Champion of the daily grind

     Soon, it will be 7 AM. I just went to bed at 1 AM because I just got home from unloading a truck full of cheap, Asian-made wares that Asian relatives will buy in a department store and then send back it back to Asia because they have disposable income working contract jobs with American corporations to send things back. In all of the Donald Trump fervor of nationalism - this is nothing new. Yet, here I am.

     I've always subscribed to the Protestant work ethic despite my grandmother being an Irish Catholic. The Protestant work ethic is the idea that a person's duty is to achieve success through hard work and thrift. It was something that fueled my Depression-era grandparents. Both grandparents lived through hard time, had minimal education, but worked tireless hours for their daughters to provide them with a home and the ability to do more than what they had. One of my grandfather's sayings was "you've got champagne dreams and a beer wallet." Obviously, 15 plus years later, that mantra sticks with me. I left my mother's house at 16 years old because I wanted to work a summer job instead of staying home and watching my brother and sister while she worked. It was a message that was emphasized over generations - how was it not suppose to resonate within a guy named Brandon? When I moved out, I got my worker's permit for a 16 year old and had a job washing dishes within a week. You can't stop the Irish from working. The earnings were not enough for an aspiring 16 year old, so I got another job at a rival restaurant and worked the maximum amount of hours. It was New York, no one was checking in on that.

    In a previous article, I wrote about the yeoman's work. After working a 12 hour day, I would come home to a 12 pack of cheap, domestic beer, such as Genesee Cream Ale - just like my Trampa. You set two beers at the opposite sides of the driveway and you take a sip with each pass of the shovel or snow blower. There was an honesty within those sips, each earned through labor. In Industrial-era Buffalo, bars and taverns would be full of workers eating a cheap meat sandwich and a pint or two of Iroquois or Phoenix. There was a tacit agreement between worker and employer where if you were going to subject your workers to a grueling regimen, you gave them a luxurious lunch hour where they could imbibe a pint or two to deal with the drudgery of the day. The wives would trudge over snow banks to go to the neighborhood brewery or bar and fill up a gallon of beer for the yeoman to come home and enjoy the fruits of his labor.    

     A lot of us working class ilk have bought into the idea of the Protestant work ethic. It's the driving force of the American dream. Work hard, find a class braud to make children with and house them in a 2 room, 1 bathroom home paid through a mortgage and backed by a college education. However, the rules of engagement have changed. God forbid you live in a desirable plot of land - you'll end up fighting for a reasonable studio apartment that takes 50 percent of your income. Student loans leave you strapped for cash. You worry about the having children because you can't provide them the same dreams and aspirations your parents had.

     Some employers in the Pacific Northwest have beer refrigerators. As a wage slave, I find that completely amazing. Employers aren't advocating for their employees to get blitzed at lunchtime, but understand that there are holistic qualities of having a cold one with a sandwich. It's like moving into your first apartment and having ice cream for dinner. You're not going to do it all the time but it's a nice treat. You could also speculate that it may dissipate the urge to binge drink on the weekend - not letting the stress to build up for five days to explode all over the weekend. There are cultures in Europe that don't have the prevalence of alcoholism because of the normalization of the act.

 *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* Time to make the goddamn donuts (if you remember the 1980s Dunkin Donuts commercial.) I believe it is time to revise the early ideas of industry and work that the American workforce has embraced since the 1920s. Do you know what else happened in that era? Prohibition. We no longer wear suits to the office and Spot, the company dog is laying by your feet at your stand up desk. We cling to old and outdated ideas. Yes - it worked before but perhaps it's time to reinvent the wheel. I believe a majority of people want to work hard, but we've all been worn down to such a point where we're just apathetic. We have two days to recharge after five days of depleting our energy. There are small, nominal things employers can do to make their employees happier and more productive. Even if the answer is working less.

So, let's have a beer at the 1 o'clock meeting, get the creative juices flowing and let's figure this thing out.