A.M.
Position: Manager
Tips: $5 (from pick-up orders)
Hours: 6.90
Total Wage: $14.72
I agree to cover a managing shift this morning for the General Manager, because I could use the money for an upcoming skateboarding trip to the Orcas Island skatepark in Washington. Yeah, I know, I just got back from vacation and now I'm about to take another week off to skateboard, swim in lakes, camp and drink cheap beer with one of my closest friends and thirty of his friends. That's one of the great things about this job, the flexibility and ease of getting time off. And while you can see by the numbers up above that managing pays about $10 an hour less than driving or serving, I'm still able to save money fast enough to take monthly trips. Today is ridiculously slow, so the $102 I make feels like free money.
P.M.
Number of Deliveries: 5
Sales: $152.78
Tips: $24
Hours: 1.57
Total Wage: $23.29 per hour
Even though I managed all day, I'm able to work some of my driving shift. As I cruise around tonight, I observe that the luxurious houses and landscapes, the gate guards and gates inside gates are becoming more and more commonplace to me; I notice that I'm noticing them less. It reminds me of an installation art project a woman (I can't remember her name nor find her right this minute through Google) did years ago where she filled an entire museum room with chocolate and had a gangplank that reached out into the center. The museum visitor would be overwhelmed by the smell of chocolate upon entering the room, but if she stayed long enough on the gangplank, her nose would acclimate to the smell, and it would disappear. The point for me being that anything can become commonplace and lose its appeal/shock when experienced for an extended amount of time or repetitiously. The smell of Rancho Santa Fe is vanishing from my nose, though occasionally I'll still notice gradations of wealth.
Along these lines, in his book Poor People, William Vollmann defines poverty not based on the World Bank's definition of living on under $4 per day but based on people's relation to normalcy, which varies from country to country and community to community. Under that definition, there are even poor people among the wealthy in Rancho. Sometimes I'll enter a house with a nice exterior and large yard only to discover aging curio cabinets and other old people furniture, accompanied by old people smell (Has anyone figured out what that smell is? Decomposing flesh on the living?), which I don't think my nose will ever acclimate to, until I become an old man with old furniture. Or maybe someone can just barely afford the mansion mortgage and is unable to park a Bently in the garage nor fill the cavernous space with original abstract paintings or designer furniture. Poor people.
While I deliver in the Morgan Run development where the skate session went down yesterday, I hear a California Report special called "Turning Points" on NPR. Today's story, which you can listen to here, is about a man who left a six-figure income on Wall Street trading in securities and derivatives and returned to school to become a pediatrician in Berkeley. During the story, he uses the term "golden handcuffs" to describe the phenomenon of keeping a job because you can't make as much money elsewhere. This is going to sound silly, but even though my job allows me time to write, exercise, read at the beach, and enough money to pay rent and travel, I feel a need to find work that gives me a sense of accomplishment and intellectual and emotional fulfillment. But I'm wearing golden handcuffs. I was only making $857 a month teaching, and it was difficult at times, but there was so much more satisfaction in someone thanking you at the end of the semester and telling you how much you influenced their thinking and writing. In comparison, what I'm doing now feels somewhat selfish and emotionally bankrupt but easy.
The pediatrician says the golden handcuffs "had less and less of a hold on me. It didn't become as important a measure of my own fulfillment and success."
(It has always been a dream of mine to become a doctor, but then I'll realize I'd have to start my education over since it's so science deficient, and I start thinking about law school or a PhD, but those options seem equally unfulfilling for me.)
The pediatrician goes on to say, "Every single day, with no exceptions, I can't wait to get to work. I get hugs at work . . . I make people feel better. I improve children's lives, and I just can't imagine something more fulfilling than that." I can't say while teaching there weren't days I didn't want to get to work, but the part about the hugs reminds me of a day teaching when a young Hmong girl came in after missing class and explained she'd been in a car accident, and when she was telling me, she began to shake and sob, and in that moment I wanted to hug her, to do the thing that seemed most human and humane, but I knew I couldn't because we were alone in that cold, sterile room with the fluorescent lights, and physical contact with students isn't allowed. Maybe this guy's onto something; maybe I should become a pediatrician, where acts of humanity aren't only accepted but encouraged.
No, keep writing. Just like you told me, "you've got a knack for this writing thing." I thank the writing gods that you were my first introduction to non-fiction. In fact, just last night Melanie and I were reliving various out-of-hand-but-so-worth-the-tension-filled-workshops we participated in your class. Good Times!
ReplyDeleteThis brought up a memory. My first year teaching I got a class at City College for which I was horribly underprepared. It was a class that felt like a slow-motion train wreck. One day near the end of the semester, when most of the class had stopped coming, a young woman I could rely on to have half a brain also stopped showing up. I felt like quitting. Then, one day a couple weeks later, she was back again, but she had two black eyes and her arm in a sling. She showed me a deep bruise slash from where her seatbelt held her from falling out of the car in the accident she'd had coming to school. She told me she had to drop out because she was so freaked by the crash, but she'd wanted to tell me how much I'd taught her before she left. And then she broke into shaking sobs. I wanted to hold her like my daughter or something, but instead I just stood there feeling stupid. I've never forgotten her--sometimes a job isn't about money.
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