Approaching the End of Working Life

I just can't face any more contract concessions at my workplace. The last negotiations didn't go well. They began with pink slips from Gavin Newsom and his city cohorts and ended with pay cuts and furlough days. Only the MUNI transportation workers resisted the bad deal and voted no on workers shouldering the financial pain. 

I fought hard against the concessions but, like a cat who refuses to go gently into her box to be taken to the vet, all that kicking, scratching and stretching out my claws to hold onto the sides was wasted energy, I knew that, in spite of my best efforts, I would wind up in that box. It was easy to see that the people pushing me there were not only bigger and stronger but had all the power and authority on their side. 

So, I accepted the vet and life in the box and it's really not that bad because I am in the company of the finest of felines. Knowing this has served to make my demotion back into the class from which I came not only tolerable but a starting point for organizing. 

With new contract negotiation going on combined with the fact of my advancing age and a far more oppressive workplace, I have decided to bid adieu to the working world and spend the rest of my days writing, dismantling capitalism and traveling. I am so lucky to have a pension, and eventually I will also have social security, so that I can make this decision. 

At first, the thought of breaking with work was hard, what would I do with all that unstructured time? Now, it seems difficult to believe that I was able to make the demands of work palatable at all. In psychology this process is called resolving cognitive dissonance. 

I will be a retired librarian soon. They say when one door closes another opens, so I'm looking forward to not being stuck in that proverbial hallway too long. My conscious keeps repeating, Close the door, Joan, close that goddamn door! "Blow out your candles, Laura...and so goodbye."

The Great Computer of Life

Another coworker have retired last week. They are leaving like rats on a sinking ship; to get away from the seriously understaffed library system and our incredible, shrinking paychecks as well as to pursue goals outside of the stifling work environment.

Attempting to live in the world of work and the larger world outside it has placed me squarely in the category of employees with a "bad attitude." After all a librarian, who is a closet writer, is not devoting one-hundred percent of her precious creative energy to her job.

I am beginning to think of this problem in computer terms. Real life: our health, those we love, our ambitions, dreams and deepest desires are an integral part of our operating system. Without them, the system will not boot up at all.

Employment, as gainful as it may be, is just a money-generating program that runs on that system. Even if it is uninstalled completely, the computer will still run. True, you may have to locate another application to fill this function since the accumulation of money does help the system run faster and more smoothly. Loss of home or health insurance can cause the system to crash, but with some tweaking it is still possible to get it up and running again.

The recession/depression has turned many of us into "bad machines" that can no longer run as efficiently as we used to. This can be a cause for worry but it is also an opportunity to try to connect differently. We must network in different ways, some of them actual not virtual.

I have just tuned up my old computer by deleting a lot of unused programs. The most important step I took was in stopping a script from running over and over, slowing down my progress and bringing my system to a standstill. My script had something to do with self-esteem being connected to financial status.

As soon as I found the way to stop that message from repeating, my computer began humming once again. It has now recovered and is running like a new machine!

Nature, Capitalism and the Universe

Donner Lake

Spending time away from the rat-race alters perception in a myriad of ways. Nature is something I didn't see much of as a child. It was at least a two hour drive from where we lived to the countryside with its farms, rivers and forests. The urban landscape was mostly all I knew and, to me, it went on forever. Now I understand why people who incorporate religion into their lives are most often rural folks. Feeling small in the presence of something large and majestic is daunting and reassuring. Like some of the acid trips of my past, the natural world can be a keyhole opening into another reality, a glimpse at something more.

However I interpret it, the experience makes it harder to get back to the daily grind of working. For me, job-related activity is a stretch even in the best of times, as it is for anyone who must repress creative desire to economic necessity.

I was on the reference desk with a colleague who has an artist friend employed to create video games. "What a great job, she must love it!" was my reflexive response. She replied simply, "She loves it the way you love your job, you love your job, don't you?"

And I do enjoy my job, especially compared to some of the other things I have done to earn a living. But that doesn't change the fact that would rather be writing, creating my own work. Thus, the difficult march to the proverbial different drummer. It's a struggle I can't win. My more committed co-workers do not like my emotional distance from my work and bosses do not approve of my "attitude." These factors may prevent me from scaling the ladder of success, but not from acquiring great  material for a story.

So, I have returned with a thud from the Eastern Sierras. Next week I will be back at work, a changed being, someone who has been to the mountaintop, taken nourishment there, and come back with a souvenir both precious and intangible; the sense that the all-consuming, merry-go-round of daily life is only a fraction of a universe that is beautiful, vast, boundless and unfathomable.

The Things We Do For Work

We're seeing some victories but mostly we're being creamed. Yes, a judge in Wisconsin declared Scott Walkers' attack and railroading through of an anti-worker, anti-union proposal unconstitutional. And folks are pushing back against the Ryan plan to eliminate Medicare. This is helping some Democrats in Republican districts, Kathy Hochul, NY in particular, get elected.

