The theme is familiar, the layers are many, and the word is “responsibility.” I’ve said a fair amount about responsibility already, but a mild “crisis” today has put it back into focus.
In the past, I’ve said things to the effect of “I’m always responsible” or “it’s always up to me” or “it’s always my fault.” I’ve lamented how often people were happy to thrust responsibility on me for starting the party (no one who attends can be bothered to take any or start their own), making the comment (no one with ears should feel attacked or uncomfortable), or otherwise forcing my will, perspective, or intention onto an otherwise perfectly innocent situation (no no, *you absolutely are negative*, just too proud, defensive, blind, judgmental, etc to see it).
A few days ago, my car functionally lost its breaks. I took it to a shop nearby, two days later, they hit me with a $4500 bill. I’m a social worker. I’m already in $2000 debt. That shit ain’t getting fixed at that shop for that amount. As it happens, I work for a company that has company cars. You’re able to get one after 90 days. Whether or not that actually happens is based on what has previously been explained as a messy and imperfect system. They have cars sitting around, but not the keys to pilot them. They have every aspect of their business online, except the sign-out for who needs an available van and when.
I live an hour from work. Yesterday, I was assigned a new case in my neighborhood. I went to what should have been a 30 minute run through of house-keeping paperwork. It turned into a 3 hour marathon attempting to persuade a pedophile idiot that his overprotective wife was not “losing her rights” by not being allowed to attend the supervised visit. It’s 8 pm by the time I’m done, 10 minutes away from my house, 50 from the office. I went home. The rule is to have non-personal cars back at the office each day.
Allie would have picked me up. I could have told myself a story about the ups and downs of social work and how this was just a “tough day” that went long and I can focus extra on “self care” over my Friday/Saturday weekend. I wouldn’t have inconvenienced a worker who needed the car today, who texted me to explain the details of his plight, only to find himself apologizing to me when I explained my struggling experience to mesh with the same scatter-brained conception of management and accountability that seems to plague the social work field. When I told him I tried to get out ahead of today, weeks ago, he said, “Oh! I know exactly what you’re talking about!” relaying the familiar feeling of attempting to anticipate something and do better, only to get shit on.
I did try. I explained that my work truck is just that, one I work with. It was in rough shape before I put two thousand pounds of space heaters in it. It's needed brakes, calipers, rods, and a general inspection for a minute. I return to, I’m a social worker already in debt; a fancy well-running truck is a fantasy us poor people don’t indulge. When it breaks bad enough you have to take it to a shop, you pray it’ll only put you another month behind. I told my supervisor I was on track to spend $600 a month just in gas to do the job. Not anything extra, like commuting, or taking mini trips across the state trying to bilk the mileage reimbursement. Just the picking up and transporting between visit locations and getting to clients. I also offered to pay a premium on what it already costs to have a company car for personal use.
“Yeah, it sucks, but you just have to deal.”
This company was happy to send me on the road with other people’s children in a car that was not mechanically sound. It worked “well-enough” for a couple weeks. They were only concerned I had the right insurance, another extra expense when I didn’t carry enough. I’ve had grinding brakes on other vehicles for many months before. It wasn't even on my radar that they would just give out, as they did when I was alone and pulling into the work parking lot. How terrible of a thought can you conjure as to what could’ve happened in bad weather or on the wrong turn?
When I said how much I put into fixing past issues with my truck, my supervisor turned it into a pissing match citing $1300 for one past employee’s misfortune to my $800 several months ago. He relayed a story of not having spare keys for vehicles that were used by two employees on vacation. Whether or not spare keys could be obtained was beyond the point, he could only think to pile on to the disorganized sentiment as evidence of our mutual futility. When I learned of the bill, I relayed it to him immediately, and explained there was no price point I could currently entertain that was going to get it to bare-minimum status. His only question, “How soon can you get it fixed??” felt like a slap.
