Sinus ramblings

I finally got the raise I've been waiting for. My next paycheck will have an extra dollar and seventy-five cents over the Massachusetts minimum for every hour I work. That's another whole dollar above what I was getting before. Rejoice! A raise in the middle of the Great Recession! Certainly I must be doing something right - right? If working ten times harder than I did in the stores for an extra thirty-five dollars a week before taxes counts. That dollar was eleven percent of my pay. When I say I got an eleven percent raise, it almost sounds like a decent wage increase. Then I remember that I have to pay rent, utilities, and loans, eat, and I would like to be able to acquire some nicer clothes, and invest in that thing I earned a degree in, but have ignored for the past four months.

Financial revelations have led me to take a second job calling from school and asking people to help fund scholarships and technology upgrades (and pay the bills). I was paid Twenty-eight dollars to solicit Four-hundred and thirty dollars worth of donations the other night. I barely earned my keep during our first two weeks calling young alumni who had never given before (some of whom graduated with me), but I justified the school's investment in me with a single night of calling. Hooray for me. All I wanted was a paycheck.

One of my teachers from my last semester would tell me that I should be amply compensated for my work. The service I provide of employer is a valuable commodity, and I should demand a fair wage and demonstrate my value to the company by working just hard enough to earn what I'm getting paid now. Unfortunately, this country is a nation of employees run by employers. We are supposed to be of the people, for the people, by the people, and in a sense that is still the case. Our bosses have just convinced us that it is in our best interest to make it as easy as possible for them to make truckloads of money. Theoretically they would re-invest that in us, but big surprise, they would rather invest in their bank accounts than ours.

Our relatively high unemployment rates work out pretty well for them too. It can't be that hard to find workers when five (let alone today's ten to twenty) percent of the workforce is under or unemployed.

I find myself in a struggle, not only for work and a living wage, but for meaningful work. You could probably call me an idealist. I want to be useful - not to a CEO or board of directors as a money making machine, but to everyone. And I want to see the effects of my actions first hand. I guess that is kind of a steep price to ask in a global economy.

I'm sick of hearing about the bottom line. "Just the facts ma'am" doesn't work when your decisions affect people.