So we're sitting on site until they move this beast. For a couple of days we'll make a good bit of coin, certainly worth the drive. But there are challenges mind you. Lisa and I fall into the roles we've picked out the last couple of years, her being on days and my anti social self nights. She being the more socially gifted I have no issues whatsoever her insulating me from the top tier bosses and such. On this job, the site safety man has turned Lisa loose on the clean shaven rule which has resulted in many sound admonishments of unsuspecting and lackadaisical workers showing up all face messy and stuff. Upsetting enough to warrant nasty looks upon leaving. Although from previously scruffy faces. The power of the site safety man is immense and mountainous woes to the talker backer. For she will certainly rat him out.
This has not always been the case. The rules vary from boss to boss. While some have asked to outright deny access to some persons, not all company guys wish to subrogate that duty and we have occasionally been called on the carpet. It's all good.
My night life role has different challenges. Eyesight and hearing failings cause there own problems. First the hearing, "What's your name? Tyke the driver replies over the sound of the diesel. "Dike?" I repeat. And he says "sure" as I note it down wondering what parent would name his child after a female lesbian. Secondly the eyesight. At night I have to almost get within five or six feet of a mud covered license plate to read it. Even with a flashlight. And that's not a failing that mixes very well with some of these psycho drivers who blow through our little checkpoint without stopping. Fortunately my cat like reflexes, well don't really exist anymore. I am surviving this world entirely on dumb luck. Probably equally quantified by my willingness to get all pissed off and to start yelling at young guys....from Texas...who work in the oilfields...at my age. Anyway.
Watched the democratic debates. You know the adults. Bern does it for me each and every time. Nevertheless, whether he wins or loses and I think he's in it to win it. His mantra will be carried on. It started with the occupy movement. The assholes in the windows of the wall street firms mocking them to get a job. Yeah, well they and many others may be singing a different tune if Bernie gets into office. Is it fair that bazillions of people have criminal records for smoking pot when through fraud some of these rich guys broke the world and not only got to keep their millions, but the taxpayer's millions too? Candidates are now speaking the words. Too rich to go to jail? I guess history will tell. But in any event, times are changing. For myself, how interesting to still be around to watch. For my children, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way.
Listen, when I was a kid, a single person could work part time and afford an apartment, a car and even some extras. I could afford to play on the weekend, pay for a date and even catch a college football game or two. My kid jobs? bartender, truck driver painter and a host of others, predominantly unskilled. I caught up on classes in my off time. The handful of times I had a legal issue, twenty bucks the first time and forty the second. The latter involved showing up to court on my behalf twice. I painted a dentists house in exchange for work and even the most minor part time job usually had some elective health care with it. At twenty years old if I was crazy sick, (which was the only time I'd go to a doctor) I just opened my wallet and grumbled that it cost twenty bucks.
So, thirty years later was I surprised to learn that in effect, bartenders made less than I did. Thanks to a shitload of regressive taxes, car registrations are crazy expensive. Likewise the price of cars and insurance prohibitive. A visit to the ER on average is eight hundred, but who are we fooling? It could be thousands. Where I was making two fifty an hour, a little under two weeks wages that was set aside paid for tuition for a semester of college. Cramped my style that month because rent was seventy five bucks. Somebody was going to have to buy the beer this weekend.
Bottom line, if we want our kids to have any quality of life, minimum wage fifteen bucks, I'd say make it twenty. Surprise, maybe some common sense will prevail. I'm gonna have to be a little precocious here: my generation needs to get over themselves. We didn't "work" harder than our kids do. If anything, we were just more entitled.
And so it goes.
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