Our last staffing, my supervisor started leaning on the idea that the “sympathy period” for being a new hire was over. 3 weeks in, 3 completely and last-minute changes or additions to my schedule, and if I wasn’t making my hours, it was going to be a challenge to consider me full-time and allow for all the “benefits.” Last staffing he relayed to me that 3 people previously hired took 3 to 6 months before they had relatively consistent schedules. I’ve had exactly zero say in who I got, what times they were used to, or whether or not I could retain ones after they wanted to foist a problem client onto me after he’d chewed through 8 previous caseworkers.
So, disorganized, implicit threats, side-eye from my regional manager after I sent an email to our “I’m here to help new hires!” guy detailing my experience, and I’m sitting at home on my “day off” having spent a good portion of the day returning the van, answering texts, and writing emails in attempts to troubleshoot how to get a car from a company that contracts with a rental car company. My truck is still in the parking lot an hour away needing to be towed to...who knows where, and I’ve got two coworkers who are car savvy that might be able to help me make the repairs for 90% less money over a considerably longer period of time.
Where and what are we to make of the different levels of responsibility? We’re pretty reflexive in regarding how we exercise our care and attention as fair to good. From my little perch, I feel I have a responsibility to keep myself fed and housed, so I get a job. The terms of that job implicate me at different levels, from the reliability of my car, to my ability to regulate my mood enough to deal with the incredibly dumb or hostile in an ongoing basis. I have to attempt to communicate clearly to management and clients. I have to maintain standards of safety and timing. I have to be comprehensive and record every single text message I send. I have to make less than inflation-adjusted minimum wage.
I think, in spite of the ask or “requirement,” my responsibility stops at donating my car. It stops before any remaining health in that car is exhausted to anything beyond things that are making me money or getting me where I need to go. I think I stop wanting to take responsibility when the response to my efforts to mitigate problems at my less-than-accounted-for levels go ignored or are deliberately downplayed. I think I’m less inclined to take responsibility when I’m in an environment that trains the impulse out of you.
I’ve been a manager. I’ve been a supervisor. They’ve been at a “smaller” scale than all that is involved with social work, but I know my impulses and ideas on how I would try to fix something were a similar problem brought to me. I’d have asked or told me where to go to find out if paying a premium might work, not reiterated the policy (changed as recently as within the last few months in response to two idiots drag racing in company cars). I’d have offered to get you home if you were going to be functionally stranded at night having dropped off the car like a good policy soldier. I would have asked Enterprise for a goddamn spare key, or paid the expedited shipping to get it sent from wherever they were on vacation (and, goddammit, Covid, they shouldn’t be far).
Why would I do that? Because I’m in the business of parents seeing their children. I’m in the business of keeping people in their home and retaining rights. I’m trying to save time and money by keeping people from selling all of their worldly possessions to keep their kids in diapers. I’m not enabling you on aimless joyrides or feeling resentful that you’d feel so ”entitled” to be able to carry out your duties without losing money.
Here we hit the existential crisis. I see parallels in my day-to-day that are mere echoes of our cultural failings and reckoning. We haven’t figured out that things “don’t have to be this way.” It is entirely possible to pay people fairly. It isn’t just your right, but your duty to be indignant about being taken advantage of. We can acknowledge when we see problems coming and plan, like building dams to stop inevitable floods or refraining from building in the floodplain altogether. Increasingly, we can no longer claim ignorance about the grounds on which we’re building houses.
If you don’t know better, you can chalk anything up to “that’s life.” Richard Wolff explains that he used to give talks about “the system” and people would have blank stares. They had no idea it wasn’t normal to work 3 jobs, be stressed out and exhausted, and not have healthcare because “capitalism” and the ethics that come along with it were beaten into them their whole lives. Now, to someone like me, saying “duty” to describe maximizing profits to rich shareholders sounds beyond absurd, not matter-of-fact good business. Our duty is to each other, and we can’t pretend that we’re able to serve when we’re knee-capped by willful blindness.
We’re not paid enough. Our cars aren’t up to the hundreds of miles a week driving. You don’t have a problem of “morale,” you have a problem with “truth.” Maybe your organization is trying to grow beyond what it can pay for. Maybe it’s not making the right kind of sacrificing and elevating the right kinds of behaviors to deserve to survive. This is such a common and familiar theme, you can easily trick yourself into thinking it’s just the way things are or that there’s something universal about what failures humans are.
