Hate the Game, Not the Player

By Anonymous / Winter 2023

I’m mopping the floor of the cafe, cleansing the white tile of the day’s grime. The wet threads catch the dry leaves, straw wrappers, and receipts scattered about by today’s clientele as the sheen of another day is left behind. I’m working the closing shift (as I am often scheduled for) so it's getting late. Although it's only my second week of the first job I've ever had, I feel strangely worn out, as if I could be spending these nights elsewhere—going out with friends, playing volleyball at the park, at home studying for exams or playing video games. I sigh to myself and dunk the mop in its bucket before scrubbing at a particularly stubborn stain. Questions rise unbidden in my mind: Why am I cleaning up after someone? Why is it that I am mopping up a spill someone else put here, and could have very well cleaned up themselves? I remember the words of my manager on the day of my first training. It’s not your job to complain. I put my thoughts on the back shelf. I suppose that I am lucky enough not to be used to this kind of work—I have only ever been responsible for myself and occasionally helping out around my family’s home, and the excitement of earning my own money has begun to fade. I finish closing on autopilot. My feet drag with the seeping dark and cold of the night. I know that when I get home I won’t have the energy to do much more than eat and sleep.

At this time I had just turned 17 and moved to the Bay Area with my family. It was nearing the end of September 2021 and COVID restrictions were relaxing, but the whole world was still feeling the effects. After nearly two years of being cooped up, I had high expectations for my post-hibernation life and I was ready to explode into life in a new city. Throughout the long months the world spent at home during the pandemic, we witnessed a global explosion of social media and internet usage to compensate for the lack of social interaction. Short-form, dopamine-blasting content on Tik-Tok, Instagram, and every other online dominated media was a major source of entertainment and communication for teenagers and young adults. I knew even as it was happening that I was sucked into this machine of social comparison. I’m still trying to escape—in vain, I often think, like the rest of my generation. For me and my friends, lots of this content was all about “The Grind” which evangelizes ways to claw up the financial ladder by any means necessary. This echo chamber was fueled by interest-based algorithms keeping me and my friends locked into these figures advertising get-rich-quick schemes under the guise of “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps.” Like so many young people with dreams of financial autonomy and success, I was completely sold. I spent hours every day listening to cheesily-edited videos of men with sunglasses and sports cars telling me that I’m just not trying hard enough whose image was burned into my mind. Voices in every corner pressured me to get a job as soon as possible. I wanted to work my way up, I wanted to invest, I wanted to be able to drive a fast car and tell people they should just do what I did. But after my second week at work, I felt weak. I was worn out from having to go to school, go to work, do homework, chores, and even my acts of daily living, and it made it no better that I was constantly pumping my brain with messages like: “you don't work hard enough” or “you don't go to the gym enough.”

I get home from my closing shift and I can finally relax a little. Sprawling out over my bed with a sigh, I can’t help but think that it would be so much easier if I just didn’t go to work tomorrow—I could just get some homework done, play some video games, cook something nice for myself. My phone vibrates, interrupting my thoughts. An email from my bank flashes across the screen. I’ve just received a direct deposit. It's the first paycheck I received as a working American. $607.40. My eyes light up in excitement; my chest swells with pride. I can’t believe it. I’ve never been in control of this much money before. I race over to my twin brother to show him and he has the same reaction. All of my earlier disappointment and frustration melts away. Now that I’ve had a taste for gold, I don’t want to let it go. I immediately email my manager to ask if I can take on more hours even though I’d have even less time to spend on schoolwork or my friends. Looking back, I can’t believe how good it made me feel to see those digits in my account. How is it that I most easily found motivation in money? Why was I willing to sacrifice my passions and emotions for a dream fabricated by social expectations? My pursuit of a life the world told me I wanted obscured these questions from view with the blinding shine of my bank account screen.

