On Working
I am a bit conflicted when it comes to the subject of work and having a work ethic. On one hand, I live in the least unionized state in America and retired from a career as a state employee where we were forbidden by law from engaging in collective bargaining, a law that was created to stop white and black workers in Charlotte from organizing together back in the 1950s. On the other hand, I believe in not being a burden on my co-workers and in the benefits of taking on hard tasks.
My mother was the daughter of a tobacco farmer in Southeast North Carolina. She grew up doing manual labor. Although she is now a retired intensive care nurse, she didn't go to nursing school until I was in my teens. While I was growing up, she waited tables, set type at the newspaper and worked in a day care at the Presbyterian Church. She taught my siblings and I how to clean and run household appliances as soon as we were capable of learning. She expected us to do a good job too. Even today while visiting her house, we might get tasked with running a vacuum cleaner or folding a load of towels.
There wasn't any extra money in our house, and I learned early that if I wanted things like comic books and baseball cards that I'd have to find a way to hustle for them. I scavenged for recyclable bottles and cans, sold newspapers on the street and later had a paper route. I moved in with my uncle on his small farm for the duration of my high school years, working year-round as the situation required. My uncle believed that work solved all problems. I had the temerity to skip school in 9th grade and I got caught. As punishment, he had me dig a water line with a shovel and a mattock that must have been a quarter of a mile long. I never skipped school again. After graduating, I went straight into the military and encountered for the first time people who had no concept of work or discipline.
As a southerner raised by traditional parents, I'd grown up saying yes sir and no sir. That part of military life required no effort on my part. I'd also had to make up my bed, so that part of the experience wasn't hard either. As a farm kid, I'd learned what it felt like to be bone tired. As a high school athlete, I learned that you can always dig a little deeper when you get the feeling that you can't go on. In basic training I saw people that had not learned those lessons and they either had to do so very quickly or they got washed out. I also observed for the first time people who resented being told what to do in a job setting. The first few weeks of Army life are designed to be stressful but it's not like Full Metal Jacket. We weren't getting ready to go to Vietnam. It was 1983 and we were just a bunch of cold warriors going through the same experience that millions had gone through before us.
I raised my kids as close as I could to the way I'd been raised. My son still talks about being a human bulldozer who graded our yard with a shovel and a wheelbarrow for committing a few of his various sins. He also chose to work in high school to have money of his own. He went into the Navy before he was even 18 and has been independent ever since. My daughters also have good work habits. My youngest wanted to go to a boarding school in the mountains where students worked in a nursing home to help earn their tuition. She came home with some great stories from that experience. My oldest was more involved in extra-curricular activities, but graduated early, worked during her gap year and today owns a successful business while also working full time as a nurse anesthetist.
In my line of work in IT, a lot of time is spent sitting in front of a keyboard. But, in any large organization with hundreds of computers, there are days where someone in the organization is unloading trucks of new machines, moving furniture to run wire, climbing ladders to hang wireless access points and other decidedly non-sexy but necessary tasks. I look at those things for what they are, part of the job but in 30 years, I've seen many who regard them as tasks to be avoided by any means possible. I don't have much tolerance or sympathy for the lazy or the work averse when their character flaws mean that someone else from the same organization has to pick up their slack.
We are advanced enough as a society where we should not have to exploit people's labor. Companys like Amazon where warehouse workers pee in bottles to avoid taking too many bathrooms breaks need to be dealt with. There is no reason Americans shouldn't get the same kind of holiday leave that people in Europe do. Economic inequality is a problem that's getting worse and the failure to keep the minimum wage in line with inflation is a gigantic "fuck you" from the ruling class to the working class. All of that can be true while at the same time not being lazy in the workplace can also be a virtue.
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