A bit dramatic of a title, but bear with me.
My second diary, because I have a lot of thoughts and opinions. It starts with a story, and I forewarn will be a bit of a rant at times.
In my thirties and painfully underemployed (There’s a good record for those on the Spectrum like myself being underemployed) for the last 13 years I’ve had quite the experience in what I feel I’m actually being paid for. I got my first job out of college in my field! Just as the post Bush great recession went into full swing. I lost the job in 6 months due to layoffs from the recession. There was
I spent the next two years on unemployment. Then, just as my Obama era unemployment was set to end I got a job. I worked in retail, Goodwill in fact. I had to resort to walking into their employment center and saying ‘I’m autistic and can’t get a job!’ to get into even that! I had 11 dollars in my bank account and had to pay rent for myself and my disabled mother’s studio apartment.
I worked at Goodwill for about 3 years. During that time I had my first workplace injury, which thankfully they provided insurance from Mexico (walking distance from the border) which cost about 75 dollars a month (for both medical and dental). With that, I was able to get almost everything covered, recover and regain feeling in my lower half (I had a numb to ‘prickly’ feeling during the injury). During this time I was paid about 8 dollars an hour.
During this time I got constantly told, despite the injury being dealt with things like ‘don’t sit down’ ‘don’t lean’ ‘don’t look sad’ ‘stay busy’ or the best one ‘just be faster’ I got tasked with dusting shelves to look ‘busy’. I got to wondering why they cared, as the work is being done. I was the fastest they had for tagging, was very good with procedural details and could do my job basically in my sleep.
‘Act Professional’ I've learned is usually the death knell for the autistic person in a formal workplace. Once you’re pointed out as the Unprofessional One you’ll never even be considered for promotion or any responsibility. It was like choking, I had so much growing anxiety every work day until I tried Ubering for a week, to see ANY other option. My mother said for the first time in a long time I was smiling.
I put in my two weeks notice immediately. Leaving behind a management team which increasingly micromanaged my actions despite me doing my job. It took me a long time to get the hang of it, but the freedom Uber gave me was amazing. I got to meet people every day! People I’d never get to talk to, letting me learn new perspectives and make a living. For about 2 years, then Uber began coiling its grip around drivers. We had car payments and a living to make but they lowered pay. We got 75% of the fare then they added many many types of ‘special fees’ which while it increased the cost of the fare was not paid to us in out payout since it wasn’t ‘the fare’.
Then Uber decided to become more like a real professional office. I began to get complaints about ‘being on drugs’ while driving, which was because I act ‘strange’ for the average person on account of my neurodivergence. I refuted it with my disability diagnosis, and asked Uber to put it on my file so that the issue would not come up again.
Then it happened again. I went to the Uber office and asked in person to put it on my account file so I don’t lose entire DAYS worth of work due to Uber needing to ‘investigate(Somehow intending to conduct a toxicology exam via email).’ It happened about 5 more times, my sending the exact same copy paste explanation in response to each of these ‘investigations’ before I one day got a letter that I had too many incidents of being thought to be under the influence and got permanently deactivated. I tried to respond with the same explanation and got a response that it was final. (note that never did they contact the DMV or authorities regarding have a supposedly constantly intoxicated driver on the road. I tried to get an attorney but was basically advised that due to the private contractor agreement I couldn’t do anything.
I drove for Lyft then until someone ran a red light and I hit them on a 45 mph road. Insurance covered the rest of the car and gave several thousand to live on, until my next job. I got in because my friend worked there and could recommend me. A call center, as data entry. I specifically said I wanted nothing to do with the phones, and applied for that job.
What intrigued me about this place was the complicated 12 step process on how punishment worked within the office. 12 strikes. 1 for every randomly picked call that failed a 96% Fail ‘speech grade.’ 1 for being late, 5 for absence, and 10 for no call no show. It was very detailed about what happens after too. The ‘verbal warning’ the ‘written warning.’ They even timed the percent of the day you had to be in what ‘time setting’ on the computers down to the second.
There was no system on how to advance or do better. You could fail, but never do anything but ‘enough’ at best. The process was made to degrade you until you were no more. You didn’t get paid more for doing more work, but they expected more work over time.
I was spared from most of it, until they wanted me on the phone. I was hired for data entry, and specified that my disability would render me unable to get a 96% on the script.
You see, their data system (saleforce I believe) is made to specifically log every action, and every action is impossible to undo under a certain access level. I managed to ask around one of the assistant supervisors who I was very friendly with who accidentally let slip that at a certain level of access changes can be made and are not logged on the system. You see, the company had failed to hold onto the patent of the drug and they were quietly shut down the department by not hiring more people after firing them (I found out from my work carpool driver). The woman who trained me got fired before I did.
After that I started getting errors I don’t usually make on the system. When I was terminated I knew it was coming. I was told the punishment system was ‘fair’ because it was applied equally to every employee. I obviously can’t prove that they faked mistakes to make me get enough punishment points to be fired, and I processed record levels of forms in the company. They accused me of an actual HIPAA violation that would normally make sure I'd probably never be hired in the field again.
