Occupational Snobbery and Unemployment
The cure for occupational snobbery is unemployment. The road to finding a sense of equanimity when considering the false hierarchy of pride in occupation starts with the awareness that we are all vulnerable to unemployment. Viewed from the great equivocator of joblessness it's only a matter of time before we perceive all occupations as worthy.
The plutocratic foundation that holds up the American Dream leads us to believe that wealth and material excess raises our status to one of power and entitlement. In tandem with this notion is the one that says a vast amount of education also gives us privilege. Snobbery comes with the number of degrees that follow our name. As the cycle of long education and well paying career continues there develops a removal from other areas of life that causes those in the professions to comment that this or that person is "just a ____ (fill in the blank)." They are just a housewife, just a car mechanic, just a checkout person at the grocery store and so forth.
Don't families desperately need housewives and mothers? Someone must care for the children and do the laundry. If the family can't pay for outsiders to raise their children for them, someone must stay home and fulfill that job. When the car breaks down aren't we happy for mechanics? If we don't know how to do the work ourselves or are too snobbish to stick our own heads under the hood, we need to pay the expert to take care of things for us. And what about those long lines at the grocery store where we all become exasperated because there aren't enough checkout folks?
In reality, it is need that elevates work. When you are unemployed you need a job. You may look to find a job in your profession of choice for a while but when push comes to shove what you need in the long run is for money to start flowing back in. Suddenly working in the large packaged goods store doesn't look so beneath you. Suddenly waiting tables or mopping someone else's floor looks like hard work that you've never done before, don't know how to do and causes a little anxiety because it's new territory.
You find out that these same positions you looked down your nose at, but now need, are those that require new skill sets, new attitude adjustments and new physical demands. The large packaged goods store has its own technology and very specific policies and procedures that you have no idea about. Suddenly the brain has to work again and unfortunately among your many degrees there isn't one in how to operate the register, stand on your feet all day and be pleasant and helpful to masses of cranky customers and their hoards of darling children.
The people who have worked in the store for a while know what they're doing and look quite comfortable. The same people you dismissed as uneducated and ignorant are the ones you call on to bail you out when you make one of your many mistakes. You find envy moves in to take the place of snobbery. You sure wish you were one of those comfortable employees. Funny how the tables turn when we all fall off our pedestals into unemployment.
