The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society.

Money and Business Narratives From Anonymous Authors

Money

On July 29, 2019, I filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In doing so, I wiped away $35,000 of credit card debt—debt that included a decade of medical bills, insurance premiums, food, utilities and a lot of basic survival-type shit that I could not have otherwise afforded. 

I still feel a lot of shame about filing for bankruptcy. American culture is hyper money-focused, and because we believe ourselves to be a meritocracy, financial failure—or just financial struggle—is viewed as a moral failure. Struggling to pay your bills? Try harder. Got debt collectors calling you? It’s your fault. 

On the other hand, we deify the rich. Financial success in America is looked at as the pinnacle of human achievement. We worship at the altar of entrepreneurs, those maverick individuals who find ways to game the system and accrue fantastical riches. The message this sends Americans is: If you’re not rich, you’re not important. 

I was never wildly excessive with my money. I didn’t buy big-screen TVs or spend on lavish parties and vacations. But graduating in a recession, living during an unprecedented era of wage stagnation and rent increases with no healthcare coverage for years just kept accumulating costs I couldn’t cover. I stopped paying my credit card in 2018 when it became a choice between my minimum payment and eating. It is an entirely isolating feeling when you know you cannot afford to pay your basic expenses, but it is an even more overwhelming feeling when paying your debts means forgoing things like, say, food. So, I—not shockingly—chose food. 

It took only a few weeks for the phone calls to start. They came at all hours, from all area codes. Some days, they came in five-minute intervals. I ignored these calls based upon the advice of no one since I sought no advice on how to alleviate my debt. And because I felt like a sublevel human shit for having debt in the first place, I kept this process from almost everyone I knew.

Never at any point in this process did I consider bankruptcy. Even though I had no feasible way to pay off the debt, I was obsessed with the idea of digging my way out of this hole. Bankruptcy was for quitters, for the losers, the failures. In America, you’re told that there’s always a way to hustle your way out of a jam, to get that one golden opportunity that can rescue you from embarrassing destitution. Ignoring reality and dreaming super fucking vaguely that I’d be rescued seemed more hopeful than acknowledging my reality: that there was no chance in hell I had the means to handle this debt.   

One day, about a year after the payments stopped, the phone calls did too. In private conversations with other people running from debt, I’d heard that in rare cases—after a year or so—the collectors can actually just…disappear. 

They called up a law firm with a cache of aggressive lawyers; they filed a court date; and they sent an official letter saying that I was past due and liable to pay back everything owed or my wages could be garnished. Pretty scary shit. 

I’d vaguely asked about bankruptcy on Facebook years before (“Just asking out of pure curiosity”), and an acquaintance DMed me with her story. She told me that bankruptcy was one of the better decisions she’d ever made in her life. It allowed her to start fresh, to erase the mistakes of her past and be able to make financial decisions with a clearer mind. She told me it helped her be kinder to herself and referred me to a bankruptcy lawyer and financial advisor she said would guide me through the entire process without shame or judgment. 

I made the call that day and laid out my extensive financial history and was told immediately that I qualified for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Chapter 7 is the type of bankruptcy where you erase all your debts. In order to qualify, you must prove a few things:

You did not make any exorbitant purchases on your credit card(s) during the past three months anticipating bankruptcy would wipe them out (see: cars, homes, etc.)

You do not have any inheritance or assets that could help you pay off this debt (if you receive any windfall within six months of filing, you are legally obligated to pay back the debt)

At the time, I was working as a bartender, waiter, assistant, truck driver, copywriter and was selling vintage clothes and flipping items on eBay. It was not a glamorous life but this also meant I qualified for 100 percent relief of my credit card debt.

After you decide to look debt in the face and punch it in the fucking jaw, you then need to fork over some dough. $1,800 goes to the financial folks who set you up with a bankruptcy lawyer, give you all the proper paperwork, help you file your court date, send you links to federally required pre- and post-bankruptcy financial competency tests and also field all your paranoid questions because you believe you’re going to fuck it all up. 

You make an itemized list of three to six months of expenses for the judge (I was asked for six), and you get intimately familiar with how you spend every dollar you earn. Then, it’s a cool $400 court filing fee to get your date with the judge set in stone. I was broke and lucky to have a close friend float me the money to pay for the service. Many cannot.

My court date was set for a month after my payments went through, and during that time, I lived with paranoid anxiety that I would be rejected by the judge and banished to lawsuit hell. My lawyer assured me that if I brought my ID and was prepared to answer questions about my itemized expenses, I’d be out in a few minutes. 

On the day in question, I arrived at my hearing location—a Brutalist-style bank in Downtown L.A.—where hearings are held on the seventh floor. I sat under stained fluorescent bulbs and watched disheveled lawyers in mismatched suits giving young people, couples and elderly immigrants advice, assuring them their cases would be approved. 

Once my name was called to enter the room and sit with the judge, things got pretty fucking hazy. I wish I could say I held my head high, but once I was two feet in front of the person with the power to decide my financial future, I had difficulty making eye contact or speaking above a faint baby whisper. I’d faced my financial situation head-the-fuck-on by showing up in this room and was finally in a position to have a clean slate and I was deeply fucking terrified. 

The judge blandly asked my line of work (“waiter”), if I’d spent any money on a credit card in the past three months (“no”). I answered the judge’s questions with the confidence of a 5-year-old covered in glass shards being asked about a broken window, while she studiously looked over my paperwork. The whole affair took about one or two minutes before the judge plainly said, “You are approved.” My lawyer nodded and told me I’d receive my official notice in the mail three months to the day. That was it. Done.

I walked to the elevator, descended to ground level, walked into the acrid July heat and cried; the kind of cry where you make harsh grimaces and heave a lot. There was no fanfare, no hugs, no cheers for my courage. It was just the anticlimax of living through a traumatic moment and being forced back into anonymity.

