Memories, ah sweet memories

People often ask me why I am so positive. Is it the medication I've been prescribed? Am I feigning this illness? Nope to both. What really keeps me positive is a series of memories I have from my past that make me very thankful to be where I am. Constant physical pain compared to, say, working at a movie theater, make me sigh in relief and ignore the stabbing sensations in my legs. The following is one of three horrible job experiences I have had in my adult life. Enjoy!

I put my work clothes through the washing machine twice, but they still reeked of the popcorn stench that I marinated in for 5 hours every afternoon. I had worked for years at a stressful, yet comfortable loan center job before I went back to college, and in this new city I wanted to try the regular, unappreciated work I had avoided. I should have just read Nickle and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, I realize in hindsight.

This movie theater job lost the "Worst Job Ever" award to my three months as a telemarketer, but it won for worst job environment. Supervisors, who were high school drop outs with slicked back hair and cheap shoes, slung insults with orders as I cleaned the floor and gave popcorn to movie goers. The first person who I ever filled a popcorn bag for was an old man who said "Why don't you try actually filling it up, missy" (it was already full, I ended up sprinkling popcorn on the top to appease him). Naturally, within a week of working the popcorn counter, I asked for a transfer. I was throwing up each day before work from either the stress or the smell still lingering on my uniform.

My weeks suffering through this job isn't the story I wanted to relay with this post. It's about a young woman who worked with me cleaning theaters, who was suffering from narcolepsy. Her brother worked along side her, helping her fall gently to the floor while he cleaned double fast for the both of them. Sometimes he wasn't there to catch her, and she would hit her head on an armrest or on a concrete step. All the while, her brother and the other cleaners pretended to me that there was nothing wrong.

One day she fell down the stairs and hit her head sharply on the wall. I carried her into the bathroom when she came to, her coordination shot and her body dry heaving as I rushed her as well as I could to the bathroom. She was taller than me, and certainly heavier than me, but we finally made it to the restroom. She threw up for a while, I held her hair back as I convinced her to go home and rest.

After dropping her off at the front office, I met up again with her brother and the other cleaners. He explained that they couldn't afford health insurance on their wages, and a doctor who had examined her pro bono had told them her treatment would be very expensive. This job was the best they could do, considering she would fall asleep during interviews and cleaning theaters wasn't supervised by management. They knew if management found out about her illness, they would find a reason to fire her. Illegal as it was, I didn't doubt that at all. She was chained to this thankless job filled with rude, disgusting people who care nothing for the peons that either feed the customers or clean up their mess. I used to do the math in my head as I cleaned up the floors of the theaters. At $9.50 a head, an average of 30 people per theater, they couldn't afford to provide health care to this young woman?

I left the job a few weeks after that. I ended up getting a job at another bank, a truly fabulous job where I sat at a desk and worked with documents I had spent my previous years reviewing. They appreciated me, they were compassionate and kind people, so much so that I wondered if I had exaggerated my memories of the movie theater. I went back a few months after I had quit to see a movie, and I over heard a girl being sworn at by a supervisor as she cried, cleaning up a dropped bag of popcorn.

I don't know what happened to the sick young woman who sobbed on my shoulder as I walked her into the bathroom. I just know that had this event happened in Canada or England or almost any other developed country, she would've gotten treatment for her illness. Movie theaters, which charge obscene amounts of money to patrons, who show paying customers ten minutes of advertisements before each movie, who sell candy and soda for seven times their worth, are the sort of companies that show what is wrong with our version of capitalism. Those on top do anything they can to make those on the bottom stay there, whether its by not providing health insurance or paying minimum wage, a wage that is impossible to live on.