But remember: the enemy is not the "handout", it's the capitalism, complacency, scarcity, and greed that kept your sweet hands handout-free in the first place.
When I was an apprentice at a theatre company, I got paid a measly $600/month stipend. Two years later (when I was on staff), the apprentice stipend got increased to $1,000/month, just because someone who they really wanted asked for an increase.
I felt two things: happy for the new apprentices who would make closer to a decent amount of money and also upset that I'd had to live off much less and now it was going to increase to what was practically a lavish wage to me at the time. (Oh what teensy tiny expectations I had.)
What really got me wasn't the fact that the increase was happening, it was how easily the wage changed and the knowledge that I had not been valued in the same way.
Because that's all it takes to increase a wage or forgive a debt: a decision. A little bit of will. One person to value the work or life of another.
The problem isn't that someone eventually might make that decision, the problem is that a bunch of people spent so long maintaining the opposite decision--the one that kept you in debt or at an inhumanly low wage.
So feel your rage, if you've got it, just send it in the right direction.
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| Kate Tumblr |
I had this experience when I left a job I'd been doing for a long time and the person who replaced me had a starting salary higher than what I was receiving when I left. Undervalued is exactly how I felt.
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