Working Alongside The Lower Socio-Economic Class: The Catch-22 Of Upward Mobility In Today's Workforce in Ecco Domani

“Practice doesn’t begin when you walk onto the baseball field, nor does it end when you walk off of it.”

-The coaches of my winning baseball team in high school

“Alright! It’s money making time!” Rev your engines; the race is set. We’re racehorses gnawing our bits at the starting line. Anticipation, and intrigue fill the room. Except, it’s just another work day for me: clock-in, perform my duties, get the process down, avoid conflict, and folks looking for trouble, say something polite, and understanding when there is turbulence, clock-out, and live my life. Nothing exciting. I get home, and nothing has changed that I myself have not changed. My greatest struggle is replacing the bad habits that rub off during time at work. Some mornings I wake up with a foreign mentality. I find myself depressed, heavy, and lacking enthusiasm to face the day saying, “I deserve something. I feel like I should have more money. Somehow, I am owed more than I’m making. I need a reward.” And then I remember I have exactly what I need to succeed.

I manage my finances well, stay healthy, and exercise. Across the board in my working career, I find myself working next to men who pay child support, live beyond their means, and take themselves on expensive vacations, ergot, my paycheck pie has fewer slices taken out at the end of the month than theirs. And, time and time again the feelings turn to resentment. The feeling that I have cheated somehow in the race. There are definitely peer pressures to spend the extra slices, because that’s what everyone is doing: level the playing field they think after they come back from a cruise. Fight those feelings. There was a child’s story that sticks with me from childhood. It was either Beatrix Potter or some other English Nursery rhyme about a chicken who worked when others played, and saved when they spent, and when it was cold out, the others felt deserving of her savings. I can’t turn back time, and give that book to their mothers, or other stories on being good stewards. It’s a deserving attitude. The attitude that just because they clocked-in makes them deserve what others have. My life doesn’t begin, and end when I clock-in, and clock-out. I’m still playing the game when I get home.

Last night one of the workers went on for hours loudly and angrily about his beliefs. I am sure he was waking up the whole ward of patients. One of the patients came into the hall saying, “This isn’t a hospital, I can’t sleep, and the same thing had happened last night.” (It’s actually one of my favourite occurrences when the patients on the psych ward say something more rational than the workers do. I have noted some resentment towards the patients from the workers: comments like “You had breakfast this morning. I haven’t eaten a thing.” When the patient is complaining or anxious to be released; workers envying how simple the patient’s life are with 3 meals supplied, “and they don’t even have to go to work.”

The worker was angry over “what they are teaching kids in high school these days.” It was exceptionally Fox News-esque propaganda, and unmanaged emotion. He has to prove he is the big man in the room. He was sure two gay men can create aids which I corrected; some leftover fear mongering from the ’80s. After he gets done with his tirades he goes to sleep in the back when he should be awake and working. This leaves me doing 80% of the duties while he catches up on the Zzzzzs. I’m sure he is worn out, because I know I am exhausted just listening to it. He is in his early 50s, and will retire when he is 78ish if he can make it. He spent his 30s, and 40s being a playa’-play, playing video games (and I’m sure yelling about his beliefs.) One night he’s yelling about being a “real man” who knows how to treat his “Woman,” and giving relationship advice, and a few nights later he is pretty sure he is going to cheat.

He isn’t a bad fellow after all. He’s struggling just like the rest of us. However, time and time again I mark when he says “I don’t work more than one job. 40 hours, and that’s it.” In the last 5 years I’ve averaged 65 hour work weeks. I’ll throw out life preservers but I’ve learned you can’t allow them to sink your ship.

It’s nights like last night when I hear Aaron in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus yelling as they bury him alive:

“If ever one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul!”

Last updated June 04, 2023