For Wilshire Baptist Church
I’ve been thinking a lot about work after seeing Wilshire’s production of “Working” on Saturday night. My thoughts have been stirred by a great production and a good discussion afterward on the nature of work. And mostly I’ve been thinking about the way we treat people who work at jobs that are different than our own.
Work is another piece of life – like race, gender, education and age – where we are quick to draw lines and create categories of worth and value. It’s often subtle or even subliminal but it’s very real – and it’s very wrong.
I can’t say that I’ve ever been dissed for the full-time work I do. I’ve had argumentative and tyrannical bosses, but that’s a different type of relationship; that’s more about power, prestige, turf and insecurity. I’m talking about someone saying or behaving in a way that says: “I am better than you and more important than you and more valuable than you because I have this job over here and you have that job over there.”
I do recall a specific night when I was belittled for my comparative lowliness while completing a part-time job. I was in my mid-twenties and working for a city magazine that also published a tourism guide for hotels. One month the regular delivery contractor couldn’t do it so I decided to do it myself. My paychecks were still small and I thought the extra income would be nice. I arranged to make the deliveries at night in a rented truck so as not to interfere with my day job – as the magazine’s assistant editor.
It didn’t take me long to learn that a man making deliveries to a hotel at midnight is ranked well below the bellmen standing at the front doors and the desk clerks on the late shift inside. I learned this at hotel after hotel as bellmen and clerks barked at me for every imaginable delivery infraction: parking in the wrong place, not scheduling the delivery, using the wrong door, scuffing the floors, blocking traffic, and walking into a five-star hotel dressed like a delivery guy – which I was. There was plenty of attitude and body language that let me know exactly where I stood on the “hospitality industry” food chain.
I was annoyed and even embarrassed and at one point I had the urge to break open a box, open one of the magazines, point to my name right under the publisher and editor and say something like, “This is me. I published this. Get off my back or I’ll tell YOUR boss tomorrow why I cancelled the delivery.” But instead I took my lumps and modified my actions as the night went on. I know that abuse rolls downhill and these people were mostly just dishing out to me what is dished out to them all day – from the management hierarchy at the hotels but also from the moneyed guests who demand a lot as they come and go on their vacations and business trips.
I can tell you now that whenever I pick up one of those tourism guides in a hotel I have a soft spot for the person who delivered them. And I know not to presume the circumstances that put him in that job. He may be like me – doing it on the side to earn an extra buck for his family – or he may be working his way through school or coming back into the workforce after a setback of some sort. He may be aspiring to do something different and this is just a rung on the career ladder. Or, it may even be that he is working at his dream job and is proud and pleased to be doing it. And there’s plenty to be proud of because the man who made the delivery ensured that out-of-towners had information they wanted to complete their visit.
The point is: It doesn’t matter where a worker is on that continuum of motivation and desire; what matters is that they deserve the same respect that we give to the people that society holds in greater esteem – and the same respect that we desire for ourselves. That begs the question: How do we show that respect? It’d be great to show it with a living wage if not more, but sometimes the delivery guy would just appreciate you holding the door open for them.