The creamed part has led us to sweeping anti-worker legislation ushered in under the misnomer of "pension reform," forcing public sector employees to pay for the financial meltdown with meager paychecks as financial inequality increases the rich make more money and pay less taxes than ever.

Which brings me to the topic, The Things We Do For Work, which tend to be as desperate and drastic as The Things We Do For Love, but with a more limited result...like paddling against the current in a river just to stay in the same place and not be swept backwards, downstream.

My sister is in a situation where she is vulnerable to being swept downstream in a civil service job related to Social Services in a large Bay Area County that shall remain nameless. She was accepted for promotion to a higher level job and wound up with an anal, newly hired manager, twenty years her junior who is trying to ramp up her hard-ass boss lady title at my sister's expense. She wrote up a three month review for my sister that, although only about one quarter "needs improvement" said at the end is no uncertain terms that she may not pass her probationary period and keep her job.

Now my sister has worked, as a union-protected employee, for over five years in this county. In other words she is "vested." But there is a catch in a new probationary period. You don't necessarily get bounced back to your old job and can conceivably wind up on the street. All for the sin of taking a risk and accepting a promotion. What does this mean if it exposes you to job vulnerability that you didn't have before? It's all very scary and let's just say she is swimming as fast as she can, submitting rebuttals and getting everything in writing.

A friend of hers has another horror story of work probation in another Social Services job at the county level. Hers ends at five months before her probationary period ended. She was just simply informed that she didn't get the job and should just leave, no explanation, nada. She believes it was over a difference of opinion but will never know for sure. She wound up going back to another job that had accepted her previously but she'd turned down. They took her on at $10,000 less salary per year than was offered during her first interview. She took the job at the reduced rate even though it's a couple of hours away and requires her to rent a room during her work week and drive back for weekends. Both huge additional expenses not to mention inconveniences.

So, these are the kind of things we do for work in this so-called economic recovery as the public sector is decimated and all these new jobs that are being created seem to be at McDonald's and Starbucks for eight to ten dollars an hour. Welcome to the New Economy!

Status, Emotions and Disclosure in the Workplace

Emotional Expressions

In October of 2010 an interesting study by Kraus, Cote and Keltner was published that correlated lower socio-economic status with an increased ability to recognize the emotions others may be experiencing. They postulated that this ability among the have-less has been developed as a survival skill in the true Darwinian sense of the term. Wealthier people are less dependent on others for their safety and well-being therefore they have not perfected the art of anticipating their needs. But working class and poorer folks' destinies are more dependent on the external world and the fickle winds of fate. They are not more compliant when confronted with those needs, just more observant.

Another fact they discovered is that what they termed "lower-class" individuals are more expressive to begin with than those of higher economic status, something I have frequently observed in various job environments.
When I worked in a factory making wind chimes for piecework pay my co-workers and I would listen to the radio, sing to it and chat about our lives as our fingers moved as quickly as possible tying ceramic pieces with string. When I was a drafting technician the guys didn't talk much, but the women who worked in the office would talk about everything from sex to laundry detergent.

After I got my master's degree at UC Berkeley I entered a "professional" employment world fraught with treachery. Talking too much about personal life or politics was considered not only gauche but dangerous. What people know can be used as ammunition to throw someone off the job ladder we were all supposed to want to climb to the top. The safest topics for conversation consist of those that are specifically job-related. My boss explicitly told me that If things were rocky back home I had to put it all aside and show the world that stiff upper lip.

An article today on Alternet: The Big Squeeze: How Americans are Being Crushed by Financial Insecurity and Doubt illustrates this mentality perfectly. It concludes with the following quote:

"We shouldn’t lose sight of the more invisible, but mounting, resistance of the moral underground. As it grows, it may undermine one of the great social fictions grounding American capitalism: That one leaves one’s morals and politics at the office, factory or store door when one enters the job site. This fiction is based on the well-propagated notion that when one sells one’s labor power one leaves one’s personal beliefs and values at home.  This social fiction is crumbling under the pressure of the Big Squeeze."

The enforced stoicism that makes for such an uncomfortable workplace is giving way to a new reality, one that recognizes the players as human beings and relies upon a new moral imperative to look out for them. This is a significant shift especially for those of us who come from a background full of animated, expressive people who have historically relied on one another to survive. It may help us build a movement to enable us to eke out a future in the bleak landscape of New America. 

Scapegoating at Work

The tanking economy has put more pressure on those workers who are left after layoffs, cut-backs and general attrition. Unfilled positions mean heavier workloads for those of us who have survived the slaughter. Our punishment is more of a slow and painful death instead of a simple beheading. Scapegoating in the workplace is not a new phenomenon. It was a problem before the recession as well. It just seems that now everyone being hammered senseless an desperately seeking a dog to kick.

