One year ago I was a python coder. I have my pipy packages, and am reasonably competent. I could not find a job in France because they all want PHP/C#/C++ coders with weird proprietary environment or have interviews that I would grade as bullying against which I have been adamant. Sometimes in your life, self esteem matters. So I took the first job I could find because I have no more savings: I am currently a mover. And, I am strangely glad.
Yesterday, I was on the highway with my truck. A 20 cubic meter, with an engine that has hiccups, hardly any breaks, non functioning signals, various signals on the board telling me oil should be changed, lights are not functioning and it was my first time driving this kind of truck. Unable to direct my rear mirrors to have a clear view of the back.
I was in the middle of an heavy flow of cars, trying to keep up with my 130km/h speed limit : my extra time on chantier not being paid. The faster I am back, the faster I can see my wife.
While I was inserting myself at maximum authorized speed on the third lane (without signals) a car chose to irrupt from my dead angle with full acceleration at 150km/h. Fuck it was scary. Afterwards a mob of angry drivers copiously trashed me for having a dangerous behaviour.
People don't get it, I cannot lose my driving license: it is part of my way to earn money, I cannot pay for speed tickets they represents 3 days worth of work. But I don't want to lose time. Because time is life.
I don't live to work, I work to be able to live. I wish not to work 53hr/week and earn more money. I prefer to give up on cars, expensive LCD flat panels, computers, furniture, clothes, smartphones and share more time with my wife.
But, correcting with the effective time I work (14hrs+ per day) I am paid ~5€/hr ~ 7$/hr for being a mover. I sometimes wonder why I don't prefer to go on the social minimum.
I do complain, but this job is fun. I just don't understand why a job that no ones wants to do is way less paid than other jobs. In fact I know, I tried to apply to the other jobs and was cockblocked by the means of various strong arbitrary selections based often of cronyism or weird tests/diplomas/formation that are honestly useless. The job office even proposes for expensive costs for the jobless android formations based on the free IP google delivers. Paratism to the max.
There is normally a formation for being a mover. I did not have it. I learn by doing, watching, asking questions. Colleagues now ask me to work with them. It's rewarding in its way.
I move people with unopened goods still labeled in money that disappeared 15 years ago that worth more than one day work and that I so envy, like a calligraphic sets of fountain pain. I don't steal.
These customers often with level of education similar to mine are scolding us as if there education level gave them an automatic insight on everything. They don't understand the global picture. I am a ripper, I am an ant taking part in a collective intelligence made of preppers (the guy preparing the box), the tetris players (the one stacking efficiently and securely stuff in truck), the unloaders (people preparing balanced sets of boxes for efficient routing). I do small stuffs, like bringing information back and forth, giving status, moving stuff out of the way, cleaning, moving stuff fast without breaking them, doing complex practical 3D geometry with pieces of furniture.
They speak to the movers like shit. I shut my mouth: don't antagonize the customer if you want to be paid. But, for being able to compute scalar product in infinite dimensions, I respect my coworkers. They have a good intuition of geometry, better than most of my former CS colleagues, my now new customers behaving like shits to the commoners. It is funny how people with 80 cubic meters tell me how we are profiting of them while I left Canada with 1 cubic meter selling all my beloved goods on kijiji to be able to make it. Since they have a big contract, they pay less, leaving us less money and hardly tipping. It feels wrong.
On the road, they have these fancy cars, coming back from my rear nearly killing me.
They want to be able to ride over the speed limits, and they horn me, flash me, insult me for trying to get back the fastest possible to my wife with my underpowered and unsafe truck on the road.
But I keep my lane on the road obnoxiously, I do not even try to be nice to them anymore.
I have a life. I don't think of my job anymore when I am back.
My emotions are rollercoasting with the teams I take part. Team work is a weird alchemy. I am part of the mob. I try to support my colleague by untying the knots of causal anger I see forming.
Waking up at 4 am, riding at full speed, eating in 15 minutes working under 34°C moving heavy loads, and this stretched on 14 hours is tiring.
Some people to keep up, like when I was a coder are boozing, smoking, sniffing ... I try to avoid them, and avoid to give a bad example. I may be supporting the right to alter consciousness, but in the limit of work safety.