It’s been over two years since my approval, and I still haven’t fully come to grips with my reality. My credit score is slowly building up, and I’ve been denied a starter credit card multiple times. I won’t qualify for financing for a car or a home for at least another five years, though my wages make those purchases unreachable anyway. I’ve gradually become more open about my situation, not only as a salve for my shame but as a means to spark discussions about the predatory nature of modern capitalism. 

It’s not an immediate shift toward forgiveness when I talk about my bankruptcy. Talking about it is often painful because the conditioning that all financial struggle is a moral failure—a dearth of effort and grit—runs pretty deep. I have to be mindful of my audience, of those I trust to listen to me without preconceived notions of judgment, of admonishment, of shame. But gradually, with time, there has been easing, a lightness and yes, even some forgiveness. The path is long. 

We do not live in an equal system. Hard work is not universally rewarded with riches. We live in a system where many of us are one medical bill, one illness away from financial devastation. Wealth inequality in America, especially since the pandemic, has propelled us into a new Gilded Age where a few individuals control most of the wealth. There really should be no shame for struggling in a corrupt and imbalanced system. Meritocracy is a toxic myth. 

I don’t force the decision to file bankruptcy on anyone, as each person’s financial situation deserves different approaches. Although I can be hardest on myself, from time to time, I find myself listening to my own advice as I console a friend in need, stressed or sick from the fucking toll it takes to stay just above water financially. “It’s not your fault,” I say. And for a moment, I believe it to be true.

Don’t Tell Anybody: My Journey of Shame and Forgiveness Through Bankruptcy

Amazon is one of the largest multinational corporations in the entire world. With dozens of contracts with the federal government and with intelligence agencies, it could be looked at as the future of the workplace and tech itself. 

Growing up, I considered myself to be more of a free-market Reaganist and had a positive view of large corporations. I held the belief that large corporations generally practiced business in good faith and helped benefit the economy by providing jobs. Whenever I would hear labor unions and essential workers talk about how they weren’t being treated well, I thought they were being too demanding and putting themselves over the company collectively. However, by stepping into their shoes, I was able to learn about their perspective.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began in the spring of 2020, I was a college student left with no place to go. The campus was closed and the baseball umpiring job I had in previous years was shuttered along with the sports season. With an economy decimated by the pandemic, job openings were few and far between. However, there was one job opening that caught my eye: a delivery service partner (DSP) with Amazon, who was hiring for a delivery driver. 

The role was advertised as a flexible, high-paying seasonal position, where you could pick which days you could work and training would be provided. When interviewing for the job, the HR manager made the position seem as attractive as the description, where if you came to work on time and worked hard every single day, you would be successful and have opportunities for advancement on the job. Drivers would be scheduled to work five days a week for 10-hour shifts. They would typically assign drivers 140-160 stops each shift, with Amazon expecting that drivers complete deliveries at a rate of 20 stops per hour. Most drivers were able to complete their routes before the end of their scheduled shift, while still being paid for the entirety of their scheduled shift, and if they didn’t finish their routes before the end of their shift, a supervisor would recall the driver to the station to return the packages they were unable to deliver.

After accepting the job, I attended a three-day job training seminar, which was followed by a hands-on training session, where an Amazon job trainer would follow you around. As I began my experience as a delivery driver, it wouldn’t take a long time for me to realize that the job would be a lot more challenging and significant than I had previously thought.

After completing my training and beginning my time as a driver, the job felt great. I was assigned smaller-sized routes, was completing my routes early and was earning high driving scores. As I continued delivering packages, my route size gradually increased until they reached full-size routes. While I was able to perform well with more residential stops with winding roads, routes with tighter roads and apartments were a lot more challenging. Some days required delivering through hazardous conditions, such as excessive heat, thunderstorms and torrential rainfall. 

One day when there were intermittent thunderstorms, I was assigned to a route with over 200 stops and even delivering at an above-average rate in ideal conditions would be almost impossible to complete before the end of the scheduled shift. I couldn’t take the required 30-minute break and still couldn’t complete the route before the end of my scheduled shift. In this situation, drivers are left with the choice of taking a break or completing their route on time.

Amazon was able to utilize pandemic protocols to implement lasting changes in the workforce. Pre-shift meetings where all the drivers would typically gather were moved to Zoom, while cutting back on ride-along training sessions, which took a lot away from the personalization of the workplace. The elimination of the personalization made the job made it feel as if it was managed by algorithms, and made it feel as if they didn’t want us to interact with other drivers so that they could have more control over drivers.

Before proceeding to their assigned route, drivers are provided a company smartphone, where they are required to sign in to two different apps. The first app was the Amazon Flex app, which serves as a tracking and navigation app. Whenever a driver completes a delivery, they are required to scan a QR code on the package and take a picture of where the package was delivered. It also determines the order of deliveries and can track how fast an employee is completing deliveries and whether they are completing deliveries in the correct order. 

The second app is the Mentor app, which evaluates how safely a driver is driving. Drivers receive daily scores ranging from 500 being dangerous to 800 being elite. If the app detects a driver driving over the speed limit, breaking or turning hard, not wearing a seatbelt or using the phone while driving, you will lose points. A lot of times, these algorithms can be inaccurate. An article in Bloomberg reported that these apps can deduct drivers' scores for offenses they did not commit. Even though it is widely known by drivers and supervisors, this app is used to evaluate driver safety. For example, while I would have high scores on residential routes, my score would be reduced for sharp turns and aggressive acceleration and braking because of the grid layout in urban areas. As if they didn’t surveil drivers enough, since I left Amazon, they have added algorithmic surveillance cameras to each van to detect whether a driver is distracted.

