A Working Stiff's Manifesto: A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine That Fired Me, and Three I Can't Remember by Iain Levison
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Book Reviews of A Working Stiff's Manifesto: A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine That Fired Me, and Three I Can't Remember
Book Review: Whaddaya mean, my degree is worthless???
Summary: 4 Stars
Personally, I found Levison's grandiose sense of entitlement and flexible morality (lying, stealing, etc) utterly reprehensible . . . but at least he never went so far as plotting to get co-workers injured or fired, nor did he stoop to sabotage -- although he could probably "justify" both. Hadta subtract a star just for his poor work ethic, bad attitude, and failure to apply himself. All of the jobs he lists suck, that is true: but he always could've gone back to being an EMT (which is a cool job that pays reasonably well), and since he seemed to think working in an office would be so great he could've avoided entry level manual labor altogether if he wanted to use his English degree to become, say, a copy editor -- or even an over-qualified file clerk. But if he didn't work all those suck jobs there wouldn't be much of a story, would there?
Like it or not, once you get past all the cynicism and silliness, Levison makes two very important observations:
1. Every high school student is stongly encouraged to take on tens of thousands of dollars in Student Loan debt in order to "get a degree" of dubious value. Sure, a degree in Law, Medicine, Business, or the hard sciences can pretty much guarantee you a respectable salary -- but it seems like over 80% of all BA degrees are in Liberal Arts (English, Fine Arts, Literature, Philosophy, History, Sociology, Languages, Music, etc) -- and if one does not have a clearly defined goal, loads of ambition, and a (possibly financially) supportive family that degree will be nothing more than, as Levison put it, "a $40,000 fly swatter." Lots of young people graduate with a worthless degree, crushing debt, and no way to earn money outside of entry level menial jobs that pay little over minimum wage -- and that debt will accumulate interest FOREVER and the creditors will hound them into the grave, using the guvmint's Top Secret Labor Database to track them from job to job, garnishing the wages of each. After rent, car insurance, utilities, and food there just isn't enough left over to pay even the INTEREST on a $40,000 loan. Someone is getting rich off this scam, and it is a national disgrace.
2. The primary cause of employee malaise, absenteeism, poor performance, theft, and sabotage typically is a result of abusive management practices. While I certainly am not excusing bad employees from doing bad things, management (and their Evil Korporate Overlords) needs to realize that many of their methods are counterproductive. Evil Korporate Overlords say that "the bottom line" is the most important thing. Sure -- cutting wages, denying benefits, and trying to wring every possible bit of "productivity" out of cowed and depressed workers may increase profits in the short run; but high turnover, shrink, poor customer relations, and even sabotage will inevitably result from poor employee morale. Levison cites examples of managers whose sole job seems to be to stalk, demean, and harass diligent workers right out of their minds (if not the company). Happy workers = happy customers . . . and "happiness" can not be forced or inflicted upon one -- it is the result of a friendly workplace where stress is kept within reasonable limits. Deliberately increasing stress levels for no discernable reason other than THAT YOU CAN is malicious and counter-productive . . . but that is what many managers seem to excel at.
This work, while not a "manifesto" in any way, is an amusing and enlightening book that should be read after Ehrenreich's brilliant "Nickle & Dimed" and "Bait & Switch."
Book Review: Both funny and tragic
Summary: 5 Stars
Iain Levison can find work but not fulfilment. The frustration of dead-end, deadhead labour induces a frustration syndrome as the realization sets in that his college degree in English literature will gain him little by way of psychic wages on the job. He is adrift in a workaday world where one human is as good as the next and all are expendable. Meaningless promises abound, "like when they were telling us [at commencement that] we were the future of the world". In ten years, Iain Levison has lived in six states and worked at forty-two jobs; from fish cutter in Alaska to furniture mover in North Carolina, film-set gopher, oil deliveryman, truck driver, and crab fisherman. He quit thirty of them, got fired from nine, and has difficulty remembering the other three. Whatever could go wrong often did, hilariously
It is a funny book about the not-so-funny American workplace. The real thing, written not by a high-priced journalist disguised as a counter clerk, or a tenured professor passing as a vagrant, but by a genuine wage-dependent, red-blooded working stiff too "rich" for welfare and too broke to fit a consumer demographic. He works to keep his car running to get back and forth from work. He works to get by and get back for the next day's labours.
