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| Thanks to Utility Workers Union of America and Labor 411 for the pic! |
You know that feeling when you work part-time and you have 45 hours per week? And the other three days in the week you are going to Uni? And the homework at 3am on Sunday after you finish work just so you will meet the deadline? And the other assignments? And being treated at work like a lower class person? And being yelled at? Trying to do the best as you can but they will always find a mistake just so they can pull you down? Being constantly physically and emotionally exhausted? I do. I face this everyday, or I should say every week.
Needless to say, I didn't have much time for blogging or reading for the matter. And God, I've missed it. Doing things that I love. Things that I enjoy doing.
Today they broke me. I was doing an 11-11 shift and at 9pm, when I asked for a cigarette break, they said no. As in "you will go when I will tell you to go".Which, let me explain two, three things. I work in hospitality. It wasn't that busy and I could go no problem. And why it upset me that much wasn't really because of the cigarette that I desperately needed. It was the knowledge that he wouldn't let me go just because he could. As in "I have the power and you are nothing, and you will do as I say". I come across stuff like this everyday at work, but they are usually more subtle about it. This time around it wasn't. The whole day was pretty much stressful and that was just the cherry on the top of the cake. I hated him. I hated everything. I loathe the society we live in today. I do. And then realisation that this will never end, broke me even more.
Capitalism. Modernization. Everything. Money, money and even more money. Corporations are everything. Money is everything. Work work work and there is value. People? Oh, come again? Who cares about people as long as we have the capital and corporations? Fuck. That. Shit. I hate it. People do matter.
My other manager said people these days are not hard workers. You should have seen my O_o face. Now, you might think, well yeah probably there are, but talking about an environment where all people work 10-13 hours per day.. that's a different story. And I was like "What?!" And she kept going. And all I could think was, people don't mind hard work. We are all working for something that is worth working that much for. What people do mind is working hard and being treated like a piece of shit. Show people respect for their work, and they will be willing to work even harder. Because they will think their work matter, that they matter. Without respect.. what exactly are we doing?
I understand that we have to work to survive. But at what cost? All of a sudden my motto "All for Uni, all in the name of science" wasn't enough. How much am I supposed to take and how many times do I have to break so future Nea will have a shot at something good? Not extraordinary, just something good.
In what kind of society did we end up?
Everyday I glimpse this disappointment. I didn't go to school for getting this. I didn't got to Uni for this. I didn't study my ass off for this. And sometimes I am so scared that even my Master degree that I am working so hard to achieve, won't actually help. This is what probably scares me the most.
How is it possible that with all the technology, science and modernization, we have to work 10-12 hours per day to have a normal life? I don't think my grandparents fought and worked that hard for us to end up in a society like this.
P.L. Berger and T. Luckmann (1966) in The social construction of reality taught us that in Primary Socialization no matter how much the primal sense of inevitability in the subsequent disappointments is weaken, the memory of certainty (that will never happen again) is adhering to the first world of Childhood. Primary Socialization in this way achieves what we can call the biggest and most important issue of trust, that the society can afford. The world of Childhood is designed to install an established value system in the individual structure, that the child can trust, as in "everything will be okay". Later we find out that some things are way far from being "okay".
And I am telling you now, the future is a far cry from okay. The reality is a far cry from okay.
