The cab takes me to the outskirts of town on a cold early December night. As I hand over due cash to the cabbie, I hold on to the synthetic currency for another couple of milliseconds to feel its statutorily enforced value and the plasticity of financial stability. I would have given this romantic tussle another whole second but I was at the destination which would help me make more money. Soothing myself with that consolation, I walked towards my first workplace after I had moved to a new country.
I prided myself for the dedication with which I took up a night shift as I put on my warmest jacket and tried to figure out the entrance to the tightly-secured warehouse premises. So far, I am an archetype of a female immigrant student who wants to be a part-time money maker and a full time Dickinsonesque writer draped in her dead grandmother’s shawl. I continued exploring the circumstantial thrill as I watched the poorly edited training video. The night shift manager looks at me being attentive and points out how boring these introductory videos are and that was the first instance when my confidence went for a tumble but I agreedly chuckled at him.
After graduating from college this year, I had stayed between jobs and freelancing projects till I set foot in grad school or as I like to call it - an extended opportunity to avail student discounts. Like an average early twenty something who is swayed by the idea of economic autonomy, I continued applying for jobs with a vision of affording semi-luxurious grocery items. In sheer honesty, I need self-financing but not as much as I obsessively desire financial independence. The awareness of one’s privilege should usually result in using said privilege for other’s alleviation. Some people, however, misjudge the step that follows after acknowledgement of privilege and try to destroy or undo their privilege which, in reality, is pretty impossible. It is the survivor’s guilt that gets confused with lack of generational trauma. For the lack of a better metaphor, privilege becomes the postmodern albatross around a ‘woke’ neck.
As I went on sorting big packages in the warehouse of this courier service company, I started doubting my new professional advent with every passing minute. The cost of commute considering how far off my workplace was, sacrificing sleep, compromising study hours, missing out on already rare parties i.e. only few occasions to socialise, taking up the first job and thereby shutting out opportunities for more desirable ones, being one of the only three women in a workforce of seventy odd people etc. There were plenty of reasons to throw one of the packages onto the opposite conveyor belt and make a well-informed dramatic exit. Maybe mama did raise a sans-work-ethics quitter but nurtured a trial-and-error advocating decision maker. While clocking out, I declared that it was the last they will see of a South Asian literary enthusiast immigrant token at their workplace. The rather dramatic proclamation was met with a shrug and ‘All the best, kid’ which, in retrospect, was disrespectful to my storyline. The manager instead agreed that the job was not for me and I feel it was pretty rude of him to be this compassionate and professionally cordial.
With instances like moving countries in the middle of a pandemic and showing up for ill-timed hours to a warehouse job when it was towards the bottom of my job preference list, I would deduce that my decision making skills are substantially subpar. There is one aspect of quitting that I cannot run away from, not even if I dramatise it for the readers. The work culture I am voluntary but reluctantly becoming a part of will abandon me if I don't follow its unsaid yet well pronounced guidelines. The ‘hustle’ culture has evolved from ride-or-die to ride-and-try-not-to-die. Getting numb to the pain of rejection but brutal hatred channeled towards self for quitting a perfectly redundant job made me realise how I was attaching my labour to its financial aspect alone and detaching it from my whole self. All these revelations followed much later though.
That night, I was standing outside the warehouse at 4.45 am waiting for another cab that I will blow unrealistic amounts of money on, considering how much I had earned from a single night shift of five hours. Holding my arms together to fight the unbearable cold, I simultaneously felt this familiar teenage fear of parental beration, only in this case I was the one who would be berating me once I got into the cab and the weather got warm enough for a convenient session of self-loathing. I cannot even water down the profanities I threw at myself and I’d much rather skip to the part where I reached home and spent the following sixteen hours in bed. I could have stretched the self-care/flagellation time a couple hours more but time is another luxury that can't be afforded if you are unemployed. The resume would not upload on its own and the cover letter would not edit itself. I pushed myself off the bed and applied for three more jobs.
