In the program, the story of five working poor are followed. The people followed discuss how they work hard fifty to eighty hours a week to barely get by, their dreams of success and moving up the economic ladder and all the effects that this status quo in employment and the paradigm of keeping workers in low wages and low skills ("fast food employment") does to their lives. For people like this even health care and housing are often luxuries.

I've found myself wanting to cry several times in less than an hour so far. In this program I see people I've seen in my life so many times. Friends in bad situations. Women with children that I've dated. In fact, at times I see some members of my own family.

Am I glad I am not in this trap? I make $65,000, which is far above the national average for median household income, and I am in a mid-career position with growth ahead if I keep on this course. My work is highly skilled and I get to direct how that work is done to a very high degree with the barest minimum of supervision. I feel that I am appreciated by my immediate supervisor, and his supervisor's supervisor (if not the one in-between). I am definitely not in the group that they're talking about.

But I have been.

I have worked jobs making between minimum wage and $8.00 an hour, and I have been so broke that I had to shuffle my bills to and lean on my family to survive. This isn't when I was nineteen, either - this was until almost the end of my twenties.

While I had the skills and knowledge, no one wanted to hire me to write code or do tech support. I did some contract work on the side for people who knew me because they knew me and what I could offer, but often for reduced wages because if I wanted more they wouldn't hire me, and frankly, I needed the money.

The reality is this: when you don't get into a good job situation early on in your career, doing responsible work for good wages, or when you have problems that interfere when you do manage to find that, then you get caught in a trap of low pay in dead-end jobs. I have seen that first hand. When I was making very low wages and was drenched in the depression that was the stuff of my life, my spirit was broken. I couldn't fight the battles of improving my situation because just getting out of bed was often a struggle, and that was made worse because even my family that I depended on couldn't recognize that. The one period of time during my twenties that I got it together and started to improve my lot, I became ambitious and decided to strike out on my own with a coworker, and that was a total disaster which derailed me yet again. It took a serious change of life and spirits to make a move out of that period of my life and get back on track.

Nonetheless, I am a wage slave of sorts, too. I work where I do because it's always challenging (if frustrating), but also because it's quite good money. I think about the fact that even as much as we make, I put away very little money � effectively, we live paycheck to paycheck. Sometimes I am afraid that if I went to a new job situation then I may not make as much and we can't live in the way in which we're accustomed. I am afraid of returning to the situations that I had been in when I was younger. Other times, I'm afraid that people won't look at my experience and the body of work I've done, not to mention the recommendations I could get from coworkers, but keep weeding me out because of narrow criteria that HR departments put on job advertisements such as degrees and certifications. In my experience those things mean very little, but it's a convenient criteria for them to cut down the field of job seekers.

What's worse is that in my work I am effectively a toolsmith; I build tools. I help our support center, desktop field support and third tier groups do more work with the same amount of people by automating tasks and giving them better tools. If our hospital system stops growing then the number of devices we put on our network will stop growing at the rate it has been, but the focus will remain doing more with less. In that situation I'll be an instrument of thinning our employment ranks, rather than holding the line against employment growth.

I watch programs like I am now and I wish I could do more. I wish I knew what to do.

Marilynn has always commented that I am a good tipper. Even my mother has. I know that comes from being in a situation where I made almost no money, so I know that a good tip is appreciated by poorly-paid wait staff and will (usually) go to good use. I guess it's my little way of doing something.

But I wish I knew how to make a real impact.

restlessmind