Got a job offer today. Going to look at it tomorrow. If it's good I'm out of the nowhere I'm working now. My loyalty is to the lady who hired me. The business is not smart about how it's built, literally, and its ambitions & resources, and it's limited, and I, as an aging husband, have to be realistic about exerting myself on behalf of a business that has not bothered to settle its debts to me in re: a $1000 medical bill for some superglue, two pairs of gloves, the cost of anticeptic prophalaxis such as masks and the rubbing alcohol, and the paper cover on my examination chair, plus the approximately 40 minutes of manpower spent dealing with my paperwork & minor scalp laceration. Emily is the one who drove me to the hospital. My loyalty is to her. But she's the manager and she knows Northwestern Medical has sicced debt collectors on me without so much as sending me a paper bill, nor having a formal phone call.
I mean.
So if the prospective gig at a corporate-run retirement community can provide me with ethical medical care and actually pay me my asking price-- I did not have any leverage or power in negotiating my starting pay, and was promised a raise within six months. It is now one month short of a year and instead of a raise I was given an 8 oz bottle of olive oil and a handwritten thank you note. From Emily. Not the business. The business cannot even manage to build its own property in a sensible or convenient fashion.
My brethren of service workers & slaves in the service industries, I have stories. Tales of construction & inconvenience comparable to any of the actual fires & floods of sewage I have seen... and general Old Man Weirdness from a Nice Enough Dude who has, like myself, had a traumatic brain injury. So I take some issue with the judgement & competence & haughty stubbornness from the people who have not the foresight to win my loyalty with a living wage. Because I have a brain injury.
I also have a new scar or two from their establishment, not entirely of my own fault. And I haven't stood there with my hand out about it, and they've kind of conveniently forgotten about it because it suits them. It's infuriating, obviously.
Feel free to stop reading at any time, because I'm going to do this for at least four more paragraphs.
Yeah. I think I'm going to look real careful at this place before I say yes, and I make sure they can fucking PAY me without me doing my damnedest-- so that I will win THEIR loyalty, as my employers. That's the fucking idea of this whole capitalism thing, isn't it? Isn't the relationship I am trying to describe basically the foolishly trusting, platonic ideal of what we're supposed to do? Isn't that why I'm busting my ass for these little coloured pieces of currency that I redeem for goods permitting my existence until I book passage on Charon's Crema-tours and spread my ashes o'er the faces of the waters of the deep? I think that's the principle we're talking about, here.
I work so I can afford to survive & make art & exist in love with the best man I've ever met.
I'm loyal to him first, to myself first. But my loyalty can be bought by competence & consideration, from good people. Emily's good people. But she's working for stubborn old men and we're all lucky to be working, and working in a place where no-one has substances abuse issues or anger issues. So we're sticking it out despite the stupidity-- until we find an offramp, obviously, and I have my eye on the offramp more than anybody else at this tiny joint. It's a nice bakery but the place is actually kind of a claustrophobic wreck and makes no sense. It's fucking dumb. A retirement home where the kitchen aren't all fucked up is all I'm looking for. Maybe this could be that. I'm gonna inspect it Thursday and see what's the what.
Three days off. Time to draw. And work on fixing my fucked up sleep cycle.
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