Covid sort of saved our lives. The Unemployment Insurance I got was boosted to enough to cover rent and get a savings. I got another job in the field during the height of it, Covid Testing (later transitioning to another dept). In my field, degree required. Meaning I definitely wasn’t fired for cause in the call center (you don’t get UI for cause). I still have it! It’s night shift, odd (but static) days… but it's enough to live on for now.
My current job I’ve had issues with my disability, but I'm given so much leeway for my weirdness I’d gotten nowhere else. Better pay than I’d seen before (even if still underpaid)… It became more clear now that I had time to read on the events in the world over the Covid period and the “no one wants to work anymore” ongoing phase.
Those who are underpaid for their labor are instead paid for their suffering. There is no such thing as ‘unskilled labor’ anyone who does anything will tell you there is a difference in speed and efficiency of a worker who is untrained and who is trained. When I started in data entry it took 90 minutes to do one form. Everything had to be correct, because it couldn’t be undone. By the time I was fired I could do thirty a day.
When I have work done but am asked to ‘act busy’ or something, it’s just suffering. However, actually using the time efficiently is viewed as unprofessional. I write. I wrote 30 pages of a book project while at goodwill by hand on paper. Same in my data entry job. While I can’t stay indefinitely at my current job, the freedom to enrich myself while doing it and finishing a book project is at least me not suffering while working. I can plan out my entire workflow from about twenty minutes, and then have free time to use the in building gym or work on my projects to see about becoming published (I currently just have a in-progress web page and patreon).
However, everything I read and looked about the political atmosphere was about how America needed to be put ‘back to work.’ Lockdowns had to end because Economus, the God of Capitalism needed to be fed. Fed lives, fed covid infections and deaths that would have been avoidable if we had monthly payments like Canada’s government enacted. No. We had to pull money from the government we pay for in taxes to nominally protect us . By the teeth. How DARE the masses get money without suffering.
Unemployment requirements I went through never got me a job. It just got me a ‘smaller’ job of suffering for the forms and hoops. In Goodwill, I did everything I was supposed to, fulfilling my labor… but I didn’t suffer to the liking of the management, so I was given useless criticisms.
‘don’t sit down’ ‘don’t lean’ ‘don’t look sad’ ‘stay busy’
At the call center I got some reprieve, but that just let me start to see the Punishment System’s sheer complexity as I watched every coworker I knew be fired. I was the last person on my team to go that was of my rank (I was told I wasn’t allowed to refer to my boss as a higher ‘rank’ of authority on a single but notable occasion).
I finally got to lift my head up and see, 10 years out of college, what working with a strange type of job security was like. I finally understood the privilege that came with it. I wasn’t getting paid to suffer as much because my Covid era savings let me keep things in a balance. If I’d lost my home when I had 11 dollars in my account I would have to do a much bigger song and dance of suffering to gain any measure of the balance I have now.
Homeless people have to pay a tithe of suffering to even be allowed to remain within civilization. They regularly get raided by police with their belongings stolen or destroyed and suffer all manner of atrocities. More-so if they are a intersectionaly disadvantaged minority. They’re left out like a old timey Stock and Pillory for the working class to see how bad it can get if they DARE slip up.
All the recent talk about a living wage, and people being able to leave predatory jobs due to the Covid money, that’s what’s enabling the fight for more we have now to even happen.
A non-living wage is not just exploitation it is at least low-key torture. It is high-octane torture if you dare ask for money or basic shelter for not working. You don’t have any opportunity to enrich yourself, and every thought is on the deadline you know is coming when you can’t stay in that job anymore or need an additional one. A non-living wage is not just exploitation, it is paying by the suffering the person getting the money undergoes. The lifelong physical damage workers in Amazon warehouses is NOTHING CLOSE to compensated in the wages they get. Neither do they even scope the capital they produce. Amazon is notorious for not hiring upper management from within. They get paid to be effectively tortured, for what... Economus’s entertainment? I know I had to do a song and dance of suffering to get accommodations I needed to survive high school and college.
I felt like sharing my thoughts, in the hope they’ll be helpful to someone. Ideas require experience and time to explore for inspiration and enrichment. ‘You can’t know what you have no access to know’ is how I came to understand privilege because that’s how human interaction is to me. And even then I could only understand that when I could take a breath.
As I look at my next job while I have the chance to find a job that will pay me for my labor not my suffering. I hope everyone does. Rent still increases, but the yearly raise is a measly 3% for best work. I’ve done the math, the space is tightening. If I don’t find a better source of income, it’s back deeper under that Suffering-Labor line. At least in Soviet Russia we got a free apartment home.
But, for now I have enough air to try to get my book published (I’m working up the nerve to overcome my shyness), and work on some other projects for my own enjoyment.