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March 2009, Volume 23, Issue 1 - A Proper Job |
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Originally published in the Advocate in April 1987.
By Joe Watts
I met Ann last September. She’s a stewardess with British Airways and was here on a two-day layover. The attraction was mutual, so we began seeing each other whenever she was in town and continue to do so.
So far, except for the obvious difficulty of living 7,000 miles apart, we’ve encountered only one problem – money. Although hardly wealthy, she’s earned a good living for the last fifteen years and is used to those things which accompany a decent income: nice cars, fine restaurants, paid vacations. I, on the other hand, am a part-time English teacher who drives a ’72 Pinto, finds Happy Hour at Topper’s an extravagance, and who hasn’t enjoyed a real vacation in years.
So when we began dating we soon discovered a kind of economic ―culture shock.‖ When I picked Ann up at her hotel on our first evening out, she skeptically eyed my heap, her doubts being quickly confirmed as we bounced, rattled and shook down Main Street. The dinner and drinks at Café Pelican were splendid; however, the $60 tab was for me strictly a first-date lux-ury. We did manage a trip to Monterey in November – I borrowed my sister’s car – but we stayed only one night because the $58 motel room was beyond my means (she paid for the night we did spend there). And several times she has invited me to come visit her in London, but my answer is always, ―I don’t see how I can afford it.‖
Even though Ann has been remarkably understanding about all this, one day her frustration surfaced. Fed up with having to hear me plead poverty due to low pay, she blurted out in her very British way: ―Well when are you going to get a proper job?‖
That I instantly resented her question tipped me off that there was some unpleasant truth about to be revealed to me, some insight I wasn’t sure I wanted to face just then. But after a brief hesitation I asked her to explain what she meant by ―proper.‖
―Well, for one thing, a proper job would pay you enough that you could buy a new car. A proper job would allow you to go out for a decent meal when you felt like it. You could take a vacation – even come to England this summer. If you had a proper job these things would be no problem.‖
Her words stung: I wanted to defend myself and my job. I started to tell her that I would gladly accept a full-time teaching position were one offered to me, in which case my salary would more than double. But then I would have to enlighten her as to the current situation of budget cut-backs and administrative priorities – grim realities which would only have made me more depressed than I already was.
It hurt to admit it, but I couldn’t argue with her; any job which allows for little beyond the basics of food and rent cannot be considered a proper job. All my cherished notions of why I was scraping by in order to keep on teaching; my lofty sentiments about shedding light and touching lives, even if it meant doing without many of life’s usual pleasures; my firm belief in the importance of my profession – all these fled in the face of her words whose truth seemed embarrassingly clear.
Sad to say, in my seven years of teaching I had never looked at it like this; now I have a hard time seeing it any other way.
And I find myself wondering; when will I get a proper job?
Professor Watts finally did get a “proper job,” becoming a full timer in 1991, and more recently even got a “proper spouse,” having married FA Executive Secretary Janet Watts in January, 2008.
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