Meanwhile, a member of dispatch is stationed at the delivery center to oversee delivery routes. At any time, dispatch members can track a driver’s location and how far along their route they are. A dispatch member will call a driver when they want them to pick up packages from another driver, check on a driver that is behind on their route or to call a driver back to the station if they don’t finish their route by the end of their shift.

Each week, the two apps will calculate the safety, efficiency and accuracy of a driver into a score ranging from 300 to 800. Each driver will then be ranked from best to worst based on their score. Each day, the Amazon DSP would be provided with 40 routes for drivers, and if more than 40 drivers were scheduled to work on a given day, the drivers with the lowest scores would be sent home. If a driver struggled to keep their score above 660, they could be fired automatically. Even though a human supervisor would probably evaluate drivers differently than the algorithms, the algorithms are treated as if they are perfectly accurate.

During one of the company meetings, I remember something that was stunning to me. One of the toughest parts of the job is delivering packages to places like apartments, where a driver needs a password or customer permission to enter the facility where they are supposed to deliver the package directly to the customer or their room. If the driver can’t enter the facility, the driver will leave the package in a doorway or lobby so they can complete the delivery, while being able to continue onto their route, even though it is against company policy. However, to enforce this policy, Amazon began using the Flex app’s algorithms to detect whether a package was delivered to the correct location. If the algorithms detected a driver delivering to the wrong place, they would be shut out of the Amazon apps and fired automatically. The concept of digital firing was an idea that I thought was crazy and unheard of.

The craziest part about working at Amazon is how they view employees more as a part of a system than as human beings. Employees are assigned 40-60 hours of physically demanding work weekly. If an employee makes a handful of mistakes or isn’t able to handle the long hours and follow every command, they can easily be replaced. If an Amazon worker expresses concern for workplace safety conditions, they face the threat of retaliation from their supervisor. A recent example would be from Edwardsville, Illinois, where supervisors were allegedly threatening to fire employees who left an Amazon warehouse to seek shelter ahead of a tornado that later leveled the warehouse and left six people dead.

A year after working as a delivery driver for Amazon, I worked as a driver helper for UPS. While they had challenging, competitive jobs, UPS takes care of their drivers better than Amazon does. While Amazon has more seasonal drivers, with less delivery experience, UPS has more experienced full-time delivery drivers. UPS drivers are also unionized, where the union is able to negotiate for manageable workloads and bargain for higher wages, an option the drivers at Amazon don’t have. With employment and job stability going through a union, drivers have a lot more certainty that they will be treated fairly by their employer. 

Prior to working for Amazon, I was a free-market absolutist, but this work experience definitely provided me with a more blue-collar perspective. While profits are important, an employer should always prioritize the well-being of their workers. There are a lot of exploited blue-collar workers throughout the country, and their voices should be heard and should be protected from exploitation.

Inside Amazon: What It's Like to Be a Driver for the E-Commerce Behemoth

Sharing this is cathartic for me, purely down to the initial level of embarrassment I had from the series of events in the first place. There is some sort of comfort in subverting my emotions by running with the accidental exhibitionism and turning it into an unrepentant voice—a real story to share of my co-workers witnessing me at my most exposed. 

With lockdown lifted where I live—and liberated as a young, single woman—I’ve been living my best life. It’s gotten sloppy and messy at times, but I’ve been loving it. I work for a handful of nightclubs in my small city and generally spend my weekends between all of these places, getting tipsy and having a great time. I’m a hard worker, but I like nothing more than to let off steam at night—usually by the combination of loud music, dark rooms, few clothes and uninhibited strangers.

I’ve worked for one of these clubs for over three years now. Part of my job is working on duty as a bar supervisor, but most of the time at night, I have free rein to party since the majority of my work is outside of when the events are on. The team is like my family—mostly viewing me as this fun, bouncy liability with a good aura but far too much abandon on frequent occasions. Some of them are quite protective of me, but for the most part, they understand my personality, as they work in the industry too, which makes them just as liable to carelessness—on occasion.

One weekend, I'm at the club, and I’m staying late for this one. I’m pretty inebriated but still have enough clarity to know what I’m doing with my faculties. I have this guy in tow, and he’s exactly my type: the holy trinity of tall, dark and handsome. We’ve been flirting all night, and at one point in this chaotic rush, I decide to take the plunge and drag him to the back of the club, through a door into the backstage area. Finding a little hidden nook, we start making out, and it’s getting heavy. He has his hands all over me, and I’m feeling the heat start to race. 

I’ve known him for a little while, and I’ve always had a bit of a crush on him—and here I am with his entire body to access. The fire pours out of me through deep pants, moans and urgent gropes as I desperately explore his body through his clothes. We’re entangled in a messy, dirty embrace, our tongues playing with each other between frantic words and erratic movements. Something switches, and without thinking, I dip down onto my knees. I look up and see his face burning from the tension as I pull out his dick. I worship it with my entire face, the adrenaline giving me life. What’s life without risk and adventure anyway? His hands grip my hair as I go down on him, and I’d be lying if I said that the next 10 minutes or so weren’t a blur. Who knows what else we got up to—but what I do know is that I did that, thinking it was this perfect, outrageous secret.

I remember him pulling up his trousers and we rushed off back to the dance floor again. I also explicitly remember thinking, “Fuck, that was FILTHY…I hope nobody saw it.”

We parted ways that night as I had work to do the following day.

Fast-forward to three weeks later. I arrive at the club to see my work family for a brand-new night that’s kicking off and immediately bounce up to my colleagues to say hello. When I ask where one of them in particular is, I’m told that he’s in the main office, a short walk from the club. I hadn’t been there in a while since I usually have no need to be, so I head over to find him. I’m buzzed in, and the first thing that I see makes my heart fucking drop.