The position of scapegoat is usually a rotating one. The person who holds it is perceived as powerless by others. You are not going to find a middle or upper management person being targeted. I've been actively in the workforce for 40 plus years now and have seen many scapegoats. I have also been one from time to time. In the huge majority of cases I've witnessed the person who falls out of favor is female. As women we have a lot of unwritten expectations piled on our plates. Transgression is easy. The bitch stereotype resonates with almost everybody, male and female alike. And it's a hard hole to climb out of. You can use direct confrontation tactics but that is a slippery slope. Both yelling and crying will only make it worse. Keeping your mouth closed and working hard is the only strategy I've seen work. But it's a protracted one. Don't expect results overnight.

RIght now it is happening to two people I know of at the library where I am employed. One a lesbian artist, the other a straight mom. The arguments against both of them are remarkably similar: "She is not a team player,"  She doesn't allow her work to interfere with her life," etc. are typical statements that circulate about them.

I'm not condemning my co-workers from a tower of self-righteousness. My hands are not clean on this issue either. And after having been the designated scapegoat more times than I care to remember, you'd think they would be. It's an oddly compelling feeling to dish someone in a group setting. It provides a sense of inclusion, of shared threat, of a common enemy. It can be a catharsis as well as a great relief to find that you are not the one being taken down. This thank god it's not me sensation has been a hit with viewers of reality shows for a couple of decades. Just watch Survivor for the reactions of other tribe members when someone is about to be voted off the island.

There is only one instance I recall here at the library when the scapegoat was male. He was a gay man who worked in the Children's Department and he was accused of child molestation. He was convicted by the testimony of co-workers and children and although the courts eventually threw out the charge saying it was unfounded, it was a blow that could not be survived. He is no longer among the living and although his death was due to disease, I'm sure the humiliation and ridicule he endured played a major role in shortening his life.

So, what can we all do to try to make our lives more tolerable in the new depression workplace where jobs are fraught with insecurity, low pay and meager benefits? I could quote Joe Hill on this one with "Don't Mourn--Organize." But if you just need to indulge in some serious trashing remember, that's what Management is there for.

The Hypersexualized Queer Mystique

Full disclosure, I am not a young person. And I have been openly queer for a very long time. I'm one of those genetic dykes, the doctor pulled me out, kicking and screaming (I must have had a sixth sense about this whole setup) and then said, Congratulations, it's a lesbian! The queer part of life did get better after I completed adolescence, which is a hell of an internship, and got past movies like The Killing of Sister George and The Children's Hour I was annealed in the flames of identity, so to speak.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the workplace and being gay there. Mine is in San Francisco so you'd think that all these issues would be a thing of the past and, on the surface, that's true. But work is a place where we are required to deal with people who might not interract with us at all in the real world. In that environment, all kinds of negative assumptions are alive and well. The one that has come up for me, of late, has to do with the hypersexualization of lesbians in the eyes of the straight world, in my case, straight women. I know that in the seventies it seemed as though every straight woman thought that every dyke (and every striaight man as well) wanted to jump her bones. In my real life, I have many straight friends both male and female. They are unabashed progressive types who have opened up their lives to include all genders and orientations. And many have come a long way in queer conciousness since I first met them.

I have always found the entire process of making friends at work daunting to say the least. When you are economically dependent on your job, it can be a path laden with danger. Although I get along well with everyone, the people that I actually talk about my life with tend to be queers. Not that I get along swimmingly with all the other queers but at least there is no "fear factor." This hypersexualization phenomenon is truly amazing. About five years ago I tried to be friends with a straight woman from the Phillippines, married with kids and grandkids who was a world traveler with an interesting history of working in the Peace Corps. We schmoozed a lot in our cubicles so one day I asked her if she wanted to go to lunch. After hemming and hawing a bit she said, I don't think so. You know I'm quite happy with my husband. Wow! I guess that she envisioned one hell of a lunch. Silly me, I was just thinking about a salad.

After that disheartening experience I gave up on befriending straight women at work until recently when I  connected politically with a union activist. Last year our workplace was a very stressful one, filled with pay cuts and layoffs. I liked her politcal perspective and her sense of humor. Here, I must add that I've been with my present partner for 12 years and am not looking for another sexual involvement. Both my girlfriend and I are monogamous sexually but neither of us are monogamous emotionally, meaning we both actively befriend other people. Also, I have to admit I'm not good at small talk and being of jewish descent, Im a bit of a terminal neurotic.So maybe I was inappropriate and too forward with self-revelation because I was having a meltdown due to my incredible, shrinking paycheck. But I felt that it was mutual and I certainly never proposed anything untoward or made any kind of advances at all. In fact I remember a conversation where I admitted that my libido was disappearing as I got older. But I was beginning to notice avoidance behaviors from her, which are really destructive in a workplace. Then I heard from a gay male friend that she though I'd been coming on to her!

Now, I avoid her completely which is sad but much safer for my career. I thought she was a lefty, but I guess the political isn't always personal on some level. 

I find this whole episode tremendously depressing. It reminds me of the way the critics of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy worried about gay males distracting straight comrades with aggresive sexuality while dodging bombs and bullets. Has all salaciousness been relegated to us queer folks? Do other people who've had these experiences have any suggestions? Maybe only time will shift this kind of prejudice.