I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better - Sophie Tucker
I used to believe that. I'm not sure, any more.
I've had high-paying jobs, and low-paying jobs. High-paying jobs are better.
This, I'm sure of. Because, when they pay you more, they also treat you better. Lots better. That doesn't really make sense to me, but it definitely seems to be true.
The way I look at it, the worse you get treated, the more you should be paid. Busboys should be paid, I figure, about 35 bucks an hour. I know I wouldn't want to do that job for less. The same for doing hard work in bad weather. I don't think being a forest ranger is such a crappy job, but being a lumberjack sure seems to be. You have hard work, weather, sawdust, dirt, branches, and insects. That would be worth $125 an hour.
A few days ago, I mentioned here that I worked at a place in Houston where they did animal testing. In that job, I dealt with cages after the animals moved on to, er, Animal Heaven. Fortunately for me, I usually got the cages after they had been washed, but not always. I think that job paid little more than minimum wage. It just doesn't seem right.
I've been a substitute teacher. It's fun teaching little kids, but at the middle- or high-school level, you get treated as an incompetent boob by administrators, teachers, and students. They expect you to control a bunch of bratty kids, and they don't give you the power to do it. I guess I was paid a tenth of what I should have been. I quit when they decided I should pay $50 for the privilege.
I've been a highly-paid computer nerd. I was a systems programmer, a database administrator, and just about everything else in computers. Considering what they paid me, I should have been spat on and locked under the building at night. Nope. I almost never punched a time card. I reported to my boss how many hours I worked each week, and I even had one job where I could have worn shorts and a T-shirt to work, and sometimes, come in any time of day I wanted.
I guess I could spend the rest of my life wondering why life isn't fair.
Right now, if things were how I think they should be, working at McDonalds should be worth $50K a year, and dancing on Dancing With The Stars for a couple of months with those gorgeous dancers, should be worth negative $50K.
I could do with a year like that.
