding house or a crackerbox).

It's a feeling that never crosses your mind, until you find yourself falling down that rabbit hole. A little bit of care goes a long way, but if nobody ever provides it, that's where you end up. And it takes forever to dig yourself out. Take heed, and proceed accordingly. --The Squawker

Work Work Work Work...

...Die