Capitalism! So neat! Money is a thing most of us need to survive, and often times people who have the money to pay other human beings aren’t exactly paragons of virtue. So for this week’s Bad Behavior Issue A+ roundtable, we asked our writers:Â What is something you had to do for money despite it being very unpleasant or else against your core beliefs in some way? How did you feel about it at the time, how do you feel about it now?
As always, we’d love to hear your answers in the comments!
Laneia, Executive Editor
Well this is going to be extremely lowkey ‘unpleasant’ so I hope my response is being place somewhere between two other, more interesting responses! The most unpleasant thing I’ve done for money was work at Tutor Time, which is a preschool chain. I needed to make money, and I’d been raising these two kids, so like?? What could’ve made more sense than getting paid to part-time raise other kids?
This is where I learned that I don’t like children. My kids are fine, but other people’s kids are not my thing. I’m sure your kids are lovely, though, I really am. I know they’re hilarious and smart and clever! And so sweet! But I don’t really want anything to do with them. I would come home every single night shaking from stress and needing to be totally alone, which is not how you want to parent your kids, you know?
Hilariously (haha) I had to enroll Eli at Tutor Time, because I needed someone to watch him while I was watching other people’s children for minimum wage, but the minimum wage I was making was just enough to literally break even. HAHAHA. So then I quit.
Now, when I look back to that time, I think, “Hm, that was exhausting and terrible!” And that’s it.
Rachel, Managing Editor
For almost a year I worked at a Fortune 15 company as an editorial sales associate, which meant that I used Microsoft Word to make individually prescribed formatting changes to Requests for Proposals from other companies according to that company’s own internal requirements for RFPs. A monkey could have done that job, albeit a monkey with the ability to understand Microsoft Word’s formatting preprograms, which is I guess another way of saying a human. Specifically, the company is one that provides software solutions to healthcare corporations and insurance companies — the thing they run on the computer, I think, to compute what you owe or what a doctor can bill for a procedure. Honestly I never knew exactly what our products did; I didn’t need to know in order to do my job! Which is sort of horrifying. I felt miserable about my job because I didn’t know what kind of cog in the awful machine that is healthcare in the US I even was; I felt awful that I was making the most I ever have or probably will ($50,000 a year, with benefits!) to do honestly almost nothing while my coworkers I had left behind in food service were busting their asses 50 hours a week and doing actual work for much less; I was deeply lonely being the only person under 40 (I was 23!) in the office and having the older men alternately ask for advice about their kids and tell me they liked my lipstick. Most of all, I felt terrible about feeling terrible, because I did in fact have a job and it was 2010 and no one else did, and I hated myself for being so ungrateful, especially when I knew my service industry friends thought of me as lucky and having made it.
I was also losing my mind for unrelated reasons at the time, like a terrible breakup and a very unpleasant living situation, and I decided I couldn’t possibly stay in my city or life any longer so I used the company printers to print out grad school applications, found a funded program and left. I also stole two boxes full of office supplies. I don’t regret leaving; I do feel guilt sometimes at not having stuck it out longer, at least paid off more student debt, been better situated now to be stable myself and help other people. I also feel grateful in retrospect that I was able to save and pay off as much as I did, and that I had the experience of working in a dronelike office environment. I know a lot of people in creative fields who fantasize about quitting to do something “easy” and make money, and I’m glad I don’t have to indulge that fantasy because I know how much I hate it.
Erin, Staff Writer
I’ve served and bartended for people who’ve called me darlin’ and sweetie and cutie and bitch and did so without ever once lighting a building on fire and it’s a personal nightmare that I survived and never want to do again. Customer service workers are saints, they’re gods. To be one takes an enormous amount of restraint, nerve, stamina, and mercy. While I was doing it I had to disengage with my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual body in order to get through a shift so it’s fair to say I was struggling considerably. This isn’t everybody’s experience with it, obviously, and for some people it’s the easiest thing they’ve ever done, but as someone who has been told by a renowned seer that this is my last incarnation because my essence is “exhausted” and good on the whole interaction front, it takes a lot out of me. I feel sympathetic for serving/bartendering me and want to give her hug.