I have nothing against this ... except when I work. I maybe making my own booze, I don't booze or even think of smoking drugs on the work. But, my brain understand why people may want to do so. So I don't judge. I try my best to be nice to them, I do what I think my hierarchy was never able to do: I encourage my colleagues all the time when they do positive stuff. Like a stupid anime character in a shounen. I tell them how good they are at their job and that I want them to teach me and help me improve, I sneakily try to make them do the cleaning of the unsafe shitty trucks by initiating it so to help them regain some pride. I only speak of colleagues in their back if I have something good to say about them.
I am experimenting something a sociopath like me never thought possible: social interaction. My weird above the average stamina and pain ignorance makes me compensate by speed what I can't deliver by raw power, I encourage collaboration, because well, I don't have power, so I rely heavily on the others to carry with me, and teach me.
And you know what, my efforts sometimes work. Sometimes I notice an effect. I see people happy to work on chantier more than they usually are, and sometimes speaking or smiling. I give myself credit for it, but to be honest, it may be delusion. However, I don't care.
And this is part of what is making my new life worth the sacrifice I made. I finally can live in a world where cooperation matters. Where when work day is over, I will not have to reconnect my computer and work until 1am. Where my boss won't try to steal my inventions.
However, the people we mainly move whose merits are often to be born and have estates are assholes.
When I try to rent a place I am often refused to rent a place for my wife and me because they don't want a couple to leave in ... 25, 32, or even 40 m².
We actually live in 16m² and it is okay. Is it really the owner's moral judgement that should lead my life. The standards of those who owns should really not be pushed down the throats of the modest persons.
I don't need your smartphones, your apps, your internet of shit, your healthy or ready made food, your cars, your expensive bikes, cars, gadget. I just want a decent place to live in, time to spend with my wife and enough money to buy food. My computers are all falling into pieces. It is a matter of months before I might not be able to write on this blog. I don't even know if I will buy a new one.
Oh! And I would like to be respected.
My bike is my only way of moving and I am bored of cars trying to push me out of roads on purpose, or scold me for not using unsafe-slow bike path.
This is an allegory of the world we are living in: the wealthy are just bullies nowadays, whose power of nuisance is enforced by crony politicians through lobbying.
And to add the insult to the insult, I was listening to the radio and had this intellectual writer explained what it meant for him to change life. His book was full of deaths and murders saying how cataclysmic in his fantasies life changing was. It was full of clichés and condescending. And I realize most of you don't know how life is for the people: our «cultural» industry that is heavily sponsored or funded is made not by the people but by a small self designated coterie of pedantic ignorant. French movie will depict the boredom of rich kids leaving in exclusive places most of the time. The life of most of the impoverished population is held a shameful secret or fantasied in irrealistic success stories. Artists can go screw themselves. They look like «small Goebels» flooding the world of a Prozzac©® fairy tale where poor people failed by unwillingness to commit to reasonable social rules.
I see so many self called musicians lacking the burns on their hands due to practice. So many so called intellectual unable to know the difference between christianity and catholicism talking about religion. So many self called leaders scorning their workers constantly instead of helping them improve.
Well, my life is bittersweet right now. I am on the edge of becoming a hobbo.
Was it worth to abruptly fall down the social ladder? Well, I did not choose. My actual boss is the only one that gave me a chance. I have it because be it 4am, 6am and sometimes 7 am I am here ready for the call.
Wealthy people party all night preventing me from sleeping, being rude, but still I stand. Growing a disturbing uneasiness about the fact that at the opposite of the socialists in France I think class struggle did not disappeared but is getting worse.
I am getting very disturbed reading newspapers our elite seems to be totally blind to the real daily life of the common people. All political formation, even Nuit Debout seem out of touch. A silent drift is occurring under my very eyes between the population and the governing elites (administration, elected people, economical elites, artists, journalists) and it does not feel like a good omen. Social diversity is disappearing thus national concord, fueling resentment of the excluded. The first violence fueling terrorism comes from the deny of reality of the elite.
Me? Well, I will adapt the wheel of chaos. Finding it fun. And enjoying my life with my wife even with the reprobation of the society even if landlords want me to overspend my money in something I don't need, even if bitter workers try to sabotage our works as a kind of revenge on society.
Life may have become tougher, but I love my new life ; I am freer than I was. And since I don't have a messianic wish to take the pain of the world on my shoulder and correct it, I will just take my already heavy enough personal load and move it to better horizon.
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