Thursday, November 17, 2011

It Takes All Day

... to be poor.
Simmy set her mind on making new drapery for her Christmas design scheme. It took all day (or five hours) to make these drapes.
Now, if I was making these drapes for a client instead of just myself I would be in the poor house unless I charged $75 for the time it took to make them, $170 for this particular fabric, (which I bought at a greatly reduced price), and $25 for notions. So, I would need to get $270 for these drapes in order to earn a lower- middle income.
Simmy carefully monitored her time, watching the clock to make sure that the pies that had been ordered by 'who resembles God' would be ready for 3:15 p.m. He 'who resembles God' had stopped by the bake sale on the weekend and asked if it would be possible to buy pies on Thursday...
'I get paid on Thursday, he said.'
"Of course I can make them for you on Thursday," Simmy had replied.
People all want to have the same things... the social ability to live a decently prosperous life to be able to hold their head up in the presence of their peers, without shame, even when there are obvious and visible disparities in how everyone gets to live. 
A knock at the back door showed tired eyes and a bone weary worker. Simmy opened the door and said, "I just pulled out the apple pie and I'll just quickly take out the pumpkin pie. I wanted to have them as fresh as could be for you."
"They smell so good," he said.
"Good! So, what do you do for a living?"
He 'who resembles God' said he had worked in a factory for 33 years and Simmy said that Sam had been doing the same kind of work for about that long as well.
"Does he get a half hour lunch though, because we don't," he said.
"Well no, he takes two 15 minute breaks back to back and then he gets to go home that half hour earlier."
"Well, we don't get any formal breaks. We had to sign off on that though... for the labour laws... but every worker gets to take a bathroom and smoke break every hour."
"Well, that is something at least. It keeps people from getting careless from monotonous work."
"Oh, we rotate every hour as well," he said.
"That should keep injuries down then," Simmy said.
As she placed the hot pies in his hands, he let out a little groan of appreciation and said, "Oh, I know these will be good just by how good they smell."
As he walked down the street, Simmy was happy that she had made the day of a hard worker just a little better.
The next thing she would have to pray for was a dental and health plan for these workers.
The article below is a good read and poignant in light of the rich versus poor riots currently happening in the world.
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/reports/docs/SIC_2009_report_120909.pdf

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