Back in the Working-Class

 “Few gods, nations, or revolutions can sustain themselves without martyrs.” Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

I spent thirteen of my twenty-two years at the school district in management positions, meaning I had some direct responsibility for people and processes. I was fairly successful at this work, though in the final few years of my career I often felt like an overpaid clerk. I never simply went through the motions -- I’m not wired that way -- it was more that the work itself became routine, often boring, and it didn’t require one hundred percent of my energy or focus. I felt like I was on a treadmill, running but gaining no ground, and it was difficult to believe that what I was doing made much of a difference in the overall scheme of educating children. The experiences my own children had in the school district stood in contradiction to the high-minded rhetoric I heard almost every day in the district’s internal propaganda. Reality rarely lives up to the ideals we espouse or revere. The school district was a system created and managed by people, and that guaranteed it would be flawed, capricious, contradictory, and sometimes, incomprehensible. 

Retirement came at the right time for me, as I felt like I had nothing more to contribute. I didn’t believe in the district’s stated mission of preparing students for a future that had yet to be created, because in my more cynical moments I believed we might be better off preparing them for a future in the process of being destroyed. This seems more honest to me. Human societies often push the consequences for their inaction and cowardice and corruption onto the next generation. We need to be dead straight with kids: the future will not be brought to you by Disney. As is in all large organizations, there was too much conceit at the school district, too many pointless meetings, and far too many egos in need of stroking and delicate handling. I’d had enough. 

I understood that retirement didn’t mean I would completely stop working, because it wasn’t financially feasible on the one hand, and because I need the balance work provides to my life. Work, leisure, time for reading, time for quiet. Simplicity and moderation. Most of all, I wanted a job without the heavy mental load, the responsibility for other people and answering for their perceived failures and misdeeds. I started working on a golf driving range, picking up balls, when I was ten years old. My dad was a butcher. My mother worked in a bank. My family is working class, once a proud moniker. From my boyhood I always loved to work. I loved taking care of the yard at our house so much that when I was done, I ‘d go down the street to the Castagna’s and rake their leaves, even though Mrs. Castagna had three very capable sons. I just liked doing it. On the driving range in the California summer evening, the mountains turning shades of purple in a sky that was much fresher back then, I’d race myself to fill as many baskets as I could, and try to beat my record for clearing the entire range in the shortest amount of time. Silly little challenges. Work well done made me feel good. What kind of work didn’t matter.  I don’t shy from honest work and never have. 

I’m now working at Whole Foods Market on upper State Street. It’s a decent-sized store, seems to do a high volume, and employ many people; customers stream in steadily and spend solid money on groceries, meats, fish, dairy, and vitamins, and other healthy living, never-get-sick-and-never-die, products, all free of dyes and perfumes, never tested on animals, vegan and organic, and of course, green as a Virginia field. If you judged only by the cars in the parking lot, you’d guess that WMF attracts consumers with lots more money to spend on food than their less affluent fellow citizens. I try not to render judgments as I round up shopping carts like a shepherd in search of lost sheep. I’m assigned to the Maintenance Department, and there’s certainly some tasks that fall into that bin, but ninety-five percent of the gig is custodial work. Inspecting and cleaning the bathrooms and every aisle every hour, with a scanner to register accountability to the standard. I sweep/mop the restroom floors five or six times every shift. When I complete the “walk”, I usually check up front to see if the lines are long and the checkers need bagging help. Bagging is my favorite task. It’s  the challenge of packing the cold stuff in the same bag, double-bagging when the load appears heavy with meats, cheese, apples, or bottles. I silently bless the shoppers who bring their own cloth bags because the store paper bags are thin and tear easily. For me as a bagger, cloth bags are far superior, hold way more product, and are easier to pack. If the checkers aren’t swamped, I go cart hunting, making a complete sweep of the parking lot. If the carts are under control, I’ll check and tidy up the outdoor eating area, and then swing around the back of the building to check the roll-off garbage cans and the cardboard bailer. By the time I get through all that, it’s usually near time to make the next store walk. Basically, I don’t stop moving, which is why during my eight-hour shift I average more than 30,000 steps; my health app reports this is twelve miles. I start at 2:00 and work until after 10:00, the closing shift that many employees dread. I’m learning the ebbs and flows and patterns, recognizing repeat customers. I commute back and forth on my bike, eight miles round trip. My lunch break is thirty minutes. For the most part, the time passes quickly, and I can always find something to do. I clock in and out, on a Kronos electronic keypad, something I never did in all my years at the school district. I’m back in the working-class, with folks who work irregular hours, often at night and weekends and holidays. The store never stops. The wheel turns anew every morning when the doors slide open and doesn’t stop until the gate is locked after 10:00 p.m. This kind of work has a relentlessness about it. A mundaneness. By the time I get home my legs are tired and my feet are sore. I have this weird condition with my left foot. No matter what shoes I wear, within an hour or two, I feel pain in the ball of my foot, or the tip of the toe next to my pinky toe. Sometimes it’s tingling, other times it’s a burning sensation. I don’t know the cause because I am afraid to pursue an answer. Nerve damage? Bone spur? Arthritis? Sciatica? This condition predates my work at the store. For the last nine years I worked at the district, I used a stand-up desk -- I was the first person at the district office to get one, years before they became standard -- and was on my feet seven or eight hours every day. Even so, that was much different from walking non-stop for a couple of hours at a go. 

This is the right kind of job for me at this time. Interacting with people, solving little problems, and putting in an honest shift is good for me. I still have time for writing and reading. I just finished 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari -- very thought-provoking -- and am well into Humane by Samuel Moyne, a book about war, American-style. My sister-in-law in Santa Maria, and my 87-year-old mother in Hawaii, are having fairly serious health problems, and Terry and I are now engaging the health care system in a totally new way. Skilled nursing, OT and PT, radiology, multiple doctors, advanced health care directives. The whole ball of wax.