Why should we care about working, when to us, working means doing the same thing over and over and over again, getting paid the same too, which isn’t nearly enough to make it even slightly worth it?
What does a couple of extra thousand dollars get you in New York? A month’s rent is all, for a year’s worth of headache.
THE HALLMAN BY CORA CRUZ 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 63
The worst part about jobs like mine is the way they make you stupid. If you weren’t stupid to begin with, stay with the job long enough and for sure you’ll deteriorate. Better to have started out dumb, that way at least you’ll never know what you missed.
I’m a hallman, as they call me, but I work the elevators too and sometimes the door. My other title is relief-man, which means I cover for breaks. I’m next in line for supervisor, management tells me, since I know everyone’s job and have a sense for how they fit together. I’m not sure I want the trouble, though. For an extra 5000 dollars at the end of the year—which isn’t even that because they take out a third in tax—you get the pain of being responsible for a bunch of lazy bums, everyone trying to pass off their work on someone else, porters never showing up, handymen conveniently forgetting, this one drunk or that one smoking weed in the basement, and it’s all on you. What does a couple of extra thousand dollars get you in New York? A month’s rent is all, for a year’s worth of headache.
But as I was saying, it’s not dealing with the others that’s the worst, or even the tenants. Some of the tenants are decent, treat you with respect and ask about your family, and it’s clear they do care. Some even go out on a limb for you, they’d write you a recommendation if you need it or put in a good word if you ask. I’ve had a tenant or two stick up for me in a dispute. But about half of them treat you like furniture. Still, this isn’t what I mind most. It’s the way they tell you that you can’t read, even when there’s nothing going on and you’re standing there in your uniform in the entrance or at your point in the hall, or sitting at the desk in the lobby, or on the stool in the elevator, bored to death. It’s the boredom that kills you. If you don’t find ways to occupy your mind you won’t make it, that’s certain. It does something to you. They say stress kills, but I think they confuse stress with boredom. The guys, you see them after a while doing anything to avoid it. They talk shit, constantly. About their adventures with women mostly, though we all know most of the stories are made up, or commenting on women as they pass by, observing everything, speculating. JC’s gay so he comments on the men and it’s all shit. Sometimes I ask them if they all just have shit for brains, if they’ve ever read a book or thought about anything ever in their lives, but it’s pointless. I get it though—even if you’re motivated, after a while you give up.
We sneak a look at our phones when we can. But you’re fired if you’re caught reading. Every few months the superintendent sends around a letter saying anyone seen on his phone will be sent home on the spot. For one or two months after that we put away our phones till the boss chills out, but then, little by little, we take them out again, till a few months later another letter gets circulated.
My wife says it’s the same at her job. She’s a secretary, or as they label it these days an administrative assistant. That’s what they call the women they hire to organize an office, but she says she doesn’t care, it’s all the same thing. She comes home sad and frustrated every night. They promised her all kinds of stuff when they hired her, they said things about future opportunities and growth, she was excited and bought two suits, but once you get hired as a secretary, she found out, it’s for life. If you’ve worked at that even for a little while, it sticks to your resume like super glue and no one ever sees anything else, especially the large companies. My wife, she was born in Colombia, came here with her mom and baby sister after her father was assassinated, worked her way through high school and college while still taking care of her sister and then raising our first kid, taught herself Portuguese by watching TV till she was fluent, all that, and they treat her like an idiot. She wanted to be a doctor, maybe go back to Colombia one day to help the children there. Now she makes appointments or books travel all day and answers phone calls. She’s supposed to be grateful. Everyone around her getting promotions, them no different than her except they went to a fancy school and got a degree in finance, and they didn’t need a job so badly like she did then, that she had to take something convenient, something just for now, so she could go to classes at night or pick up our son from daycare, not knowing it would get her stuck forever.
Well we’re on the same page about that. An army of doormen and hallmen could join an army of secretaries to protest the life sentence of stupidity we serve. But no one ever organizes a protest about this. No one ever brings it up. Not the people on TV that go on and on about racism and sexism and inequality. Not even our union, which is pretty good I’ll admit in other ways. We get decent health coverage, dental too, for now, and the wages—well they’re not great, nothing you can get a house on or support a family, but they could be worse. Still, no one talks about what it does to us, having to waste our lives like this, letting our time on this earth slip away for nothing, every day at work the same as the one before, watching ourselves never improving, never growing, not ever going anywhere.