It’s Friday, March 14, 2025, 5:24pm.  It’s kinda sunny outside and getting warmer daily.  Last night was the full blood moon eclipse or something, but I slept through it’s ideal viewing time.  My cat snoozes to my left as I type this out on my living room couch.  This is another edition in the Crip Time essays.  I started this one a week ago, and here it is in entirety:

CRIP TIME 2: On LABOR & WAGES

It’s Friday March 7, 2025, 4:07pm.  It’s still kinda warm and sunny outside and I’m sitting on my living room couch while my cat snoozes beside me on her sea of blankets.

I just got home from dropping my sweetie off at work.  He works full time (5 days a week/8-hour shifts) at a residential group home for people with mental health conditions.  Before getting out of the car, he was telling me about how one counselor at the group home recently needed to take an extended leave of absence from work to take care of their own life and needs, which is impossible when also addressing all the needs of their job on a full-time basis.  This is a constant problem for anyone in a demanding field or industry, especially during times of political/social/economic crisis as we have been experiencing here in the USA for a long time now.  It made me think not only of mental health counselors but also ER doctors, nurses, PCA’s (personal care attendants), public school teachers, mothers and caretakers (who may still have other full-time jobs to tend to additionally), and so many more.  It also made me think of an old meme I saw that illustrated how therapists also need their own therapists themselves.  Some people laugh at this concept, but that only makes me wonder what that laughing person’s job is?  And what are the daily demands of their job?

In my previous essay about “Crip Time”, I mentioned my theory about how  analyzing this concept could be helpful to ALL people.  Here is that part again: “I feel that pondering the expansiveness of crip time would be helpful for people who aren’t constantly ill in understanding what it’s like to be so.  But its also helpful to reexamining all aspects of modern life and its continually failing/crumbling systems and structures as well as our relationships to them.”  The system/structure that I want to examine in this essay is that of LABOR, it’s relation to time plus our mortal bodies/abilities, and the concept of being compensated for this “work”.

One time, long ago, I had one of those “nice” jobs.  The kind where they really take care of you: full health benefits, PTO (paid time off), plus other cool perks.  If you worked there long enough, they even hooked you up with a cell phone that was paid for as well as a vehicle that you can also use outside of work.  Even still, I found myself overwhelmed by the workload and the variety of personalities I had to answer to on a daily basis.  It came to a head for me several times.  One time, I was deep at work trying to finish editing an important video in order to meet a strict deadline.  However, my office door was always open to whomever chose to walk in (I always liked having an “open door policy” lol how *~*progressive*~* of me!).  While I was attempting to concentrate and trying to meet my deadline, I found my office suddenly crowded by three different bosses.  They all seemed to be talking at once about three completely different matters.  What made me angry is that most of the demands they were making of me had absolutely nothing to do with my job description.  A year before this, I even “quit” that job at the drop of a hat when I was asked to make a PowerPoint presentation for someone else, which was also unrelated to my job.  I stormed out of the office after announcing my resignation and went for a walk by the wharfs downtown, ignoring a barrage of phone calls from all of my bosses pleading for me to come back.  I obviously did go back, because I was passionate about my work - but I was SO MAD lol.  Anyways, this time I decided to try a less “emotional” approach (I was often criticized at this job for “lacking a sense of humor” and tried to work on this).  As the three chattering men crowding my office continued to raise the volumes of their 3 individual conversations, I quickly switched applications on my computer.  I went from my Final Cut editing software to my iTunes and let one of my favorite Black Flag songs RIP through my computer speakers.  “I’M NOT A MACHIIIIIIIIINE! MACHIIIIIINE!  MACHIIIIIINE!”  (At least they stopped talking.)  The next year I replaced myself at this job and resigned.  I never had a “nice, full-time, salaried job” again, for better or (oftentimes) worse.

Sitting in the car with my sweetie before he had to go off to work, I couldn’t help but wonder: why don’t they simply reorganize the scheduling process for his job?  It is clear that burnout is a constant problem in his industry.  It made me think of an ex from my past - a friendly, cheerful writer from Texas who paid his way through private college by winning a highly-coveted scholarship but also working summers on an oil rig.  Their schedules were very grueling and were organized by a general standard of “10 days on/10 days off”.  So for the first 10 days you worked your long-ass shift (probably 12 hours) while living on the job site.  Then, you got to go home or wherever for your 10 days off.  While I still think that job schedule is RIDICULOUS and ABSURD, I began to wonder if this practice had any logic whatsoever behind it.  What if the counselors at the group home worked 1 day on/2-3 days off, based on their individual needs?  Maybe this schedule would ensure that the counselors had enough time to address their own daily health needs or at least get a chance to regroup from an especially traumatizing day at work (in that industry - there are many of these!).  This made my head spin, because a barrage of further questions filled my mind immediately. 

