The Bare Necessities...
I had no clue what I was going to write about tonight. (I'm still not 100% certain I know now, so please excuse me if this begins to ramble.) As many writing teachers suggest I began looking for topics. Brainstorming, hitting the mind-bump sites that would perhaps give me something to blather about, even looking at the daily prompt for LJ. Nope. For giggles, I decided to scroll through the daily polls instead. I mean, if I wasn't going to write, perhaps I could just kill time instead. There I found my topic... "Have you ever quit a job?" The choices should be familiar... "Yes!", "No way!", and... "God, I want to."
Wait. What?
"God, I want to."
The very way this is phrased means that there are reasons people aren't quitting, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that it just might be because our economy sucks. The national unemployment rate is 9.0%, slightly down from 9.2% in June. This is what http://www.ncsl.org has to say: More than 104,000 jobs were created in the private sector in October. Business sectors showing job growth for the month were professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, health care, mining and retail trade.
So the question begs - If you have a job right now, when 13.9 million of people would beg, borrow, steal, and commit bodily harm just to find a job... why do you want to quit?
Ooh ooh I can explain this one!
Here's a laundry list -
You have dreams and aspirations to be MORE! (who doesn't)
You have a family who needs you at home. (join the club)
You really really really hate that guy in the 3rd cubicle who spends his day snorting and coughing, and you don't EVER see him wash his hands. (most of us have these. Mmmm lungbutter)
You have a degree that is totally NOT in the field of the job you're currently in. Hell, it isn't in the field, the park, or even in the same SPORT. (More and more common)
You aren't making enough to justify the time away from your education. (Again, join the club)
You aren't making enough to justify child care expenses, but if you don't work, you get no benefits, and then not only are you broke but have food assistance, you're broke, the kids are hungry, and CPS steps in looking at you like you're an awful, horrible, negligent human being. (This was a recent client)
Do I need to go on?
What are the bare necessities for humanity to survive? We're all taught this in school. Well, we were before standards changed and children quit being taught to -learn- and instead started being taught to -test-. Let me go ahead and give you the answer. The basic human needs are Food, Shelter, and Clothing. Guess which one of those can be bought without an income. That's right. None of them.
Here's a scenario - You and your spouse each work full time. You have four children. ALL four of those children have some sort of medical need/issue that requires medication and/or therapy. Neither you nor your spouse have a college education, and you both want one so badly you can taste it. Especially when you're trying to encourage your oldest child (who is a sophomore in high school) to go to college when he graduates, (If he graduates. Right now, that's iffy.) and he says "But you and dad never went to college."
And you realize.. you really really REALLY want to go to back to school. But how? You work full time. Oh, that's easy! You go during the day! .... But you're a one car family. Oh, well, then just drive back and forth. That raises the gas bill to over $200 a week. ... Oh.. well then. Go online! Yeah, not so much an option since most online courses are hybrids that require your attendance as a live human being once a week, and you have to work. Okay. Hmm. Quit working. ... What? You're barely making it now on what you have coming in with two incomes. How the HELL can you just quit? Use financial aid, and work part time! Doable. But wait... right now, your job pays for all your insurance costs. If you quit, and have to be added to your husband's insurance, that gives you a premium of $327/month. Which is almost as much as you make at your part time job every two weeks.
Also, don't forget - four children. Medical issues. One of them is making noises about wanting to be homeschooled because his school is "dumb", and the teacher doesn't listen, and he hates trying to learn there. One of them is trying, hard, to get her grades up, because she KNOWS she's smart, but she's terrified of asking for help because she gets treated like she's an idiot for not understanding. One of them doesn't want to try, because she thinks that the world owes her. (No one is really sure WHY, or WHAT life owes her, but she's pretty sure it does)
So then you have to weigh the job.. that you hate, or at least dislike intensely... against the needs of your family. And your own needs. But, according to the The Rules... as long as everyone has food, clothes, and a roof over their head - it's all good. The bare necessities are what matters.
This scenario is enacted in dozens of homes across our country. Parents are scrambling to meet even the basic needs of their kids, because we live in a society where if we ask for more, we're being "greedy".Tell me something people - when you were a child, were you happy and content with a roof over your head and food on the table? Or did you actually enjoy being with your mom and dad? Did you enjoy playing tag, and baseball, and working on an old car? Did you enjoy having the time to take a walk through the park with your family? Do you look back and think "Gee, I wish Mom and/or Dad had worked harder, so they could have bought me all those things I wanted," or "It really sucked having my family around so much all the time when I was a kid. I would have LOVED to come home to an empty house every day"? Yeah.. I didn't think so. Fuck the bare necessities.