One of the interesting things about modern work life is that it brings one into contact
with people of different backgrounds, life experiences, races and cultures.
Most importantly, it introduces people of different
financial circumstances to one another--even if they aren't always aware of it.
It's an unspoken rule that in America, we don't talk openly about
our finances; no one admits to the type of credit card debt the average
American family holds. And yet work
often exposes you to subtle cues about how other people live. The secretary who will be taking an 18 hour
bus ride to visit her boyfriend for the weekend because the $250 for a flight
is too high. It doesn't matter the ticket is still $100 bucks and will cost her almost 2 days travel time. Or the lady who works downstairs who doesn’t have a credit card,
but a Nick’s Check cashing card.
Then there is the secretary whose kids are constantly calling to say the electric
company has turned off the power, despite the fact that she explains to the electric company every month “I
pay my bill on the 15th, not the 5th." But they just don’t get it
so every month they turn off her power for a few days because the bill comes
due sooner.
In one of my first jobs out of college, I find myself very aware of money at work. Especially when accounting drags its feet in
reimbursing mileage and expenses. I turn
in my card with every pay sheet only to find that the check covers only a
portion. Sometimes a pay period will
come and go with nothing. “Next time, it
comes next time,” the accountant always nods, slightly annoyed.
” Since I just got paid for July, will August’s check come in
October?” I ask. She looks at me, deferring
“No. Next time. You get paid next time.” Work currently owes me $110. I can cover it but it annoys me to have to
keep track and remember--least they never repay me. For many employees, this would be a problem,
but I am lucky.
My boss had explained,
“We'll pay for your mileage
out, your parking. If you stop to get a coffee, we’ll pay that
too. No one ever takes me up on it but
we will." He added, "It’s totally appropriate if you
get out of a meeting at noon to go get lunch and expect the company will pick it
up.“ But as I quickly learned, there is a big disconnect between
the boss and the accounting department.
“They shouldn’t make you wait." He told me, "If
you need to be reimbursed right away, use a check request to get the money in
advance.”
All over America,
wages have not kept pace with inflation and you can see it at the workplace if you know where to look. I pay close attention to my coworkers
cars--not because I'm particularly interested in horsepower, or sleek lines and name brands, but because of what it no longer signals. Everything is bought on credit
these days, especially vehicles. The boss
drives close to the same car as the secretaries. A few of the workers have older cars that are
a little beat up, but most drive $30,000 or more vehicles. One secretary drives a shiny new oversize SUV
she leases because she can’t afford the purchase. But as she told a friend one day over a coffee break, when she goes on trips she rents an Escalade
from a friend that runs a luxury car rental,
“A one-hundred-and-twenty-dollar a day car, I get it for sixty.”
My eye wanders to clothes, purses, shoes--trying to dissect
the hidden financial lives of these people.
I know that even the lowest paid among them can’t earn less than 30-40 K
yet some of them can’t pay the bills and many carry debt. What do they spend it on? Are they just bad with money? Hidden expenses? Some of them have had bad breaks. One woman in particular, I think she just
doesn’t know how to deal with money. She
cashes all of her checks at Nick’s check cashing and uses it as her bank.
Gas prices, I am sure,
haven’t helped. Most of my coworkers
commute. I was coming in from a conference at 10 am one morning. As the elevator door slid shut one morning, a
woman staggered on. She caught my eye.
“Traffic.” She pauses dramatically, “Was
horrendous. It normally takes me one
hour to get here but it was hell today--took me an hour and a half.”
”You know," I calculate, “If you commute an
hour each way every day, you’ve essentially worked 10 hours you weren’t paid
for ever week.”
Her eyes lit up,” I
know.” She said, “Isn't it crazy?”
I didn’t have the
heart to tell her I lived a mile and a half away. One of the things I am
realizing is that most people just don’t think about these things from the perspective of what it is costing them. She got it, yet she acted like she didn’t have a choice.
When I first started
working at Initech,I mentioned to a secretary that I only lived a short distance
away. “Oh, my god, we hate people like
you!” she joked, calling to an admin
assistant. “But you rent, right? I own a home, so I’m out in Valencia.” The other woman lived in
Fullerton. I should have been geographically shocked,
but I once had a friend who lived so far away then when she went on job interviews the firms she interviewed with had
never even heard of it. "Monrovia?” they asked
incredulously. Two hours is too far even
by LA standards.
*
I remember reading a
series of articles in the LA Weekly about living in LA titled “The L.A. Dream
Revisited.” Since most people in the LA
area rent, the series contained the curious subtitle “Beyond the house and the
yard…the apartment as object of desire.”
It focused on the people who rent, which the reporters struggled with
against a backdrop of record home ownership and housing prices. As Robert Greene writes, “A majority of
Angelenos don’t live in cottages, mansions, or tract houses but in apartments,
and there is no living unit more emblematic of LA than the three-story dingbat
apartment building, parking spaces underneath, stucco covered…” I read with
some amusement an article on a couple who have sold their house to rent because
it is such a comparatively good deal.
And yet more and more
people have added the additional burden of a long commute into the mix. More and more people have felt compelled to
jump into the real estate market, moving further and further out for affordability,
never questioning whether home ownership is a good investment when you
calculate the cost of commute times and high prices on lifestyle.
With the rise in gas prices, the effect has been two fold; a
loss of time and a money. That house now
costs many more than they realize. The
job that pays 40 K and takes 40 hours a week now pays less for more time when
you factor in gas and the 50 hr work that commute creates. And that assumes you never come in early or
leave late, an increasingly difficult balance to strike.
It's the hidden financial lives of coworkers that are changing in subtle ways the American worklife. It has to affect productivity, and one questions the societal toll as we look to
schools to baby-sit and raise the children whose parents are stuck in traffic or the cubicle and can't get back until dinner. Can we reclaim our work lives and roll back
the clock?
Sometimes, the hidden lives of coworkers don't remain so hidden. The girl who used to cruise to Vegas in the rented Escalade didn't come to work one Monday and rumors swirled about an arrest. With the skills I'd gleaned from a previous contract job, I looked her up on the LA County jail site: she'd been arrested for check forgery. Becuase she was in jail and couldn't come to work, she was fired later the next week for failing to come in.
I left the job a few months later, but sometimes I think about my old coworkers and wonder where they are. What my boss is doing. But not very often. You never know what's really going on in the cubicle next door, or in the millions of cubicles beyond it. BUt everywhere you look--there's money, a real person, and a story hidden behind them.
Read and post comments
|
Send to a friend
]]>
