By: Revanche

I’ll take Bootstrapping for $400 please, Alex

January 31, 2012

There’s a blogger who frequents another very popular PF blogger’s site and comments in a way that reminds me of another person who used to squat on generally popular blogs: All Financial Matters, Single Ma’s blog, I can’t remember where else, but definitely at least those two, named Minimum Wage. Does anyone remember MW? I can’t recall if MW was male or female but MW was a down and outer, and ze was determined to crap on everyone and everywhere. It did not matter what the conversation was, ze had something negative to say:

“I wish I had that kind of money.”
“I wish someone would give me that kind of job/salary/bonus/promotion/praise. I’ve been working for minimum wage for the past XYZ years…..”
“I wish I could have that kind of vacation. I haven’t had a day off since …..”
“I wish I could have that kind of car. I can’t even drive a working car because ….”
“I wish that was my life. Must be nice.“
“I wish I could have retirement savings – boy I wish I could even think about retiring someday, I will never get to retire because all I make is less than [wait for it] minimum wage and I will never get out of this rut and life.”

Sunny, hm? And the second anyone made the slightest move toward asking after what MW did or made in the hopes of offering any sort of suggestions that MW might use to lessen the plight, WELL.  You might well have spit in MW’s face.

Eventually MW faded off the scene in some way, but today I discovered that one of our fellow PF bloggers has a rather pestilent commenter who is persistent in crapping all over his blog and while I’d noted the name once or twice before, I didn’t realize ze had a blog of zir own.  Curious whether there was something more behind this person, I tarried for a moment and found that actually, this person was only a couple years younger than me and my.. my oh my oh my oh my.  This was rather a prime example of the sort of personality that the older generations tut tut at and say: we’re screwed.  As a dear friend said: FAIL.

So very much of the blogger’s posts were just for lack of a less kind word: whining. The blog seethed with entitlement.

For example: A very small debt had blossomed some multiples beyond the original principal because ze hadn’t paid and eventually ended up going to court and settled against zir.  Ze has decided that there’s no gain to be had in paying it. So ze refuses.

Ze also refuses to work a full work week because ze “hates zir job”. Ze won’t find a better job (“can’t”), so instead presumably mopes about but defines the remaining time in the week as time for doing stuff like chores or exercise or blogging. Anything but working or going to school. Those latter two are definitely not on the list. And so ze declares zir job and loathesome bloggers who are successful in life and making any better salaries in any way, those despicable people who have found a way and means, anathema.  They and the people who patronize zir job are brats.  Ze cannot be one, of course, because ze has no means, the lack thereof clearly demonstrated by the poorness of which ze is plagued.

At this point, I lost my mind a little.  I very nearly left a comment.  Really? Ze is not a brat?  REALLY??  Ze works hours that wouldn’t qualify as half a job’s time, can’t be bothered to plaster a fake smile on zir face, and openly scorns doing that much and the rest of the world that shuts up and puts up??  And has the nerve to hide behind the lesbian card? The people of color card? The woman card?

Throw ’em on the table. Throw them all on the table. Anything else you got?  Oh, “lives with your parent” was the concession. Well that’s neither here nor there in the game of brattiness.

Well, here’s a little PSA. Brats come in all genders, drive all kinds of vehicles, are present in every economic band. It’s all in the attitude toward others and willingness to put everyone else down as “Other” and say that they’re just not going to put up with any kind of anything from anyone because they will be treated precisely one kind of way from only THIS sort of people.

Brats certainly are the people that you don’t like here but they are, alas, not so far away as all that from the picture you have painted of yourself. And being abusive is only half a step away from inviting and creating an abusive environment.

It’s a shame that you heap such vitriol on bootstrappers when that’s actually the way that most poor people find their way out of poverty. It may be hard to see from their positions now just because they “have so much” and maybe some of their advice rings hollow just because they have anything more than you.

I’m not going to give any advice. I’m just going to say it’s shortsighted, intentionally or not, that you’re dismissing and in fact attacking a group of people who by definition were once much like you.

I worked myself out of relative poverty working 80 and 100 hour weeks for umpteen years, and my parents took more than 20 years before me because they were strangers in a foreign land to start over. That was on top of the 15 years they’d already spent working out a living in their native land. But without fail, 365 days a year, year after year, they put a smile on their faces and went to do whatever jobs they had at the time whether it was picking up after someone else’s animals or children or land or mopping the floors or building a fence or laboring in the sun or rain.

Did they like it? Of course not. Did they want to do it? Of course not. They did it anyway.

Did I like my ridiculous hours? Heck no. Did I want to work 14 hour days? Of course not. But to make sure that the bills were paid and we didn’t carry debt forever, I did it.

And were my clients and shoppers nice to me? [Hysterical Laughter] How many diatribes did I listen to? How many insane people did I encounter? I can’t even begin to remember anymore. (I do remember having the same flipping conversation with the same old man every two weeks for five years straight because he could not remember a thing. We smiled every two weeks.) Does it matter now? No. Because it doesn’t matter in the end. What mattered was that I always did a good job, kept my eye on the important things, got through the days good or bad, and took care of my family so that my physically sick and mentally ill mother did not have to keep working with and listening to the abuse of the bullying crappy coworkers who always had poor attitudes and felt like they were always having a bad day and could take it out on the poor weakest one in the shop.

Not everything goes your way. In fact, very very little ever does without an immense amount of effort. But there is a bigger picture. Whether you can or will or want or don’t see it – that’s your call. I’m a bootstrapper whose family was poorer than dirt and we fought long and hard each and every d*mn day to win against the grind and still fight it every day because life is just not that easy.

The real lesson here isn’t who can make it in life because they worked harder or who can shout “lazy” louder or who has more money. It’s about who has the gumption to try and find the way to be happy because I’ll be darned if there’s a one of us PF bloggers trying as hard as this one to beat Minimum Wage at zir game of Misery.

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