Work is work - and eventually, everything becomes a grind.  I’ve heard these sayings before in many different contexts and tend to agree with them.  Even the greatest job in the world becomes grating when it comes at you intensely for too many days in a row.  What if we tried to remedy this by having a “healthier” relationship with TIME?  I know it’s not that easy tho - because first we would have to address our unhealthy/unsustainable relationship with equating time with money & PROFIT.

I’m not an economist nor a business magnate (thank the Lord, AMEN), so to investigate this further I decided to do an online search of a catchphrase I hear among capitalists who deem themselves “ethical”.  My search was: “profit-driven wages”.  I simply wanted to know - what does that actually mean?  My logical self believes that phrase would imply that the more profits a company makes, the higher its wages for employees go.  But how is this different from a worker-owned cooperative?  So far, my brief internet search leads me to believe the only difference is: MANAGEMENT.  Anyone who has seen the 1999 comedy film Office Space can tell you - managers are the most loathed people in any industry!  Probably because they are so useless.  They don’t “labor” in any way that is valuable to humanity.  They simply protect the profits of the bosses.  They’re kinda like insurance companies it seems.  The irritating “middle-man” that prevents anything from actually getting done in an efficient and ethical way. 

The first hit on my internet search for “profit-driven wages” was this article from 2 days ago posted on Forbes.  This is what I would call a “puff piece”, otherwise known as “puffery”.  Thats the kind of word you use to describe a piece of “journalism” that does not serve any purpose at all: it is neither helpful nor informative and even might serve to distract from/dismiss larger problems at hand.  Why do I feel this way?

The piece is very short (under 700 words if my word document app counted correctly) and is titled “People Over Profit: The Key To Long-Term Innovation And Growth”.  While it only mentions the successes of major, multi-million (probably billion at this point?) corporations, the article is nestled under the “Small Business” section of the Forbes website.  I find this interesting because it seems that the author truly wants the readers to believe that anything a corporation can do - the little guy can too!  That sounds nice and whimsical or whatever but we all know this is not true.  We also all know that a corporation vs. a small business deals with completely different environments, issues, taxes, and most importantly - very different amounts of PROFIT.

The article begins with a quote from Henry Ford: “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”  Sure, I remember my government-issue American history book in high school also lauding Henry Ford as some type of humanist/savior/deity.  However, as an adult, I also know he was a prominent antiSemite, a dedicated union-buster, and even at one point implemented codes of conduct for his workers that were enforced by surveillance tactics (which was the only way these workers could even access his offered “profit-sharing”).  While it’s nice that he implemented a 5-day workweek and $5 “competitive wages” for his time, I can’t help but wonder if this man truly gave a shit about any of the workers he employed in his industry, or if he was just another power-hungry authoritarian trying to prove to others that his way is THE BEST WAY (and must therefore be implemented by ALL).  Some may have called him a “generous” man, tho I would argue that what appears to be GENEROSITY is neutralized/dissipated as such when driven by it’s complete opposition: AVARICE.  

But it’s not only that!  My crip brain tells me: don’t trust a single soul that demands STANDARDIZATION for all.  I know for a fact: all bodies are different and have inherently different needs.  I know for a fact: health is a valuable asset.  I know for a fact: time isn’t real, but will always be counted for the profit of capitalists.  There sure are a lot of vultures out there.  If these vultures choose a process of standardization that we must all adhere to, lets guess who it’s gonna benefit the most…

Anyways, back to the puff piece.  The article in question acknowledges that most employees these days are burned out, overworked, and generally unsatisfied.  The author brings up Google’s “innovative” policy, called the “20% time initiative”, which apparently led to employee satisfaction within that company.  The purpose of the initiative was to allow all Google employees to utilize 20% of their time while at work on “projects they are passionate about”.  One *~*incredible innovative result*~* of this program was apparently the development of Gmail!  Nevermind any employees that chose to use their 20% time initiative on writing a novel or spearheading necessary scientific research to help save lives - what counts most is that employees chose to use this time to help Google drive up their own profits!  I wonder if the developers of gmail saw their wages increase once that service was rolled out and took off…

The next chunk of the article essentially states that in times of *uncertainty*, employers absolutely need to prioritize profit in order to ensure success for the company, job stability for its employees, and “sustainability”.  It’s kinda interesting how quickly the author of this article backtracks on what he just said about how happy employees are integral to any business.  Then, the article poses some aimless questions that every “good business” should ask themselves (“What steps can we take to create a more people-centric culture in our organization?”).  But there are no suggested answers to any of these questions.  The article concludes with a series of platitudes that, again, never actually address the material realities of any of these unsatisfied employees nor any ways that their employers could treat them right.  

I quickly researched who this author was.  His name is Raul Handa and he is a “Forbes Councils Member”, whatever that is lol.  He also runs some company based in Dubai called the Forttuna Group.  Their website’s “About Us” section sounds kinda vague, but it seems like they are in the business of some kind of event planning and providing some kind of support to start-ups.