The office has been refurbished with some fancy new equipment, and there’s one part in particular that catches my eye: a series of enormous HDTV screens. They’re all turned on to show not just the corridors of the venue, but also…backstage. Including that little hiding place. Why has the CCTV been moved to where everyone works? What the fuck? I wince, sighing internally to myself, and pray that nobody was in here that night. As I chat with my colleague, I slip in a couple of leading questions.

“How have I not seen the new setup! Have you guys been hanging out here often?”

He turns to face me with an open, unassuming smile from preparing me a drink.

“Oh yeah, all the time! People are in and out but there are always people on duty here—particularly on nights like this.”

“Of course; we have pretty much most of the whole duty team here for the last hour.”

I can’t believe that last answer. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK. That’s when it all happened.

Who was in here? I feel my face flush. Wow. I find some respite in the fact that these lots are super open and accepting, but…wow. They must see me in a different light if they know about this.

In the time after, I’ve reflected on who might have seen me. I can’t remember exactly who was on duty, as it changes most weeks. I have more questions. Did they see me, or did they watch me? What would their reaction have been? Laughter? Intrigue? If one person was there, would they have quietly been turned on? Shocked?

I’ll never know the thoughts of my audience—or of whom it comprised. But there was definitely someone who saw my inadvertent pornographic movie. Now, whenever I go back, I’ll never know who might have been watching me, moment for moment, in what was nothing less than a compromising position.

I have my guesses. I wonder how they see me now. With disdain? With apprehension? Or—with curiosity? The not knowing was at once mortifying, but I’m finding my perversion in it now. We’re all adults. It’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before. By sharing this, I feel as though I’m molding it into a fantasy that I’ll look back on fondly. I can own this. I never thought that I was that much of an exhibitionist, but maybe this could be the start of something beautiful. After all, what’s the saying?

I Accidentally Made a Porno at Work

For many people, my job is a literal nightmare: showing up to class naked. 

I’m in my mid-30s. I stand 5 '11” and hover around 290 pounds, with a shaved head, well-kept beard, a fantastically hairy back and, in all honesty, a smaller-than-average penis. My job is to stand in the center of a room with anywhere from one to a hundred or more strangers, strip completely nude and stay that way for an average of three or so hours while these strangers observe, draw, paint, sculpt and interpret every angle of my body in bold, dynamic lighting.

I’m a nude art model. More specifically, a plus-sized nude art model for life drawing classes. I have plied my craft in drafty art schools, prestigious universities, artists’ basements, Brooklyn office buildings, art galleries and various bastions of free expression in the greater tri-state area. I have faced the minions of doubt that appeared to me as manifestations of my bare form in the countless sketchbooks of first-year art students and the directions of instructors for their students to “really focus on the negative space in the pelvic region.”

We can start with the usual question: Yes, erections can happen and it’s not a big deal; you just excuse yourself for a second. For women, it’s not an issue if it’s that time of the month; just ask the session runner to keep your bottom on (although I have posed with female models where I have spied a string and they just kept the poses more…discreet). People who know me know what I do and don’t really care. Some have even come to draw me. In my 10 years of experience, no one has ever pointed and laughed. No, I have never been propositioned. Yes, I am a very shy person. And finally, yes, I still get nerves sometimes, but they’re more about posing than being nude.

One of the most misunderstood aspects about nude figure modeling is what exactly it is a model does, namely the posing itself. Usually, a session runs on average three hours and involves holding poses for various lengths of time, from just a few seconds to several weeks or months, for roughly 20 minutes at a time. Short poses require broad, dynamic gestures that mimic actions and can be quite exhausting. Longer poses involve standing, sitting or reclining in one position for a full 20 minutes, possibly even more over many sessions, and can end up being painful and mind-numbing. Cultivating a roster of creative, unique poses has proven to be a massive challenge, and I have had my fair share of cramps, strained muscles, numb limbs and even tumbles. There is a special form of panic you feel when you’re not even halfway through a long pose and start to notice a little burning climbing up your legs. If a model isn’t careful, they might find themselves in the middle of a classroom, unable to move or feel anything from the waist down. Learning my body, and what it can handle, while being an interesting model is a constant effort.

Being a nude art model requires learning to become comfortable with the five words, “OK, so, whenever you’re ready…” For most of my life, I have existed within the awkward liminal space between my desire to be seen in my truest, most realized self and my wish to be huddled away, hidden in the ether.

I have worked in this line of business for 10 years, but my life’s work has been—and still is—in music. When I started working as an art model, I had become frustrated with my occupation. I’m a performer at heart—I’ve played hundreds of shows as a musician. But being a musician can be a limiting gig at first for someone who’s hungry for stage time. You spend more hours prepping, planning, traveling and moving gear than actually performing. I had become more familiar with getting to gigs than playing them.

In stark contrast to where I was in that moment of my life, the first modeling gig I got in that time was in front of a room of roughly 20 freshman undergrads, and it felt just like my first time performing music in front of an audience: a recital. Now, while my parents weren’t there feverishly taking pictures for the family album and my teacher wasn’t in the wings chomping piano chords and nodding while mouthing me the lyrics, the same terror gripped me. As I stared at a large wooden model stand in the middle of a semicircle of empty easels where, just like the stage and soon-to-be-filled seats of a Catholic school basement auditorium 15 years prior, I looked upon my charge as a slack-jawed, doe-eyed neophyte, I realized the question I was asking in those moments was the same: Am I allowed to do this? 