Book Review: Interesting and sometimes provocative, but not hilarious
Summary: 3 Stars
If you read the description of this book, you may be expecting the book to be either 1) a manifesto or 2) a hilarious description of many, many jobs, when in fact it's neither. A major percentage of the book was about his experience working on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska instead, which included some insightful and memorable incidents and passages, but wasn't exactly hilarious.
I am a liberal arts graduate myself, and as I struggle to figure out what I ultimately want to do with my life now, I find myself feeling dissatisfied with any of my available options (much like the author of this book). Liberal arts education promotes intellectual growth, but upon graduation most liberal arts grads discover that the business world does not value intellect so much. Business and science may have always been more useful in the marketplace than intellectual pursuits, but a college degree in liberal arts used to be at least respectable. Now most people consider it a waste of time, possibly as bad as having no degree at all.
This book resonated with me because it danced around these issues, particularly the realization that spending 4 years expanding your mind and exploring new ideas really doesn't prepare you for the workplace, where independent thought and new ideas often aren't welcomed. Liberal arts studies prepare you to be creative and analytical, which - let's face it - are skills that retail management or sales usually do not require. Sometimes the author frustrated me because it seemed like he was on the verge of being able to change things, only to sabotage himself in the end, but it's hard to judge since we're only getting a limited picture.
I think the book could have definitely benefitted from being at least 100 pages longer, because it didn't delve too deeply into any sort of analysis even though it would have lent itself well to that. And it could have been a lot more fun to read if it aimed to be a farcical look at life in the American workplace (a la the movie "Office Space"). In the end I didn't get a lot of laughs, nor did I get any ideas of what to do...I basically just felt that I wasn't as alone, which has value too.
Book Review: Yes, but where's the Manifesto?
Summary: 4 Stars
Just in case you have been paying little attention to the real world lately (don't worry, it seems to happen to most of us), here is a book that can provide you with some basic information:
1 - Guess what, higher education does NOT lead to a promising career (or, as the slogan goes, "unlimited opportunity"). In fact, you can consider yourself lucky if you get a job at all.
2 - Working, especially in the countless menial tasks available nowadays (from moving furniture to preparing drinks at a boring cocktail party) is not fun at all - and it will hardly cover your bills.
3 - The people who "serve" you (whether they are filling up your gas tank or processing your delicious deep-frozen Alascan fish) don't care about your well-being at all - more often than not, they will consciously or unconsciously sabotage their work (i.e., spitting in your food and other such appealing habits).
Iain Levison manages to deliver these unromantic facts about work in a nonchalant and often ironic tone. So his adventures in the all too banal world of dead-end jobs are well worth reading, if only to shed any illusions one might still have about what is happening in the purportedly "richest country in the world" (something even the author remembers to mention every so often).
The most curious aspect of the book, however, is the word "Manifesto" in the title - when in reality the author provides no statement of his beliefs and no promises of better days to come. In short, Levison isn't really pointing a finger at guilty parties, defining new goals, calling for a revolution - all those things one would expect from a proper manifesto. He just describes what he is going through, in his efforts to achieve the "good living" he imagines he is entitled to as an American (though all it comes down to is cable TV and the typical junk food), and his frustration at not achieving even that. As a consolation, he reminds us that there are people in other countries who are doing far worse. So if you are an unemployed or underemployed American, consider yourself lucky!
What a contrast to the days of the big cries for emancipation of the working class, power to the people, down with wage slavery and all those nice (but, alas, empty) slogans.
And in the end, that is perhaps the wisdom of this little book: after all the ideologies and idealism have failed, it may finally dawn upon us that there isn't much to expect from life, after all. Unless you consider lying in bed after another tiring day of some mind-numbing activity and watching yet another episode of the fascinating fictitious world of sexy attorneys and dedicated lawyers supposedly fighting for "Law and Order" just about as up as you can get. Levison seems humble enough to take that. And good luck to him (and all of us) in his desperate struggle to get there. Venceremos!
Book Review: great
Summary: 5 Stars
for anyone who's worked meaningless jobs before, it is nice to know someone else out there has had more than you, and also feels just as worthless.