Creatrix Tiara, Staff Writer
There was this modelling gig for some guy who turned out to be kind of a creep? And I never really saw the photos afterwards? It was for some bikinis or something but it was in his bedroom with some dingy camera. But I got some cash so oh well.
Al(aina), Staff Writer
One time, when I was really, really broke, I gave my brand new MacBook Pro to the pawn shop for $200. I really, really did not want to ask my mother for rent money that month, and I did something really dumb as a result. What’s even worse is that I had to ask my mother for the money anyway, because I couldn’t afford to buy back the laptop. Another time, I pawned a diamond and sapphire bracelet I got as a graduation gift for $60 so I could buy new character shoes after a heel broke off of the old pair.
Both times I felt really embarrassed. I hate money. I hate not having enough, I hate having to give things up to get some, and I hate that I cannot not think about money. It was embarrassing to have to give up what are honestly important visible signs to let people know that I am not in need in order to actually not be in need. It’s still embarrassing now! Every six months or so I’ll remember that I got $60 for an almost $700 bracelet and get that hot, angry, embarrassed feeling I had when I sold it. Maybe one day I’ll be able to be generous with myself for doing what I needed to do to survive, but I’m still upset about the things I have to do to survive.
Heather Hogan, Senior Editor
I’ve worked for a lot of shitty men who ran small businesses, and always got to know their wives or daughters, and so I spent a lot of time feeling physically sick with guilt for keeping my mouth shut about what assholes these guys were. There was the owner of one business who cheated on his wife like he was Don Draper, made lewd comments about literally every woman who ever came into our office, and grabbed me and kissed me right on the mouth on my last day. He was old enough to be my grandfather and had, in fact, been my dad’s very first boss. There was the VP of this one company who literally had two families that didn’t know about each other like some kind of Lifetime movie from the ’90s. There was the owner’s son-in-law who watched porn on and off all day in his office and met women from Craigslist at lunch multiple times a week. The guy who was so into Fox News and conservative talk radio that he had basically a murder-board of Hillary Clinton’s “crimes” on the wall in his office. The guy who took the petty cash every Friday afternoon. And oh oh oh, the homophobes. I say they were small businesses because there was no HR. These men had all all the power in their tiny little worlds, never had to answer to anyone, and took full advantage of it to just be the fucking worst. I’d always leave, eventually, when I couldn’t take it anymore; on to do bookkeeping and office managing at some other small businesses that inevitably turned out to be exactly the same.
Molly, Staff Writer
I’ve been a professional journalist for a decade and I’ve had to swallow some pretty homophobic, misogynistic, racist, (and any other -ist you can think of) comments from sources and record them as though I hadn’t just heard them be terrible. And while now I feel comfortable giving them pushback on this stuff, when I was just starting out, I had no such confidence and it made me feel like a failed human being a lot.
Alexis, Staff Writer
Hello this would be my customer service job. I’ve put up with sexual harassment (being kissed, being groped, told disgusting stories about people’s sex lives, threatened when I told managers about the pedophilic and really disgusting behavior of a coworker). Also the manager told the person what I said and called them out on it in front of the person and I still had 5+ hours to work with him. I was called a porn star’s name for a while (I support sex workers, I’m just thinking this may not be the environment to be called this though), outed, punched every time a coworker saw me, asked invasive questions about my trauma, and a manager held a knife to my throat while asking me, “Do you want me to end it all for you right now?” Because after intensive outpatient, I wanted to be better, and better (to me) looked like making more money than nothing. I just ignored the facts that: 1) one of my therapists told me I was basically re-traumatizing myself every time I went back to work, 2) I self-harmed a lot more when I had this job because I felt like I could finally contribute something, and 3) now most of my money has been going into alcohol so I can numb myself so I can go to work, so now I’m thinking my logic hasn’t really been adding up.
I’ve mostly felt like dying all the time because of it. It’s like ripping off old wounds just to infect them. I feel a little less like that right now because of a mood stabilizer, but it’s still like a ghost hovering near me, you know? I’m trying to get out but it’s taking a lot for me to remember that I’m allowed to and not feel very hopeless that all the other places will be the same if not worse (that whole “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” type thing) and to even feel worthy of something better.