A month into my job, my brother decides to start working next door. I have made around $1500 total at this point and my morale is high. My mind is wandering during the monotony of work and school, always fantasizing about the different ways I can spend this money. With pride and resolve I turn first to the things my parents had previously been providing for. I start paying for food, groceries, my own clothes, and a gym membership. My media inputs begin to shift, pushing content related to my spending habits. I begin to see beautiful people around my age living in their own apartments, wearing expensive clothes, or using new phones I couldn’t have afforded before I started working. All of this materialistic fear-mongering leaches into my psyche and my priorities shift in response. Now I am faced with a choice: do I help with groceries for the week or do I buy the newest Jordans? Do I save that $50 bonus or do I buy the new Call of Duty? Impressionable as any teenager, the latter options take control of my paycheck and for a few weeks, it’s like Christmas everyday. Amazon orders, mall trips, fancy restaurants where they cook in front of you, anything I saw other people doing on TikTok or instagram, I felt like I had to go do.

It only takes a couple of weeks for my card to decline at a restaurant and my combined checking and savings to reach $20. I’m beyond mortified—I had loudly offered to foot the bill for the group that evening. I cut back on spending and refocus on saving and building up. It’s college application season, so I'm looking towards the future, thinking about how I can start establishing my independence. I find myself looking at apartments near the schools I am applying to and feel my stomach drop at the numbers I see. One bedroom for $2500 a month. A studio for $2100. Even the dorm pricing is outrageous—$1600 for half a room or less. I grow frantic. If I can't pay for an apartment, maybe I can pay for a car. A standard new car goes for $700 a month, but the rates are too high; I haven’t got any credit. Even a standard used car is about $500 a month. If I were buying all my own groceries—let alone providing for the rest of my family—paying rent, and funding my own education, it wouldn’t be remotely possible for me to get a car. At this point I’m working 30 hours a week, spread incredibly thin between work and school and life, and barely breaking $2000 a month. Something must be wrong, I think. I should be able to afford basic necessities and still have money to save but instead I still rely on my family’s support. This job pays more than double the federal minimum wage, so why can’t I afford to be independent?

I wish I could have shown myself the works of Noam Chomsky in this moment of realization. This struggle that I scratched the surface of is felt by a magnitude of Americans and is reflected in Chomsky’s idea that the passive and obedient public is easily encouraged to work and consume solitarily, separating those suffering the most for the benefit of those suffering the least. The pressure I felt was not from my family or friends. I suffered because I compared myself to what I thought I should be doing based on an idea that was sold to me. The institutions that profit the most in America are the same institutions that caused me to begin working, begin consuming, and do so happily because that's what I felt I should do. When this materialistic individualism is pushed in droves to the impressionable youth of the world, it causes a toxic dependency which I found myself slipping into.

No one achieves success through only one job, of course I tell myself. So I start taking more shifts. I apply to other jobs, and I start looking into ways of making money online. Instead of realizing that our institutions themselves are flawed, I decide that I’m just not working hard enough. Through social media, I research new ways to make money on the internet, even some less-than-legal ones. I begin ignoring my own concepts of morality and justify my actions in the name of eventual success—I’m working hard, after all. This justification for negative behaviors has become all too common in any career path or profession. I was about to be faced with such a dilemma head on.