Whether it’s performing music or nude modeling, getting up in front of a room full of people and requesting their attention on any level demands that you accept who you are as well as what you can and can’t control. Once the robe is off and the timer has started, you are here in the moment. Every insecurity or personal hang-up must be put away. You are no longer operating as a specific human; you are now the object. Just like an actor becomes the character or a musician becomes another member of the band, an art model becomes a body, a collection of limbs, meat and movement used by artists to learn and create. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

I still absolutely experience nerves. I second-guess creative decisions all the time. Annoying tics—like my leg shaking out of my conscious control—throw off my rhythm. I exist more in the aforementioned reclusive ether, staring out the window or trying to get out, only to be kneecapped or restrained by my fears when trying to leave. Posing nude for groups of people lets me explore the initial hit of having everyone’s eyes on me, while also maintaining exposure over an extended period of time and delivering on an audience’s expectations. If I could stand naked in front of a group of strangers for three hours, I think singing some songs might become a bit easier.

Suffice it to say, eventually, the leg did stop shaking. Onstage performances and public speaking engagements of all kinds became much easier to deal with. On a subconscious level, I know how to better manage the swings of a performance and understand that a performance isn’t a single point but a wiggly line. There are high moments and low moments. Being able to operate calmly under pressure while also knowing that every audience is different lets me focus on my adjustments instead of overcorrecting based on a panic mindset. On a conscious level, I am able to manage how an audience receives me better, as well. After hundreds of bookings and dozens of referrals, I know I can do this gig and deserve to be here. The same goes for music. I can now move on from a less than stellar gig knowing that I deserve to be where I am. Moreover, if I don’t have a particularly good performance, I am no longer frustrated that I have to wait days, if not weeks, to have another shot to maybe get better at my performance mindset.

I’m lucky that I have always enjoyed and been comfortable with being nude. That being said, I have spent most of my life dealing with massive body and self-esteem issues, so I kept this appreciation of not wearing clothes mostly to myself. 

While modeling for life drawing sessions has helped me be a better performer, the benefits to my confidence have been without comparison. I still struggle with body issues, especially being overweight, but having a room full of people applaud, or even give a standing ovation, at the end of the night as you stand there, bare, every flaw exposed, is a massive boost for a person’s self-esteem.

That being said, I would hesitate to recommend nude modeling to everyone. This line of work is as much a privilege to be offered as it is a service you are offering. While the job is built on a trust that you will operate as a decent human being, you are still offering yourself to someone else, and that can be a lot for some people; maybe too much. While I have found modeling empowering, for some this might be an experience that triggers a traumatic response, especially in the wrong scenario.

But no one should feel excluded from modeling because of their looks. There is no such thing as an ugly body. I had a difficult time accepting that reality myself, but the supporting evidence I’ve accumulated over the years is quite overwhelming. You can be a model of any shape, size or age or with any physical malady. Every body is welcomed.

I’m a Professional Plus-Sized Nude Male Model

Drugs & Alcohol

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Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

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The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Best of 2021

I work for a mining company. We mine sand. I've been there two years now, but I've been doing mechanic-type stuff for years. I live in a rural part of New Jersey. People are great out here, but if you're talking about ideologies, it's definitely more conservative.

I have a kid on the way, and I’m really excited. I can’t wait, to be honest. I’m more ready than my wife is. I’m excited about the whole experience, I guess. Honestly, it’s something I never thought I'd go through until recently.

I know that having a baby is pretty intense for the woman. So for me to be around to help my wife through that recovery period is a big deal. I need to be there to help. I think it's unfair just to have someone be like, “Alright, well, I'm going back to work.” 

My wife and I will be raising our kid pretty much by ourselves. I’ve got family around, but we’re not super close. For the most part, it’s just my wife and me, and that’s probably how it’ll stay. So it’s extra important for me to be able to be here to help out and pick up some of the slack.

But also, I just want to experience this to the fullest. This is my child—my first child—and I want to be there during this time. I'm having a daughter, and I want to be there for her. Obviously, I’ll be there for her in the dad role or whatever, but I also want to be there for every aspect. I don't want to just be like, “Yeah, I make money; you should be thankful you have running water,” and that's it. Being a good dad is pretty much the bottom line, and I think a lot of that is just being around for life as it happens and not just going out to make as much money as you can. Because it's never enough anyway, you know? 

So I’m taking the full 12 weeks of family leave that I’m entitled to through the federal Family and Medical Leave Act to be there for my wife and baby. I mean, that's what they give you. So I don't see a reason not to.

I’ve gotten a lot of pushback for my decision to take time off. It’s actually kind of crazy. It really doesn't affect anyone else at all, but they all have a lot to say about it, for whatever reason. 

At first, it was just at work. Not from my bosses, which is what I hear the most from other people. I have neighbors that say they got a lot of grief from their bosses, like, “Oh, what are we gonna do? We're gonna be shorthanded. It's really going to screw us over for you not to be here.” For me, it’s coming mostly from my co-workers, asking why I have to take all of the time I have coming, which doesn’t make any sense to me, since they have the same rights to time off.

My parents have been even worse. My mom called me out of the blue to tell me she doesn’t approve of me taking family leave. “That’s not what a man does,” she said. “You’re supposed to be out there making money.” She went on like that for 30 minutes. It got so crazy, my wife recorded some of it. 

There are a lot of people who think that the man’s role is supposed to be the breadwinner, that his responsibility is to be making money for his family, not being there to spend time with them. A lot of guys like it that way. I’ve had men be like, “Well, don’t you want to be at work?” I was talking to a co-worker and asked him if he’d taken family leave, and he was like, “No, I was back at work the next day.” I asked him what his wife did, and he said he didn’t know. I didn’t say it to him, but I was like, “You don’t care? You just went back to work?” 

These other people aren’t the ones who are having the baby. They’re not the ones going through the physical pain or doing all of the exhausting work. 

I want to be there in whatever ways my wife and our baby need me for. I know for sure I'm going to be doing all the chores. She’s going to have her hands full. I just want to make sure she has everything she needs, that she doesn’t have to worry about laundry, doesn't have to worry about dishes or stupid stuff like that. 

