Blue Collar Blues
ОМСК A young student just started his first job as a delivery man and earned 800 rubles for about 4 hours of work. He was surprised at people's attitudes, and not one place gave him a tip. "Most didn't even say hello, even when I was carrying 10 kg up the steps for them!" he said. Alas, the way the world views blue-collar workers is pretty low. I can empathize, as I grew up in an upper-middle-class family with a Mercedes, a swimming pool, and a large house but nevertheless spent many years working the lowest-paid jobs that were available in the area. Everything seemed to pay $3.31 or $4, or at most $7.38 per hour. The money didn't give me much to live on at all, only enough to put gas in the old car—a hand-me-down from my grandparents—and pay off a little of the monthly student loan debt. When you're poor, the extended family starts treating you differently too, and you're trapped in a world with no options and given no voice or respect. And I learned a valuable lesson too! That people who don't respect others regardless of their incomes don't deserve much respect themselves. And how life for many is a ridiculous game of holding toys to feel like somebody. So the lessons learned were not a few. I saw how my parents, who had more and more found money more plentiful, would, in a perfectly Christian way, snub acquaintances that were not deserving much respect. That's why I enjoy old Soviet films very much and just finished watching "First Trolleybus." The story revolves around a young woman who graduated from school but isn't ready to go on to university but instead finds work as a driver of a trolleybus. She has many admirers but isn't ready to settle down and is torn between going back to school or doing the work she likes. In the end, she chooses the busy life of a driver and the people who have come to respect her. The point is that films were made that encouraged people to have a 'Christian outlook' on life, if you think about it. The view that we are all necessary, that every work is valuable, and that working with our hands is the greatest thing to do in life, not sitting as a fat-cat oligarch on the 'Black Pearl' sailboat, the largest in the world, as a student in Montenegro told me. Well, hopefully, my young student delivery driver will bump into nicer people, especially those who give a tip too.
ОМСК A young student just started his first job as a delivery man and earned 800 rubles for about 4 hours of work. He was surprised at people's attitudes, and not one place gave him a tip. "Most didn't even say hello, even when I was carrying 10 kg up the steps for them!" he said. Alas, the way the world views blue-collar workers is pretty low. I can empathize, as I grew up in an upper-middle-class family with a Mercedes, a swimming pool, and a large house but nevertheless spent many years working the lowest-paid jobs that were available in the area. Everything seemed to pay $3.31 or $4, or at most $7.38 per hour. The money didn't give me much to live on at all, only enough to put gas in the old car—a hand-me-down from my grandparents—and pay off a little of the monthly student loan debt. When you're poor, the extended family starts treating you differently too, and you're trapped in a world with no options and given no voice or respect. And I learned a valuable lesson too! That people who don't respect others regardless of their incomes don't deserve much respect themselves. And how life for many is a ridiculous game of holding toys to feel like somebody. So the lessons learned were not a few. I saw how my parents, who had more and more found money more plentiful, would, in a perfectly Christian way, snub acquaintances that were not deserving much respect. That's why I enjoy old Soviet films very much and just finished watching "First Trolleybus." The story revolves around a young woman who graduated from school but isn't ready to go on to university but instead finds work as a driver of a trolleybus. She has many admirers but isn't ready to settle down and is torn between going back to school or doing the work she likes. In the end, she chooses the busy life of a driver and the people who have come to respect her. The point is that films were made that encouraged people to have a 'Christian outlook' on life, if you think about it. The view that we are all necessary, that every work is valuable, and that working with our hands is the greatest thing to do in life, not sitting as a fat-cat oligarch on the 'Black Pearl' sailboat, the largest in the world, as a student in Montenegro told me. Well, hopefully, my young student delivery driver will bump into nicer people, especially those who give a tip too.