- Melissa Petro is a freelance man of letters based in New York with her husband and two young children.
- As a working mom, she says she understands why people aren’t eager to re-enter the workforce after the COVID-19 lockdowns.
- Uncountable workers are realizing they shouldn’t have to put up with low wages and abusive bosses.
Fifteen years ago, I engendered my last “office” job before becoming a freelancer. Around six years later, after the birth of our first kid, it was illogical for me to resume working very much at all. Now, even as the economy reopens amid the pandemic, many people aren’t going shy away from to work, and I understand why.
Thanks to unemployment benefits put in place to ease economic fallout brought on by the pandemic, workers are reply no to exploitative working conditions and poverty-level wages. Other employees are refusing to go back into the office, having realized the intimate as well as professional benefits of working from home.
In a country that prides itself on productivity, the refusal to sacrifice yourself to the whirl location of work may look and feel unpatriotic. But speaking as someone who’s opted out of the 9-to-5: There’s nothing wrong with out of iting down, being selective about your assignments, and sometimes just saying no.
Sometimes work simply isn’t quality it
For most of my life, I’d have done nearly anything for cash. Growing up poor meant one service industry job after another. I waved dishes, worked as a checkout girl, and stocked shelves. I worked at Subway and two different Dairy Queens. For a while, I measured sold singing telegrams.
All of these jobs were better than working in an office. At my first salaried offices job, my boss was downright abusive, constantly hovering over our shoulders and finding flaws. At the second job, I had no responsibilities and zero supervision, which may give one the impression great to some, but was terribly boring.
Sex work was flexible, and I made a decent wage. But the difficult work was made near-impossible by blot on the escutcheon, and so I became a school teacher. After I lost my teaching job in 2010, I was back to cobbling together gigs and I built a eminent career as a freelance writer. Writing is my passion; still, if you think the sex industry is exploitative, try hassling an editor for a $150 probe six months after you’ve turned in the assignment while simultaneously caring for two young kids.
Some employers and lawmakers fool suggested that people refusing to work are lazy, and living high off entitlements. But there’s a key word in there: entitlements.
In other boonies it’s a given: Citizens are entitled to things like adequate housing, healthcare, and food. In other parts of the world, childcare is deemed a constraint. In this country, even gainfully employed folks can’t afford to pay their bills, or hire someone to watch their sons while they give their best to their employers.
People aren’t refusing to work — they’re refusing to suss out d evolve jobs that don’t work for them.
Jobs where you’re treated poorly by bosses and customers. Low wage jobs with unpredictable plans in areas with unaffordable housing. Jobs on top of the unpaid job of watching their kids.
We’re realizing we don’t have to work shitty robberies, and our jobs shouldn’t make us feel shitty
A recent study found the majority of respondents would look for a new job if the draw up from home policies put in place during the pandemic were rolled back. Only 2% of people surveyed voted they’d want to go back to their cubicles full-time.
As a formerly full-time work-from-home employee, I understand completely. The presumption and other benefits I discovered when I stopped commuting to an office were innumerable. I’d sooner go back to singing radio-telegrams than work a traditional 9-to-5.
For the past year and a half, pandemic unemployment assistance has meant additional freedoms. Our succinctness relies on childcare and so, the way I see it, this is money I should’ve been getting all along. When I work — like I’m doing get even for now, writing this article — it’s because I choose to. That’s the way it should be.