Plus, I want to spend time with my newborn too. I want to spend time with this new person. I've always wanted a daughter for some reason. People tell me I'd be a good girl dad. It’s not any one thing that’s exciting to me about it—it’s the whole thing. Just being there and watching somebody grow up and helping them through all this stuff and giving advice or whatever—just normal stuff.

These other people can keep trying to push their ideas on me. I'm not letting any of that change my mind. I'm still taking all my leave. I just think it's bizarre that all these people think it's so wrong to do that. They all seem to think I'm taking advantage of a system or something, when I feel like I'm doing the opposite. Family leave is a government program, and I pay my taxes. It is what it is, you know? 

I'm not going to let anything get in the way of that. There's always another job. There’s maybe not always another family, you know, but you’ve got to do what you can with that. You can disagree and do what you think is right. And that’s what I'm doing.

Ancestry

I’m a New Dad Taking Family Leave—and People Are Mad

Some of my earliest childhood memories belong in the front of a truck. My friend’s father ran a local freight delivery service that distributed hardware supplies shipped in from Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The semi-trucks would dock at his small terminal, and my friend and I would help unpack and load it into his dad’s straight truck. Then, we’d ride along and watch him make stops on his delivery route. We were only 6 or 7 years old, so we couldn’t help much, but I loved sitting up high and rolling around town. 

As a kid growing up in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, I kept chasing that feeling. I spent most days riding my bike around the neighborhood, pretending I was driving a big rig, and though my brother and sister were much older, I remember having a big gravel driveway where my friends and younger cousins would pave roads to race our bikes. It wasn’t until I was 14 that I got hooked with a real taste of the trucking business.

A distant relative, Justin, hauled livestock for a living and asked me to help him pick up cows, pigs and sheep from various local farms. We’d get the animals on Monday and drive to a slaughterhouse in South St. Paul, where we’d unload them and wash the manure out of the straight truck. Then, we’d spend the night and head back to Sauk Centre with freight before repeating the cycle on Thursday. I wasn’t allowed to drive until I got my chauffeur’s license at 16, but sometimes, Justin would let me behind the wheel of his semi and encourage me to back the 40-foot trailer into the docks. In those days, there would be a bunch of older gentlemen watching me—a stressful experience but one that made me feel pretty cool. 

Today, at 65, I’m still in the driver’s seat. 

Throughout a 37-year career working for Minnesota’s transportation department, I always kept my passion for driving, taking on trucking jobs over weekends and holidays to supplement my income and continue a life on the road. Since retiring in 2010 from that gig, I’ve transitioned to trucking full-time, traversing interstates in a 2007 Peterbilt 386 through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, where I haul just about everything. Over the last decade, I’ve tallied over half a million miles. 

It’s tough and lonely work, something my wife and I have gotten used to throughout our 47-year marriage. I’ve had some close calls, endured cramped quarters and met plenty of characters along the way, but I love the feeling of taking an adventure each week, rolling down the open road, looking out at the wide-open pastures and feeling a sense of freedom. These days, I’m a dying breed. 

I never thought about trucking as a career. I graduated from high school in 1973 and a few months later started employment at MnDOT, where my brother worked. I’d put up sign postings and paint messages on the road, eventually graduating to maintenance work patching holes, fixing guardrails, mowing grass and plowing snow. The job didn’t pay much—my starting rate was $3.16 per hour—but it had good vacation and sick leave. In my day, the longer you stayed at one job, the better it got, and I eventually moved into a supervising role in St. Cloud for my last 10 years there. 

Still, I needed to get my driving fix, so I hauled freight for my cousin Mary’s trucking company on weekends and holidays. I would even take vacations just to lug around grain, machinery, milk replacer and animal feed with a semi-truck all over the five-state area—Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and the Dakotas. After getting married in 1975, I’d also haul milk every other weekend, picking it up from farms and dropping it at a reload center. I would go on to work two jobs—sometimes even driving coach buses—for the majority of my life. 

Of course, driving a semi-truck requires lots of training and caution. One of the first things I learned was not to back into anything. A sticker on most truck mirrors says “GOAL,” which stands for “Get Out and Look.” Whether you’re at a truck stop or a docking station, it’s crucial to get out of the vehicle and determine the trailer's angle before proceeding in reverse. Just last week, a trucker was trying to back into a parking space too fast, causing nearby drivers to blow their horns to prevent an accident. 

Watching your mirrors is even more important on the highways, where cars always look to pass and sneak around your 18 wheels. Most drivers don’t realize that passing me and leaving minimal room ahead could lead to a rear-ending at the next red light. Why would you want to be in front of an 80,000-pound truck? Nowadays, if you try to pass a car, they’ll intentionally speed up—as soon as you get back behind them, they slow down. That’s produced some close calls in my career, like when I was driving a little too fast in an Illinois snowstorm. I was behind a semi that abruptly slowed down when firemen began directing us to take an off-ramp. As I peeled off to the right, I nearly bumped a car in front of me and slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding an accident. I just about had to change my underwear. 

Under the rule books, you’re allowed to drive 11 hours in one day and can be on duty for 14 hours a day. The longest I’ve driven without stopping is about seven hours, but in my older age, I usually only last a few hours at one time. Sitting all the time, my legs are getting stiffer, and I’ve learned to be careful exiting my truck so they don’t give out. Often, I’ll find a truck stop or rest area to stay for the night and retire to the back of the sleeper, where I’ve got a cooler to keep sandwiches and drinks and a microwave to heat up canned beans or soups. It’s pretty comfortable. I especially love the spring and fall, when it’s 60 degrees at night and I can open the windows in my bunk to get a nice breeze. 

