Have you ever had a real job? I mean, an honest-to-goodness clock-in-clock-out here’s-your-company-polo-shirt job? I don’t think you have. I’m disappointed in you.
I was hard-pressed to put my finger on it at first. We all look pretty similar. Yet still, I found some subtle difference between myself and most of the people I knew back in the day?high school?and my new companions. We have the same test scores, AP credits and gasp-inducing GPAs. But we must stare at each other across a huge gulf because you’ve never had a real job.
Georgetown students have fake jobs. Your resumes were so thickly padded when you came to this school that a pro wrestler could not have torn them in two, but the “valuable experiences” listed therein are of the wrong sort. While you were out teaching disadvantaged children of mothers with heartburn how to read, I was filling out a time sheet. Now, I don’t pretend that there was any particular virtue in this?I just wasn’t enough of a go-getter in high school to take advantage of the no doubt life-changing “leadership conferences” you spent your summers attending. In fact, if I had not encountered a big yellow bus (it was a stealth bus) at high velocity in my mother’s car, I probably would not have found myself job hunting to pay off the rather large increase in our auto insurance premium.
For that is the goal of a real job?money. People take fake jobs for all sorts of reasons?To pad their resume, fulfill community service requirements (not court-ordered ones) or the ever-elusive “goodness of their hearts”?but people in real jobs want a paycheck. There’s something sweet about simple motives.
I’m not bashing community service. I think it’s a great thing?for those served. I think that Georgetown students would do better for themselves to take a job that earns a wage. For fake jobs in community service teach only one thing: that other people have lives that suck and you don’t. If you take a real job, you learn many more lessons. You learn that it doesn’t matter how much money your parents earn if you’re wearing an apron. You learn that sweet old ladies will stiff you on your tip if you don’t refill their ice tea often enough. You learn that people will walk off with anything not physically attached to your body. You could say that while fake jobs teach compassion, real jobs teach nihilism. I certainly learned to fear and despise customers very quickly. But that’s not quite true, for though I may have hated my co-workers and my customers both, I had to learn to deal with them.
I worked for exactly two nights as a hostess at an all-night diner. As I was refilling the silverware station, I remarked to a new co-worker that I thought I knew a guy at the bar, but couldn’t place him.
“Oh yeah,” said the waiter. “I see all sorts of people here from when I was an ecstasy mule in New Mexico, but dude, I can hardly remember my OWN name from back then!”
And I simply smiled and commiserated, because he was the one keeping the crackheads at table three away from my menu station.
Real jobs teach you the true value of money. I had a job at a CD store in the gay district of town. I had 20 male co-workers. They informed me on my first day that as the sole female, if we ever had a woman “runner,” or someone who shoplifts by dashing out the fire exit, it would be my duty alone to run after her and tackle her, so that my company could avoid a possible lawsuit for sexual assault, as well as the loss of any merchandise. Before that day, I had no idea what I would be willing to do for six bucks an hour. So I wore running shoes to work, and took the cash register by the door. Ever vigilant.
I also choose to rail against fake jobs on the grounds that they are exploitative. Many internships will gleefully take your skilled, educated labor, and offer you in return “valuable work experience” and “connections.” Hey, do you think that the fact you were willing to work for free sends good signals to your future employers?
“Hmmm, you devoted 20 hours a week to the campaign to save the endangered Bolivian toothfish while carrying a full courseload. Impressive. Shall I schedule you for the same amount of unpaid overtime?”
So folks, know the value of your time and labor. It has a dollar sign on it. Devote yourself to causes if you want to, but make the focus on the cause, not your personal enrichment. I promise you that one week working with people for whom that $6 an hour represents rent, food and various mind-altering substances will teach you more about the human condition than D.C. schools could do in a year. Plus, you’ll get paid.
Laura Becker is a sophomore in the College and contributing editor of The Georgetown Voice. She also thinks you need a haircut, ya freak.
