Recessionary Blessings

I first caught a glimpse of her as I happened to glance away from my book during a lunch break. She was standing between the time clock and the coat rack. Unlike the rest of us, who were gabbing with friends, running out to the loading dock for a smoke or finding a few minutes’ respite in reading, she just stood there with a faraway look in her eyes. The deep red of her hair and her pinpoint 3d freckles clashed against ashen skin and an expression of utter sadness upon her face. I knew that face. It was the look of someone mourning the income they once made.

There were passing moments when I had also glanced across the assembly line and asked myself how I wound up here, but I knew my reasons and I suspect that my life’s trajectory was more intentional than the redheaded lady’s. I had stumbled upon this temporary gig at a mail order facility, packing gift boxes for the holiday rush, just as I was getting ready to leave my miserable job at Club Cracker. I was already making some supplemental income as a copyeditor, so I figured that this pleasantly mindless, albeit low-wage job would be exactly what I needed to comfortably scrape through the holiday season.

It wasn’t easy for me to leave the Club without a solid job in store. I’ve been at odds with the job market for the better part of the last 15 months. In September ’06, I left a good salary and a very rewarding, long term, grown up job (my first one, really) as part of my eve of age 30 “big change”. And while I honestly don’t regret that choice, I freely admit there were moments during my darkest, poorest hours of unemployment when I wondered how I had gone from $35k to nothing. I felt like I had dove into an empty pool. I had to come to terms with the fact that my arts management skills are practically meaningless in a dying post-industrial economy.

Last summer, I received an offer from the Club and snapped it up without hesitation. The money was good, but the job wasn’t. At first, I wouldn’t even let myself consider leaving. It seemed like such an irresponsible choice in this brutal job market. But then one night, I found myself sitting in the middle of my bedroom floor, sobbing as I folded laundry, because I had been sobbing too much to not multi-task. Dan told me I couldn’t go on like this. He said, “Tara, this isn’t like Detroit. You can find something here. You can wait tables!”

I never thought that the phrase “you can wait tables” would ever give me such a warm sense of comfort, but it did. I knew I would be much happier waiting tables than working this salaried, soul-sucking job, so I immediately got cracking on my getaway plan.

In the course of a few weeks, I became a copyeditor/gift-packing elf. Copyediting is certainly more mentally stimulating and better paying than the mail order job, but I found the company of my assembly line colleagues strangely comforting. Many of them were middle aged, middle-class looking people who had taken buyouts from their auto industry jobs. People talked about the shitty economy like they talk about the weather; it’s that daily Michigan annoyance that rarely gets better but is never uninteresting. Everyone seemed to be struggling (why else would we work for eight bucks an hour for a few weeks in December?), but the struggle is now so common that we were all pretty nonchalant about it.

All in all, I guess this business of being poor has become far less shameful to me. I just landed a full-time job with that same company. It won’t pay nearly as well as the Club, but it’s worth it to me to work for a company that is known for treating its employees well. I honestly feel incredibly lucky for this opportunity, among so many other things.

Like, I think a lot about the sad, redheaded lady and what may have made her situation so devastating. She looked like a mom. What would I do if I had kids and I got laid off? I feel so lucky that I don’t have to worry about that. Or, I think about how much harder it was for me to get by in Detroit. But as hard as it was there, I could never feel too sorry for myself because I could easily spot someone who had it way worse than me. I feel lucky that I got a chance to live there and learn how to be poor. I am a far more conscientious money-manager for it. I’m remarkably lucky for having a man I can lean on in troubled times. I’m so grateful for being warm on this snowy winter day, especially since I’ve come to know how hard it can be to pay your rent.

I’m not trying to belittle the misery of this economy. It will probably get worse before it gets better (despite Governor Granholm’s claims, which bear a vacuous “prosperity is just around the corner” air). So, why am I riding this inexplicable wave of glee? I truly feel fortunate and free, especially since I discovered that the best things in my life have nothing to do with working a grown up job and making $35k a year.