Still, truck stops can be dangerous—and gross—areas. Some cowboys will speed into stations in seventh or eighth gear, and it’s really easy to get run over. The worst drivers will also litter outside their vehicles, leaving garbage on the ground like pigs. Walmart used to let truckers park in their big lots, but too many left behind piss bottles and personal trash by the curb, so the store stopped letting us park there. On occasion, you’ll see prostitutes—colloquially known as “lot lizards”—circling packs of trucks, asking drivers if they’d like a little company, but that practice isn’t as popular anymore. The bigger issue is sex trafficking of minors, and most semi-drivers receive training about what to look for and phone numbers to call in case they see something suspicious. Thankfully, I haven't witnessed anything yet. 

In 1994, my wife and I bought our first truck, a 1987 Kenworth T600, hired a driver and started our own business leasing trucks to local companies. When I bought the T600, it smoked a bit, but the dealer had just overhauled it and believed it would clear. But after five weeks, we discovered the camshaft was shot and the air conditioner was broken. We had maybe gotten one or two checks so far, so I had to get a loan and borrowed $10,000. My wife freaked out, but our driver gave us some good advice: “If you can't take this, you better get out. This is truck driving.”

Eventually, we bought three more trucks and hired a few more drivers to work full time. It’s hard to find good, loyal drivers though. Many of them pivot between companies, chasing better pay rates, but most of the time, those don’t last. Generally, a trucking company will pay drivers based on the percentage or mileage of the freight they’re carrying. A typical freight line might give the truck owner an 80 percent split to carry freight worth a dollar a mile, but some companies split differently if the freight costs more. When it comes to pay, if it's too good, it ain't true. If it's really good, it ain't going to last.

We downsized to just one truck after I retired, and now I’m the only one driving. For most of the last decade, I’ve been dropping off frozen turkeys to Walmart, Cisco and Aldi distribution centers throughout the Midwest and some Southern states. My route usually takes me to six different stops and lasts about three days, and I do my best to make it back home before the weekend. I like routine. I like knowing the same procedures and people I’m working with each trip. Luckily, the truck line I work for has treated me well and ensures I can take off when needed. 

I’ve also become very familiar with the best rest stops and restaurants after having been on the road for so long. I try to have at least one good, hot meal a day; sometimes, that means stopping in Mendota, Illinois, a favorite small town with ample parking, but more recently, that means finding a Denny’s off the highway. I’ve been getting the sirloin steak and salad there, and now I get 15 percent off my meals with my AARP card. In between, I scroll through SiriusXM to keep me busy, listening to Classic Vinyl, the ’60s and ’70s channels, and occasionally the trucker's channel, which discusses popular issues in the trucking industry. My CB radio is also crucial to get alerts from other drivers of incoming traffic and weather. 

The hardest part is loneliness. While driving, I do my best to call my wife, kids and friends, who have all learned to adjust to my lifestyle and schedule. The average worker comes home around 5 p.m. and will get to spend time with his partner and family, have dinner and watch the news. When truckers come home, however, their limited time is most likely spent fixing and catching up on all the yard and housework they missed throughout the week. It’s easy to miss home when you walk into a bathroom truck stop, try to brush your teeth and there are a couple of guys grunting and farting and shitting. Not everyone is cut out for this life, which is probably why most drivers are my age. 

I vowed to drive for 10 years after my retirement, but our truck was recently overhauled, motivating me to keep going for a couple more years. It still gives me joy. I love looking out the window and watching farmers in the fields, crossing into new states and seeing the differences in landscapes and people. And yes, if you ever pass me on the highway and pump your fist up and down, I’ll be sure to honk the horn.

I’m a Truck Driver: How I’ve Spent a Life Behind the Wheel

One day in early 2020, I asked the husky-voiced human resources manager at my final temp job if I could use the relaxation room, the one available to employees when they needed a break or to stop looking outside every 20 minutes.

“Of course,” she told me before pulling the key out of a drawer in her desk. I followed her to a small, very empty room. She unlocked it and toggled the plastic light switch, illuminating the yellow and blue that decorated the space, along with a modest station to make tea, a small, cheap sofa and a recliner wrapped in plastic. A tissue box sat conspicuously by the recliner. The woman told me to take my time as she closed the door. I wondered for the tenth time how much older she was than me, how much farther she’d gotten in life despite only being maybe five years older, before I turned my attention to the chair.

I sat down inside the plastic and almost immediately crumpled. I began to sob uncontrollably, the anxiety and despair overpowering my stomach, my body temperature, my senses. My grandmother had just died. My body was betraying me. Thanks to sleep apnea and racing thoughts, I hadn’t slept—or really rested—in weeks, if not months. I was often vomiting in the morning from the aftereffects of poor REM, and I still had no idea how to make any income beyond an endless string of temporary jobs since graduating in 2014. This nonprofit gig was more suited to my skills than a lot of assignments. Yet I couldn’t stand the tension and masking that came with any position in a cubicle: Doing bullshit busywork that made me feel like I was wasting my life, constantly modulating myself, masking to fit neurotypical standards.

Neurodivergent individuals often have trouble with under- or unemployment and really with job satisfaction overall. It can be difficult to track the exact numbers, but one piece of data suggests 85 percent of autistic adults with degrees pre-pandemic were unemployed. Another from the University of Connecticut says the number of unemployed neurodivergent adults is 30 to 40 percent, which is incredibly high compared to neurotypicals. 

Neurodivergent and/or disabled people also tend to have trouble with job stability, good pay and work environments that are often unwittingly (or very intentionally) hostile and aren’t exactly accommodating. We often need more rest and time to recover from labor, conditions and spaces that are kind to our bodies and sensory inputs and time alone when we can’t really talk with other people. But most jobs are not exactly built to provide these needs.

