In the summer of 2020, I got invited to speak to bright, promising high schoolers. They were part of a scholarship program where I was an alum. I thought someone must’ve made a big mistake choosing me to speak about careers. Mine has always been in flux. Strangely adept, I’ve been able to make money writing. That’s seldom meant writing essays or stories for pay (though that does happen). Whatever creative skills I nurture get assigned to solving a company’s menial problem. Then, once the problem’s solved, I get fired, often after months spent wrestling boredom. At the time, I saw no value in speaking to squishy young minds about this tragic cycle. But, at the very least, I could serve as a source of hope: “Don’t be a dummy like I was!” is a worthwhile fable.
If I’d been braver, I would’ve told them about hiring, firing, and the fallacy of labor equaling value.
“Your labor does not equal your value,” I would’ve said.
That seems simple but it’s not. Everyone tells you, as a poor Black being, that the only way to exist is to work. The world seeks to erase you so your loudest shout/your boldest stroke is your work. That belief is so false that sweet pain vibrates my knuckles as I type it. I live under the pretense anyway. The students needed me to see past my own embarrassment and tell them the truth. But I didn’t.
Now, after being fired from my sixth “real job” and pushed out of several others, I’m ready to talk to them. Since most of them asked me about the blog entries here, I thought it might be a good vehicle. On my profile, I’ll write five essays with the lessons I learned from getting bounced from every job I’ve had. This is the first one.
Lesson 1: Your labor doesn’t equal your self-worth.
I once worked for a financial newspaper despite not knowing a lick about finances, personal or other. A young person who did their social media needed to hire someone to do the work she’d moved on from. I had enough experience drafting copy for brands that I could be trained even for the driest NASDAQ-ery bullshit. So that’s what I did. She often condescended to me about my slowness in learning financial terms. (I was never mean to her about her poor spelling and grammar). Once, during my first week training to rewrite articles for their website, she kept me for two hours past closing. As I struggled to truncate the columns for easy reading, she berated me:
“Maybe this isn’t for you,” she said, peering over my shoulder.
“I’m starting to think it isn’t.”
She never got this close when we’d see each other departing the D train. Instead, she kept up the New York tradition of pretending to not see me and then walking to the same place without so much as a glance back. As the underling, I still had to beat her to the desk, skipping coffee and darting stairs to toss my coat over the back of my chair, sweat painting my neck.
I learned the rote tasks needed to survive and did my best to slip under the dizzying hum of pressed keys and elevator dings. The Sixth Avenue building was a major media company’s glass fortress. I could drown in a sea of soundproof panes with none the wiser. I managed to do this for a year before a tap on the shoulder during the winter months. I’d been arriving so late I’d keep my coat on so I didn’t rustle extra while slinking into my seat. The young woman who’d hired me leaped a few stepping stones to the bigger finance paper one floor above. I was now a sitting duck, hired by someone who was gone and not sure (or concerned) about my standing.
“Hey, Andrew, do you have a minute? This won’t take long.”
It’s chilling how relieved I am when I’m fired. Whatever ancestral source I have pointing me to true North must be exhaling cool hope.
A bespectacled 60-something then sat me down to explain how I was being ‘let go,’ as if this was the world’s worst trust fall. I say how because the conclusions had long been reached but the terms of my exit were meant to soothe: this amount of pay (for weeks you’re not here); this amount of gratitude for your time, etc.
They wouldn’t want the Invisible Man to cause a scene.
My mind responded: “It must be bad. I’m getting paid to leave!”
I exited the building, winter coat still on, thinking of how cold everyone was there. One of their hotshots would greet me daily en route to his Bloomberg terminal, undo his collar button, and then scream his interviews aloud in the packed cubicle row. It was a power-play directed at the air, not his colleagues who tapped away at their stories not missing a beat. I thought that’s how he pumped himself up.
I added notes on my resume, extracting the best of what I did. That’s what I would tell the kids: fancify your nothingness and move on. Your labor is not your value.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Andrew Ricketts' work on Medium.