Our home has been needing a repair for awhile now, and we finally took the plunge. To fit within our budget, we've done all the prep work and the smaller jobs ourselves over the past few weeks, but hired someone else to do the part of the project where quality only comes with practice we do not have.
This project has dragged on for almost a month now, during most of which I wished we could just afford to pay someone else to do the whole thing so that the blisters on my hands could have a chance to heal, and I wouldn't have to scrape and sand and inhale paint any more.
Then the hired crew showed up. They were quiet, polite, barely spoke English (a chance for Hubby to brush up on his Spanish), did a good job, and were very thankful for their tip. They reminded me about my days of picking up any possible side job (in addition to whatever other job I had at the time) while trying to go to college and help support my Mom and little Sis. The days of running to clean someone else's house between classes, weeding someone else's yard, or any other job that involved scraping and sanding and inhaling paint.
It's hard to believe how much can change in 10 years. You will still see me wearing a free shirt most days of the week (ah, the conference perks!), but suddenly I am not the hired help anymore. I am hiring my own. And I am torn between knowing that they are grateful for the work I provide, and feeling like an exploiter who pays pennies to do her dirty work. Sure, I can tip them for the day's hard work and offer them food and drinks while they are in my home (which is tricky if all your appliances are unplugged and out in the garage). But that doesn't change the fact that they have to scrape and sand and inhale paint every day of their life. I can just hope that they, too, will find themselves in a very different place 10 years from now.
The perverse incentives of academia
6 years ago
6 comments:
Interesting perspective. I'm not sure how I'm going to feel when I need to hire people for day labor; I feel bad enough asking for items at the cafeteria.
I never know how to deal with "hired help" as I always feel like I should be doing it myself.
Thanks for this post.
It's a good reminder, yet again (but we need as many as we can), that not all scientists are spawn of other scientists, that anyone from any background can move on up.
Don't feel bad that you've moved up, and don't forget to tell the story so that others can be inspired.
I feel like that when I get my nails done.
I have the same ambivalence about corporations outsourcing manufacturing jobs to third world countires like my home country. On the one hand, these corporations are, to some degree, exploiting a relatively cheap workforce, but on the other hand, these foreign-owned factories and plants create thousands of jobs and support the local economy. The good and bad of these situations isn't all that clear-cut....
UnReaction - ditto! One thing that helped was that I was working along side them (not on the things we hired them for, but equally dirty/ backbreaking).
SM - we thought about doing this task ourselves, but decided that we couldn't do a quality job. I think I would feel much worse hiring people to do something I can actually do myself!
Phizzle - I don't feel bad for moving up, I have worked hard for it. But I hate it when people make me into a poster child and tell others that "if they just worked harder they could do it too." That is simply not true; yes, I worked hard, but a lot of things have also fallen into place without which it would have been impossible.
n/a - I've only been in a salon once (the day of my wedding), and I definitely felt that way then too!
MadHatter - that is a subject I can't take a stance on either. The outsourced jobs force the developing world into a whirl-wind economic changes the "first world" has already gone through over the last century; these changes are both good and bad, but I hope that there is more good in them. Creating jobs is one thing, but I feel strongly against using up the natural resources of the poorer countries.
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