Words to the Wise Needed

Don't do it.

Just don't do it.

How many times have you heard those words?

Three words, three little words that can be such freakishly, earth-shatteringly, frighteningly, clearly simple.

And, like most of the human race, you speed by while running on the hamster wheel of life, and forget that when Mum told you, "Don't do it," it wasn't to keep you from fun, it was to keep you from harm.

One way or the other, three words can pretty well sum up the entire safety system required for life. And those are the three words that crop up when the coffers are empty, the pantry is bare, toilet paper is almost gone completely and there is no money coming in. I mean, who hasn't contemplated that slightly on the edge of legal activity from time to time when things get really desperate. And by that, I mean the funnier "just thinking about it," not the "really going to do it" contemplation.

Get involved in stealing for a living? Well, stealing when things are truly bleak has been considered from time immemorial to the present. And I am talking about the legal to steal in addition to the absolutely illegal to steal. Say, shoplifting versus picking up some extra dosh through those occupational forays that would have been illegal under the pre-deregulation banking era we are now suffering from.

So, there is stealing. And there is stealing. You can define it pretty well, or you might be like the Supreme Court that can't recognize it except for when they see it in person, making all those X-Rated movie cases so demanding on the Justice's popcorn makers.

Well, there is stealing, and that stealing might be legal, or not. That is, stealing that is different from going to law school or B-school to learn derivative marketing -- Don't do it. It may not be illegal per se, or the theft might not be "theft" as defined in the law, but no one is going to want to know you after they see the old 401-K has dropped 6000% in value over the prior year.

How about the old sell yourself to the highest bidder for nefarious or pleasurable purposes? As opposed to less well known nefarious purposes such as a meal ticket in exchange for a relationship you aren't that into, but it's not actually selling your sleeping space to the highest bidder. Oa series of high bidders. Don't do it. No matter how you slice it, it's still prostitution, as Lady Aster found when she had to "think about it" after being offered a huge sum to sleep with a portly, and obviously drunk dinner companion. Sell your body, well -- that's why it's defined as it is. Works also for the payor and the payee.

Third rail on the El, just so close and so daring you to touch it? Don't do it. Then again, after the age of five, you pretty well know that without Mum's voice in your ear. And when you are so broke that you don't know whether to kill yourself or commit suicide, then don't don't do it. Get some help. Call a friend, a relative, or your Mum.

How about when you work month in, month out as you are paid not more than an amount that covers five of your hourly-rat hours? Especially when your monthly work hours are a hundred hours north of the average 160 hours for a working month?

How dumb is that?

Well, I ask, just exactly how dumb is that? And should one do it? For how long? Or if not, what do you do?

And who would take advantage of another by paying no more than five hours of time for a month of work from someone? Whether the someone in question worked twenty or two hundred hours, or if the someone worked not less than 150 hours per month, the pay packet answer each month is the same. Five hours of pay.

Those five hours are also known by the payor, the employer, to be about another 15 hours less than what is necessary to keep body and soul together, and so, the question is, how dumb is it?

You tell me.

I have on my side, the reality that in this economy, getting paid for even five hours is a good thing. I also enjoy the work. I like the people. But really, five hours of pay for more than 230 hours of work is still, well, not enough.

Never mind that if I were paid for 15 of those 150 hours, I could squeak by. Just.

If I were paid for 25 of those 50 hours, I'd be fine. In other words, I know economy, and I don't mind economy. But working to get enough to survive on while getting paid nothing for what I am actually doing, I cannot afford that any more.

So, now what? How do I convey the fact that indentured servitude is just so mid-19th Century?

So, this is the thing of it. I am being horrendously underpaid, which either reflects one thing or another, and it doesn't matter which one thing it is, but I need to get around some one thing to convince those that should pay me that underpaying me is a "don't do that" sort of thing.

And, I need to do some thing or the other where I will be paid more than what I am making now. I just can't believe that I am worth less now, dollar for dollar without that snazy adjustment for the decline in valuation of the dollar, than I made in college decades ago, when I worked part time in a college zoology lab and waited table at a diner.

Now that I have those decades of experience, multiple graduate and post-graduate degrees, classes and an ABD PerFudd, which is to say all but dissertation completed for a doctorate.

Any thoughts? Inquiring minds, and all that.