Feeling completely nauseous at this point - so I need to stop my random researching and gather the tides in my belly.  My conclusion is: before we can repair humanity’s unhealthy relationship with TIME, we will need to overthrow capitalism first.  As long as an hour of a mortal human being’s life is measured against a currency, any currency at all, we are doomed to toil endlessly for the profit of some guy who rather write a puff piece for forbes dot com rather than share the earnings of his company with all of his employees.

But let’s forget about Raul, forbes, and Henry Ford for a second.  What constitutes LABOR?  In my mind - labor refers to any physical, psychological, or emotional output in service to others and the self too.  On the internet - the word “labor” is defined by “work; especially hard physical work” when used as a noun.  When used as a verb, it is defined as “working hard” and “making great effort” or “having difficulty in doing something despite working hard”.  I can see how an industry such as mental health counseling doesn’t earn you much these days since that “labor” can’t be incentivized with profit.  You’re not producing any product to be sold - you’re being a human helping out other humans who need help.  I can also see how domestic work, including cooking, cleaning, and raising children, doesn’t even register as “labor” on some people’s maps.  I’ve never given birth to a baby myself, but I suspect there is a reason why in the english language we refer to the act of childbirth as someone being “in labor”.  That shit sounds *very* physically/emotionally/psychologically HARD.  And yet - did those people get paid and is this labor valued at anything?  I also think about tech workers a lot, probably because there are so many of them here in Boston, MA.  They make A LOT more money per hour than my sweetie does at his job, but this confuses me infinitely.  Their jobs don’t require all the labor that my sweetie performs at his job.  They perform lots of psychological labor, or mental tasks, but do not perform physical or emotional labor typically.  However, my sweetie is expected to perform all three of these types of labor round the clock at his job.  It’s really no wonder at all that the other employees at his place of work experience such devastating burn out on a regular basis…

Some of the other workers that I continue to witness being exploited forever seem to be cultural workers, such as musicians.  Musicians rarely withhold their labor!  Even in times of great crises.  This is probably because we can’t NOT do it (play music, that is).  Usually, withholding our labor equates to denying ourselves our own psychological & emotional needs.  People such as myself work in the arts out of what the painter Wassily Kandinsky described as an “inner need”.  In his book “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, he describes INNER NEED as the hunger for & act of SPIRITUAL EXPRESSION.  It is not so much a choice as it is an inherent, human need.  I noticed this concept is really hard for me to describe to some people.  Jobs and work mean different things to all of us and sometimes this depends entirely on our circumstances.  Some see work as a duty or a “calling”, some don’t give AF and just need money (pretty sure that’s all of us at this point), some view one thing as “self-expression” while someone else might consider that same thing a “craft” or at worst- a “product” to be sold.  However-

If we live under manufactured scarcity (capitalism) and DIY music scenes are even committed to replicating these hierarchical structures (with venues, promoters/bookers, etc) why don’t DIY bands do the same?

We should seize the means of our production (continue to record our own records & put them out ourselves) and ONLY play live virtual sets where we control all the details of the production, especially our wellbeing during “the gig”.  We can disperse access to these shows by our own means and see to it that everyone gets paid fairly for their labor. 

We can manufacture scarcity too (and probably even make it look CUTER in the process!), if that is the game we are forced to play.  What if we refused to perform any shows at any venues with any bookers until our needs are met: masks & CLEAN SAFE AIR, MONEY for our needs and our labor, healthy food, clean water, a place to sit/relax/get grounded, assistance in hard manual tasks such as load in and load out plus gear management at the show, parking for necessary vehicles, etc.  Maybe then, people who are disabled, chronically ill, or elderly won’t be literally excluded from these communities?  Actually, fuck INCLUSION.  Why desire to be “included” where you were never wanted nor welcome?  Just build something new, so you don’t have to be bothered by shitty, reluctant “inclusion” and can instead revel in the loving sweetness of liberation.  Music and liberation have always paired together quite nicely imho.

We can also refuse to play at any venues owned by complete pieces of shit!  (Here’s looking at YOU, Boston!)  We can withhold our labor until all needs are met.  And if they can’t be?  Well at least we protected ourselves and our bodyminds and got to stick around just a pinch longer for our loved ones who need us in this lifetime…

So what about the others that simply do not care?  Let the scabs scab away (they were gonna do it regardless).  No one needs to hold the embarrassment of them *for them* (it probably wouldn’t even fit in our bodies!).  This world will always be inhabited by some degree of ruthless vultures, shameful opportunists, scammers and pillagers.  What’s cool about scabs is that they eventually dry up and crackle and fall off.  What’s left underneath, in ideal conditions anyways, is a layer of newly healed skin, ready to take on another day.