It's getting closer to the new year and things are ramping up at work. The cafe’s been extremely busy and people are beginning to head home for the holidays, so the people staying have to work more shifts. I want to take advantage of the extra work, but I’m increasingly busy with school, and the stress of it all has started to wear me down. Each day at work I feel like an automated machine; all my interactions are scripted and cold. I’m working the register, trying to spread some warmth among the customers, when an elderly woman walks in. She’s clearly out of breath as she makes her way to the counter, and despite the inevitable exhaustion I feel from using my customer service voice all morning, I muster enough energy to be concerned. She asks if she can use the bathroom and apologizes for being a nuisance. The bathroom is for employees only, as per my manager’s recent decree. We don’t have enough staff to manage cleaning a public restroom. The automated response rises from my throat. Sorry. It’s for employees only. A sudden rage takes its place, and my mouth stays closed, clamped shut. Why am I blindly following what my manager says? I can think for myself. I know how to weigh right and wrong. As I look at the woman, I see the plea in her expression. I feel like I have to give her the code to the bathroom. She uses it and thanks me profusely on the way out and I think that I surely don’t deserve gratitude for that, for offering nothing but common decency. It’s the first moment all week that I’ve felt like more than a mechanical shell, a drone at work, and it is rapidly extinguished by the looming presence of my coworker. “Why did you do that? You know we aren’t supposed to let people use the bathroom.” I try to explain that I just felt bad for her and I felt like there wasn’t anything to lose from letting her use it, shocked when my coworker explains that she feels she has to report me. A dull confusion and hurt begin to take root in me. Why would someone I considered a friend decide to put my job in jeopardy? I couldn’t understand why she was blindly following policy when the policy was obviously not vital to the functioning of the store and when that woman obviously needed to use the bathroom and was never anything less than considerate.

Following the report, I attend a one-on-one meeting with my manager. During the meeting he explains that I am a valuable member of the team but for the sake of the cohesion in the workplace, he wants me to follow store policy. In my frustration I press the question. “What exactly was wrong with letting her use the bathroom?” The response I receive feels as automated as my own voice when I’m at the register. “Nothing, it's just store policy.” Again, Chomsky’s words ring in my head as I recall my emotions during this conversation. “It's much easier to go along with the system than it is to resist it.” I let go of my hold on goodwill and common decency and let the raging current of the powers that be knock me back down to a place of complacency.

I put my head down to get through final exams and I decide to take some time off of work for Christmas. The break is blissful and my mind begins to regain some semblance of free thought in the absence of the stress of work and school. I start to think about the woman and the whole bathroom situation again and I can finally start unpacking what happened. What if I’m not the one who stepped out of line? What if both my coworker who reported me and my manager are in the wrong? Surely they exhibit compassion at other times in their lives, why does it need to stop when they are on the clock? In this moment of reflection, I began to realize that neither my coworker nor my manager lack compassion, but the expectations of the workplace, imposed by a society which operates on the back of unfair labor, which have these systematic effects. While those I work with might be the ones embodying the whims of those above them, it is ultimately the will of authority that controls their actions. In hindsight I think of Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath, “Maybe there's nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn't man at all.” While I was fortunate enough to not rely on this job for my livelihood, I need to remember that for many, this is a primary source of income. They need this job, even if they must sell a portion of their common decency and compassion, to survive. This realization allowed me to quell my feelings of animosity towards my coworkers as we are truly in the fight together. A reflection of my realization during my short break from work can be seen in the Greek term agape referenced by Dr. King—he translates it into the language of solidarity: “love in action” and “an insistence on community.” As workers, we are never enemies. I am not in conflict with my coworkers or my manager. When we work together, we challenge all that threatens our community, and reject the idea that we are separate and exist apart from one another.

A similar point is made in “Requiem for the American Dream,” in which Chomsky argues that the materialistic individualism that people subscribe to from a young age is also proving to be socially degrading. It pits us against one another as if we are starved dogs thrown scrap to fight over. While I managed to stave off any major conflict after the bathroom incident, I would have done well to remember just how tight a grasp manufactured ideologies have on the populace.

