I'm a little bitter.

I think I need a new job, and that fact enrages me to no end. My current gig is fine, I have gotten used to the idiosyncrasies of the job and am fairly well regarded by my coworkers and bosses, but I have been there six months now and I don't see how this is going to be sustainable, especially as I get sent home anytime we are slower than our labor projections want us to be, and we are slower every damn day. I am not being singled out mind you, everyone gets cut when that happens unless they happen to be closing the store.

It seems thought that to be making our goals in such a way as to not have to send people home, we have to be frantically busy, working in a way that is not sustainable with regards to keeping food prepped and dishes washed so we can continue working. It's not working out well and honestly, I am tired of the daily grind of foodservice, I have friends who complain about their office jobs, and while I don't doubt that there are things worth complaining about and would never begrudge them the ability to do so, being able to sit down and not be dependent on hourly sales figures for my paycheck sounds like a dream come true.

I've been there long enough now that it would look decent on a resume so I guess I will start making the rounds on the job sites and such to see if I can find a less retail oriented gig. Or at least something not in foodservice, fuck me I am done with foodservice customers. Motherfuckers can't decide what they want, don't like the price, and are unable to follow or even understand simple directions, let alone read a menu, and they think nothing of making you bend over backwards for them while they leave a two percent tip. Yeah, we just threw together a hundred bucks worth of pizza in fifteen minutes for you during a dinner rush with no advance warning, walked you through an extensive discussion of each of our beers, after which you decided on water, and made sure to get every fucked up special request you want in there (side of uncooked Canadian Bacon? Sure why not). I am not going to look at you like you are personally pulling me out of poverty when you give me a one dollar tip, asshole I split that with five other people, you are spending more money right here than I make in a day, go to hell.

I'm not bitter.

I'm totally bitter.

And if I feel this way, making an almost living wage, how do you think the woman in her fifties with unfathomably more work experience than me who works under me feels with her eleven bucks an hour? Or the guy just out of high school who needs to pay rent with his ten o five? I have a friend who works two jobs so he can pay rent on his small basement apartment that he shares, he considers himself lucky to have them, and he is! I've said it before, in the world my social circle exists at, you almost have to be unfathomably lucky and/or privileged to exist at a level where one misstep or uncontrollable accident can destroy your life.

We can pay rent, buy food, and even occasionally have a nice thing or two, but there isn't a safety net, there isn't a rung between doing okay and everything has gone to shit, you work your ass off for your home and a couple luxuries, or you don't get a home or luxuries, there is no middle ground.

We live in the most prosperous nation the world has even known, the wealth and resources of this country are literally unimaginable, the dollar amount of wealth that moves every hour is measured in numbers the human brain has not evolved to comfortably process, we quite literally cannot comprehend, on an instinctive level, how rich some people are.

And yet, a serf class is forming in the USA, people who increasingly are beholden to the landowners and employers, we work for them, and in return we eat and drink, are protected from the elements, and attend a tourney once in a while, but we don't accumulate wealth and many(most?) of us don't even believe we ever shall be able to do so. All our earnings go straight to those who own our homes and make them livable and this is seen as the correct way to do things.

Indeed the poor are told that there is something wrong with them when they can't save ten percent of their income every month, I know this because the mandatory online training you have to take, twice, when you declare bankruptcy tells me so, that I could have avoided it all if only I had stuck a sizable percentage of my previous earnings into a savings account of some type, never mind the fact that you actually need earnings to be able to do that.

Tens of millions of us live on the knife edge and are kept in check only because we believe what we are told: That we are there because we deserve it, and we can get our own selves off of it. Well guess what? We can't and we won't, most of us anyway, our lives don't work like that, we can't hope to get off of the knifes edge, unless it is to fall directly on the blade. All we can hope for is to change jobs, and pray that this one will pay slightly more, or abuse us slightly less, ideally both but we can't get greedy.

We can't afford to be greedy.