Last edited Sun Jan 18, 2015, 05:24 PM - Edit history (4)
That was about the norm for me, in my career as an itinerant public-school speech/language pathologist. With pay on the normal public-schoolteacher pay scale. And, of course, I had huge debts from working my way through to a Master's degree in my field. We lived in dumps, drove old cars, wore clothes from Goodwill. When I took off work to have my babies, we qualified for that WIC program. And I REALLY WORKED PHYSICALLY, TOO. I literally RAN between schools, carrying three or four satchels of materials, perched on tiny chairs at tiny tables, hurried to get kids for the next session (no time was allowed for that between sessions, and God help me if anybody realized that it was taking more than a minute between sessions to collect the next kids from several classrooms). At night and on weekends, I did the paperwork. During the summers, I worked at summer school and then took required refresher courses and then prepared materials for the school year. Do you think I didn't want to work fewer hours? I was already getting chewed out constantly for not accomplishing even more! I always said that I would never even speak to Denny Hastert unless he could follow me around for a week, carrying the physical load I carried. And that's not the only stressful job. In my youth, I was a factory worker, and that was physically painful in its demands: slinging heavy objects quickly, putting sharp things together quickly, pushing heavy loads around. I was a waitress for awhile, and we had "split shifts," which meant working twelve hour days without being paid for the middle hours. As if we could just go have fun for a few hours. Sure! After a half hour walk home, and then back, and get back to work too exhausted to do a good job! Did you think waitresses were paid enough to support car ownership? There were all sorts of dodges to make us work harder. We had to make the salads, set up tables, clean the work areas. The light announcing one of my orders was burned out, but I was expected to sprint back and forth, checking with the kitchen every minute or so, in between waiting on customers. And a waitress MUST SMILE at all times, like a TV star in a photo shoot. At night, I couldn't sleep despite total exhaustion; my feet used to hurt too much for hours. Believe me, I am a BIG TIPPER! And most people work harder than is generally acknowledged. There is a good reason for the recent life expectancy drop among lower income rural women. And the men also have it hard in these jobs. School custodians, farmers, motel workers, power company employees, and retail workers can report similar ordeals. Medical professions are full of unsung heroes. And then there are the brave people out there on the road repair crews and construction jobs. School and building custodians, road crews, store managers (even of the small sections in department stores), farmers, firemen, ambulance workers, most servants, medical personnel of all sorts, all these people are on call 24/7. And most low-paid workers get yelled at and threatened with firing (which, for most of them, means imminent homelessness and starvation) and treated as if any problem must be their fault. They, too, have responsibility.
NO WEEKENDS? You think you are the only ones with no weekends? Buddy, there are a pile of us out here that would like to talk to you guys about that. How did you think the civilization around you managed to function for you the way it does, 24/7? Did you think there were food fairies? Mop mermaids? Road robots? Pothole pixies? Bathroom brownies? Elves running the electrical power grids? Perhaps you believed those nurses really are angels, with NO physical needs?
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