The next part of my journey at this little cafe takes us to 2022. Shortly after the new year, my workplace relationships reach a new level of tension. This workplace tension is not so easily alleviated when work is wildly fluctuating between tedious and overwhelming. I begin to lose my grasp on agape. After one particularly trying closing shift, my head is clouded and the workplace drama is raging like wildfire. I feel like my coworkers are still out to get me despite my efforts to show compassion, and my frustration reaches its boiling point. They say an angry man closes his eyes and ears and opens his mouth—that's precisely what I do. Walking out to the parking lot, I call my childhood friend, grateful for his polite listening. I get in the car and melt into the seat. I have so much going on inside my head but my body doesn’t have enough stamina to do anything but slump and offer mumbled gratitude as my friend says goodbye. In an effort to energize myself and get home safely, I put on my favorite song and slam into reverse, releasing all my tension into the wheel. I recognize too late that the angle is all wrong. The sound of metal scraping against metal screeches out across the desolate parking lot. Heart pounding, I jump out to check the damage—my car is unscathed, but the other car has a small scratch running along the line of the bodywork. I’m panicking a little bit. I decide that the scratch isn't super noticeable—it's an old, rundown car, and it's been a rough day, so I just go home and try to forget about it. Halfway home, a wave of clarity washes over me. I feel responsible, guilty, angry, frustrated, but I know that I’ve made a mistake, and I want to do my best to fix it. I drive back, leave a note on the car with my information, and finally head home for the night. In the morning, I go back to work and the car is still in the lot where it was last night but the note is gone. I head into the cafe and I come to learn that it was actually a coworker's car I hit.

My relationship with this coworker had been previously pleasant—we spoke frequently and had actually bonded over a few things, and as I greet her at the beginning of my shift, I’m confident that we can handle the situation respectfully and honestly. These were high hopes. It turns out that she had brought her car to the mechanic and found damage to a plethora of engine parts and body panels. She tells me the quote for the damage is $7000. Shocked, and certain there is no way the small scratch I made is representative of so much damage, I decline to pay the full amount; we go back and forth for months about how much I should actually be responsible for. She and her family threaten me with police intervention, revocation of my license, and a lien on the title of my car. Eventually, we agree to a total of $1000, with $500 upfront and $500 paid when the repairs for the damage I caused are completed.

To this day the car remains unrepaired: not only was it clear that she had tried to extort me, it was heartbreaking that someone I thought I was close to would resort to this. While I recognize I may come from a family with more wealth than her, I don’t think that was the proper way to handle the situation. To add insult to injury, my coworker knew how long I’d been working at the cafe. Had I paid the $7000 she initially asked for, I would have given her every single penny I had earned and then some. Even the $500 was a significant portion of my savings at the time and she had no intention to ever repair the car. I was lucky enough not to sustain damage to my own car, but the situation left me bitter. How could anyone pay for any kind of accident or emergency living paycheck to paycheck? If even I struggled to afford this setback, despite primarily being supported by my parents, how could the average American survive living in the red? If that job paid so well compared to others in the service industry and had such good hours, why was I struggling? Why was my coworker struggling? How could anyone close the gap between an average wage earner and a CEO? This relationship between the laboring class and the upper percentiles is deliberate. As Chomsky says, "The prevailing institutions function in such a way as to ensure that the basic requirements of the population are either not met at all, or are met only to the extent that they do not interfere with the overriding need for corporate profit, power, and privilege." The necessities of life like housing and food are intentionally kept just barely within reach for the laboring class so that the amount of work we do makes us blind to the reality of the situation. We are distracted by the newest marvel movie or the next iPhone so that we don't look up and realize we are in a fabricated structure that keeps us down.

I feel that my humanity was tested multiple times throughout my experience working in that cafe. From my time there I’ve come to appreciate more than ever the efforts we make to uplift each other—to combat not individuals but ideologies. The knowledge and experience I earned from that job was more valuable than any of the money I made and the exposure of this carrot-on-a-stick design of society was important. A life of luxury and comfort is dangled in front of us, keeps human beings turning against each other as cogs in a machine. The systems in place that profit from this societal design have waged war on agape, compassion, and common decency, because the biggest threat to their bottom line is the people living for, rather than against one another.

Works Referenced

Chomsky, N. (2017, June 19). Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth and Power (J. P. Scott, P. Hutchison, & K. Nyks, Eds.).

King, M. L. (1963, April 16). Letter from Birmingham Jail.

Steinbeck, J. (2006, March 28). The Grapes of Wrath.