A Little Hard Work

I find myself at work sometimes wondering how companies can feel good when they know that their company doesn’t pay a living wage? I’m blessed to have a job, it’s better than not having one but I still cannot pay my bills on time with what I make. I’ve told my manager that I’m looking for a part-time job to add but to be honest, if someone would offer me a job that pays a living wage, I would take full-time.

Honestly, I’ve had two interviews so far with a government agency. This one pays pretty good, not the most that I’ve made but it would pay my bills each month with extra left over. The hours would be unpredictable so that is a downside but providing a paid for home and having food on the table. Being able to buy school clothes without anyone else’s help. I just can’t stop going after that division, every posting that I see within a reasonable driving time.

One of the interviews was truly strange. It was a group interview, which was weird in itself. When I was asked to come into the room for the “interview”, the only thing he did was read over the questions on the application, that was it! It was so strange. The second interview that I went to at a different location was a bit more normal. When I was asked to step in for the interview, he was cordial and actually had a conversation with me, I was so thankful. He said he selected me but he had to take his selections to three other people and see who gets chosen from there.

My sister and her husband helped to purchase four pair of pants. School is just around the corner and I won’t know what will be needed for supplies until we go to orientation. Little by little I fall further and further behind in everything and just pray that I’ll be able to dig us out.

I just don’t understand how I can sit in these interviews and can tell the people that won’t stick around but the interviewers don’t seem to. Am I missing something?

At my current job, they all know that I’m applying other places and I think some are jealous or just plain crazy. I was talking to a girl about it when another girl came up and said that she worked for it and didn’t like it. I knew she did but she did a completely different job and left it because she thought it was too hard. She tried to put in negative things to my conversation and say things that weren’t true about the position that I’ve been applying for. I spoke up and told her that she was wrong, that it was not what I was being told and seeing. She seemed to get upset that I went against what she was saying. Then she said “that’s what others said in that position, I knew them so if you think that’s good then go ahead” then turned and walked off so no one could say anything to her. I truly think that she’s a bit jealous that she gave it up before giving it a chance, or is it just that she has the mindset that since she has a masters degree that it’s below her?

My co-workers masters degree is in literature, yet she said she doesn’t want to be a teacher and now she sits behind a desk doing customer service for less than minimum wage. I don’t get the logic, nowadays employers don’t care what the degree is in, only that you have one. They don’t seem to care if you’re applying for something that is nowhere near what you studied but seem to think just because you have that degree that you can do anything. They completely confuse education with intelligence all the time. She’s a nice girl but why would you not want to work and make enough to pay your bills? With a masters degree, you have to have school bills? I guess her parents could have very well paid for it, I’m not sure. It just drives me crazy that when you have that step up to use and you don’t use it. Why bitch about your situation when you’re not willing to take a chance and do some work at a job you studied for?

Maybe I’m not making any sense or maybe it’s just me, I don’t know. I just want to get paid a decent wage for an honest days work. There’s no entitlement here nor any intention to sit on my butt and let someone else carry the load. I consider myself a hard worker. Is being a hard worker a thing of the past? I know with everyone being on the computer more it’s hard to think of doing labor but what the heck? How does anyone get anything done anymore, hire someone to do it? Who are they hiring?

It’s frustrating but I just hope that I’ll hear good news from one of the interviews. I just hope and put it out there.

Money

Getting the pleasure to work from home is something that took years in the making. Paying my dues shall we say, is just how it was taught to me. But work was never removed from the option of being at home. When I was younger, growing up in a single parent home due to the passing of my father, my mother constantly worked in order to support our home and family. Before the passing of my father, she would always be doing something in the house. Clean bed sheets were always a nightly joy after leaving the shower and putting on your clean pajamas. Dishes were done and the floor was washed, every single day. After my fathers passing; not only did she still do these things until us children were old enough, but she also took on working outside the home. Strong woman with strength that no muscle could ever come up against. Funny how those two words are not used the same or at least understood the same.

Strong also strength is associated with that of physical capability and not with emotional stamina anymore. To say someone is strong we put upon them the burden of proof. Bulging muscles under tightly fitting clothes or the ability to lift and move something that the average human cannot. Yet being strong is not just about physicality; strength is also of the mind. Being able to lose your partner and still carry on tomorrow as it would normally be for your children; that takes strength. Consoling others while you need it yourself; that is strength. Taking the step forward into a world that you were not allowed to be in before; that is strength. Choosing to live when all of your body is telling you to lay down and give in. It is moments like these that put our minds to the test of strength and although we sometimes fail, often we achieve what we never thought possible.

Work is normally associated with that of a job that pays that person, yet I hope the majority of us also do work around the house. It’s that confusion I think that propels most of the newer generation not to do productive things. Work has become a four letter word since most of them haven’t had to do any work around the house. It was normal in my house on Saturday mornings you would find us at home cleaning and not outside playing. We were not allowed to go outside until all the work was done along with the grocery shopping. Of course being kids we made the most out of it with music and the occasional argument. But even though it was hard on us, I look back with the fondest memories of that. We were working as a family to accomplish a common goal and what I couldn’t do, my older siblings pitched in.

We laugh now as we’ve gotten older about who gave who a bloody nose and who was caught kissing out in the tree out back. But those memories are always of the family and not generally an individual. So the work we did actually built our strength in both our new families and our every day life.

I am thankful that I was blessed with an amazingly strong mother to show me the right and wrong about these words. It’s not the money that brought me to be who I am and I don’t think it ever would have. It’s the work and the strength that she displayed and I followed; being a child I would never have done what she said but instead done what she did. I agree children rarely listen, but they do as they see and are shown.

So I hope that someday I will have passed this down at least to someone and keep the thought alive that if you work and build your strength, that with each new challenge you face, it will feel easier.

Well, I have a floor to wash so if you’ll excuse me.