Workin' for a livin'
After doing an hourlong local news podcast, which is not as much fun as you'd think, I got off what I laughingly call "work" and headed to a local liquor store. It was payday, and I was on schedule to pick up the weekly 12-pack.
I'm semiretired after nearly 40 years in daily newspaper work, and while I used to buy cigars and beer whenever I wanted to, I now buy everything on a rigid schedule. This is because I spent my life on deadline and now, with no real deadlines left, I've made up a schedule that partially approximates the rigid newsroom schedule that made me miserable for four decades.
Work is like smoking cigarettes. It's a lot easier to get the habit than it is to quit.
Heading out for the weekly purchase of beer, I passed about four fellows who stood on the median strip of a big boulevard.
They were begging. They were spaced about two miles apart, at the traffic lights where the cars have to stop when the light is red. One of them held a cardboard sign telling you he was homeless. Another held a cardboard sign saying he was homeless and a veteran. The other two didn't have signs. They must be new on the job. It doesn't matter what job you have, it takes you a while to learn how to do it, and you usually learn how to do it by watching the other workers.
I guess it was because I'd just ended my couple hours of daily employment, but for the first time in the many times I've driven that boulevard, I realized those men on the median were working.
If work is going somewhere and doing something you probably don't like to get money, then these guys fit the definition perfectly. The resemblance didn't end there, either.
Like factory workers, their job determined how far from each other they stood. Like construction workers, they were working outdoors. Like truck drivers and mechanics, they sucked in engine fumes all day. Like car salespeople, they spent their day smiling when they didn't feel like it, pleasing and thank you-ing and God-blessing. Worse yet, instead of one boss, they had a thousand bosses. Every driver who rolled down the window and offered a dollar bill was boss for a minute, free to tell them not to spend the money on drugs.
And, of course, they will spend almost all of it on drugs, but I worked with plenty of drunks and pill heads in my work career, and I never once got a note from management telling me not to spend my paycheck on beer or lottery tickets or drugs or prostitutes, even though I worked with plenty of people who spent serious amounts of money on those things.
The people I worked with would proudly tell you they "worked hard for their money," and they did, but none of them worked as hard as someone standing on a median strip when the temperature is 19 degrees above zero, gasping in the exhaust fumes and enduring the unsolicited advice of people who love being the two-minute boss of some grime-caked junkie who is trying to put together enough money for a bag of heroin and maybe a slice of gas station pizza.
Personally, I give in silence, or at most I accompany my dollar bill with a low-voiced, "Hereyago, pal." I like to make sure the junkie and I both come out of this with the dignity of a working man. It's about all I can do for the guy beyond giving him the buck.
Some jobs are better, and some jobs are worse, and some bosses make you beg for your money, and Boss Heroin doesn't give days off, and it's hard to keep working and harder to quit.
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