Riese, Editor-in-Chief
I honestly don’t know where to begin! Actually a lot of this is going to be covered in an upcoming essay I’m working on about being a sex worker (which was 90% things I was fine about doing for money but 10% of the time, not so much) — but the first thing that came to mind for this roundtable was when my best friend and I were trying desperately to find an apartment to live in where we’d have enough personal space to keep our friendship intact and everything was SO EXPENSIVE and we were panicking about a potential security deposit. So that day I let a client go farther than we were supposed to according to my own personal rules of comfort and boundaries and also the rules of where I worked. The former I was honestly used to, just as a woman of the world, but the latter I STILL feel terrible about. I justified it at the time because he was my client exclusively anyhow — he only saw me, so what I was willing to do wouldn’t impact what he expected from other girls.
I wrote a story once for a porn magazine called 18teen… about why younger women actually prefer older men (i know) (im sorry). They paid $400. Also, they edited the article out of what it was into a weird story called “The Sex Pool”? I think I figured it was like, “well somebody’s gonna write and get paid for this stuff, it may as well be me!”
But honestly the most soul-sucking work I ever did was at Banana Republic. It was somehow… very bleak.
Carmen Phillips, Staff Writer
The summer before my senior year in high school, I got my first real summer job! My then-boyfriend (he’s also gay now) and I were hired to perform street theater for kids at the Detroit Zoo. At first, the job felt too good to be true! I was actually getting paid to be an actress (sort of) and being paid to be an actress was basically the only dream I had at 17 years old!
We spent that spring working with a local theatre professional to write a few short “edu-tainment” scripts about the animals, block it ourselves, and find our own costumes on the cheap. Such glamor! Did I mention that this “local professional” was a bonafide babe? Lisa Bonet come to life. When we did floor exercises, I would blush trying to sneak glances at her thighs in this black cotton sundress. Plus, she had a her full color back tattoo! My hormones never stood a chance. She once complimented my smarts during a lunch break and I lived off of that high for a MONTH! Let me tell you!
Ok, so everything was going great – until came the actual performing part. You know what no one tells you about spending five-hour shifts in the blazing afternoon summer sun, walking around the zoo trying to wrangle kids, for three days a week? IT LITERALLY SMELLS. It smells like elephant ass. Elephant ass with a light musk of polar bear and dead snake scales. And the kids cry! They run away! They touch you with their sticky kid hands and kick you because they think it’s funny! Parents never say thank you for entertaining their brood for five minutes so they could get off their feet! Your back spasms, your voice goes hoarse. And you end up spending your meager teenage paycheck on overpriced zoo food that gives you indigestion! Wanna know what’s absolutely not romantic during a hot, summer job with your boyfriend? Zoo farts. That’s what.
I wore out a pair of sneakers. I sunburned in places black people shouldn’t be able to sunburn. All summer, my mother would barely let me in my own home! I smelled so awful she’d ask me to hose off outside in our backyard!
That’s the story of short my tenure as a professional actress. I can still recite the mating rituals of cobra snakes by rap-song memory. I haven’t stepped foot inside a zoo since.
Alyssa, Cartoonist
Money is tough. I’ve not had a lot of jobs that have made me feel awful deep in my gut, but I did recently leave a teaching job that had me in pretty low spirits. About three months before I quit, I found out via coworkers that my employer had once hired the disabled daughter of a friend of theirs to a teaching aid position… for no pay. I’d legitimately never felt so bad in my life — to know that I was working for someone who’s practice went not only against my morals and values, but against the very things that I spend my days advocating against — and to feel genuinely trapped, dependent on that job for my (at least, short-term) survival.
In the end I took the leap and left my job. But I still resent the position I was put in, the co-workers that willingly stayed. The system that allowed it to happen. The voice I didn’t feel confident using. All of it leaves me with a gross feeling in my gut, and the deepest fucking resentment for capitalism (as though it’s not hate-worthy in and of itself) and a society that keeps marginalized communities fighting for their spot at a table that not only excludes but devalues them. If you think disabled folks aren’t discriminated in the workplace (and subsequently blamed for it) every day in this country – you think wrong.