We’re now prepared to be crippled by our resilience. Every possible rationalization comes to a head. Every horror story shared not to sympathize and build solidarity, but to one-up and belittle. Think of the kids that need to be fed! Just one more week I need to make it through. Think of how bad that guy has it! My wage at least has “teen” in it! That’s good money! You’re not being responsible enough!! Pick up not just your emotional baggage, but the tab, and please smile after swallowing every offered platitude. There you go!
I felt on the verge of breaking on the ride into town today. The naked ass of “existence, so-insisted” was working its way past my eyes, into my brainstem, and down into my chest and guts. Again, my attempts at exercising responsibility and foresight were denied. Again, I’m made to play last-minute and wag-the-finger at the expedient and desperate move to not be compelled off the plank into the seas of endless sacrifice. Again, I’m met with the idea that I’m on my own, or at the mercy of how much I want my baggage to spill into the lives of my friends or family. Allie’s not a cab service. If you’re upset I can’t afford a nicer car, you need to spend some time alone until better thoughts start to hit you.
The great irony is that we’re always all responsible all the time. We structure society to give a stronger resolution for obligations and responsibilities for those at the top, and they may or may not have a genuine aptitude or moral authority. As a piddling regular Nazi, it’s you who carries out the order. It’s you who accepts the conditions. It’s you who shoots deserters. I feel left out to dry. My friend offered to let me use a spare car he happens to have he’s been keeping for a buddy overseas. That’s not his job or responsibility, he chose to make it his job and responsibility. It’s still not. Nor was it his job to buy this asshole client a phone so he could keep progressing through his visits.
It’s easy to blame yourself when you don’t know who to otherwise. It’s easy to act like it’s not a big deal when you happen to have the fix or the ability to move past the issue quickly. This is why rich people suck. “Life,” as we’re made to worship through ritual excuses, doesn’t “happen” to them in the same way. Bad things certainly do, because life sucks, but they won’t be broken by a totaled vehicle. They’ll have nightmares about how long they were on the phone with an insurance company. This is why competent people get exhausted or a really dark bent. They don’t grasp they’re being taken advantage of, or don’t want to admit it, and become the loudest cheerleader that pretends they’re on “top” and everything is copacetic if you could just find that team spirit.
When I get the opportunity, as I’ve attempted to create it myself, I want people as partners. If I make more, it'll be because I do more, but we don’t have to pretend I’m benign in my desire or use of power and money. That's what we’ve done. We’ve glorified opportunists, exploiters, and psychopaths as “founders” with some kind of special wisdom because their thing happens to exist instead of someone else’s. What could a doctor (this company’s founder) who studies mental health have besides anything but the best intentions? Ask the growing amount of money coming from government contracts, because when I find out it’s a penchant for Fabergé eggs, I’m going to demand more than a basically functioning car.
I’m still operating under the pseudo-bearable plight and obligation to continually speak truth to power. I still believe that I influence people, they influence me, and though I may never see or meet them, what I say and how I say it matters. It matters now, it will matter later. In order to take responsibility you need the means, the tools, and the will and wisdom to discern how to go about it at different levels. I’m responsible for myself, my people, my home, and the ones I attempt to help as they exhaust my time and patience each day. I certainly “asked” for some level of drama and obligation by taking this job, but that ask was compelled by a whole lot of forces beyond my control that need to be spoken to as well. Whether you can actually do something meaningful within such a domineering system to change or corrode is the open question.
I’m going to try and fix my truck. I’m going to rely on my friends to help, pay just enough to keep the chaos in some makeshift car bay long enough to keep making barely enough to fix barely enough. I went into work with all of the equipment they issued me prepared to just leave it and get off the familiar wheel as quickly as I was able to recognize it. My friends’ willingness to unfairly share the responsibility is going to stoke my sensibility as well. Fuck the world that gorges on those sacrifices.
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