I can’t speak to the experience of all disabled humans. But as an autistic/ADHD person who was basically a factotum, constantly moving to various corporate skyscrapers, factories and warehouses just so I could grab a quick paycheck, I hated working in offices. I hated being away from my apartment and my comfort objects, hated pretending to work eight hours a day even when there was nothing to do (and hated actually working that much when it happened). I hated the dull, eerie drone of air conditioners and fluorescent lights hovering over beige walls and ceilings while I looked outside longingly. And I hated having to constantly mask around my co-workers, repressing anything controversial or weird in myself so I wouldn’t get strange looks or (gulp) get fired.

None of the jobs I took required my English major, even as I wrote essays on the side. I knew I was smart, and secretly, arrogantly, I felt sometimes that I was too intelligent to be a temp forever. My interests meant I’d never care much about data entry or the more stressful administrative work I often picked up. I worked full time as an admin assistant at a prestigious dental school for a bit, but my then-undiagnosed ADHD meant I couldn’t get the exhaustive everyday tasks right, couldn’t stay organized. I quit after 10 months when I started having anxiety attacks at 6:30 a.m. and returned to temping.

I didn’t know what to do. I felt I’d always be underpaid, always be dissatisfied, but I had no clue how to shift into a different career. When I turned 27, after years going back and forth between desperate inactivity and nine-to-five gigs, I began to feel a clock ticking inside of my chest cavity. It moved closer to some unknown due date with every new temp assignment, every job I didn’t fit into (I still have bitter feelings about the agency worker who sent me, an autistic with no experience in dealing with addicts, to a poorly managed rehab clinic), every panicky period of unemployment where I’d watch any money I’d made quickly dry up. I gained weight from an impulsive, poorly managed diet, which of course made the sleep apnea worse.

Later, it felt as if my mind and body were trying to tell me something when I kept calling in sick at my final temporary role at a nonprofit. I’d puke uncontrollably in the morning, then go back to sleep, terrified about what was happening to me until my step-father’s sister, a nurse, suggested apnea. Sometimes, I’d just throw up and come into work anyway. I just knew something had to change.

I can’t say the transition I made was exactly from hard work and gumption. Much of it was privilege. After years when my bank account was a joke, my grandfather sent my family and me some money, enough that I was able to quit my temp job and transition into freelance writing and editing full time. I got equipment to deal with sleep apnea, as well. I had to spend much of my savings to get through the pandemic, but I haven’t stepped into a cubicle since.

Frankly, I don’t have words of wisdom to give other individuals on how to get out of the office. I was just lucky. But I can say from personal experience that working from home, for whatever disadvantages it has, simply suits my autistic/ADHD mind better than a nine-to-five office job. I can take breaks that don’t involve awkward chats with co-workers. I don’t have to pretend that I’m productive. I’m surrounded by a familiar space and can sit with my cat, and I can take a quick walk when I feel like I’m trapped inside. 

Best of all, I’m not in an environment that doesn’t stimulate me, and I can work according to my own limits. The pandemic revealed that working remotely from home was always an option, even when employers pretended it wasn’t, and this desperately needs to be part of our work habits from now on. Ultimately, the American office and American productivity standards don’t really fit with the needs of neurodivergent people, let alone disabled people. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to pay my bills or keep up my freelancing without another office gig, but I know I’m going to try and continue to work from a place where I feel safe, comfortable and uninhibited: home.

I'm Autistic and Have ADHD: I Can’t Imagine Working in an Office Again

As the foot connected with my hip, I knew that it would just be ignored, like all the other times I’d been hit, punched and spat on. The verbal abuse from staff and patients ran through my head even after the day was done. I knew I was done as a nurse, but I still needed to pay my bills.

My first degree was in healthcare. I worked in that system for just under a decade. But the thought of going to work would often make me panic—a throw-up, tense-muscles, intense-headache kind of panic. I’d been physically and verbally abused at work many times, and after a while, I felt broken and defeated. So I decided to focus on something else—getting another degree. I wanted a completely different life, and the “transferable skills” that everyone talks about were the things that hurt me most about my previous job. Being surrounded by intense emotions—like rage and fear, all the time—made me want to scream or cry. I’d wait until I was home and begin to play the bad stuff in my head over again, circling deeper into the drain of desperation and despair.

Soon, I got an honors degree in arts, with an archaeology major. The problem was, it wasn’t enough to gain employment, even for an entry position. Nor was my post-graduate teaching degree nor the graduate certificate and other certificates that followed. That’s when I officially became unemployed. I chose to still pay taxes and moved back home with my family. I’d dug myself into a hole, had to leave my place, as I couldn’t pay the bills, and slowly started to dissolve into depression and hoarding. 

I felt broken. On top of losing my father, nothing makes you feel less independent than the thoughts that you had given up at your job and lost your home, all within the same year. I felt like I’d failed at being an adult. I’d achieved so much by the time I was 25, and now it was all gone. 

Eventually, my friends started to leave. I thought that was due to my spiral and I didn’t want anyone to come down with me. Then, I was told it was because I was unemployed, which, to them, meant I was pathetic, lazy and self-indulgent (yes, that’s what they said). 

One said that being unemployed was worse than working in an unsafe job—to them, injury and mental health considerations were not important, so long as you were “contributing to society,” a statement that completely ignored my previous jobs. They also told me I was a burden to taxpayers and too picky when it came to working. None of these statements helped build my confidence or self-worth, both of which I was lacking.

When you’re on unemployment benefits, you need to apply for about 20 jobs a month, make appointments, try mini-courses and attend work placements. If at any stage this isn’t achieved, the government cuts off your benefits without warning. Being unaware that I had zero money for food at the store was demeaning and harmful. 

Here’s how the next conversation goes: You call your work-support company and are told you’ve been cut off because you didn’t attend an appointment—you know, the one that you were at yesterday? Well, your attendance wasn’t submitted. Your money will come through eventually, but you’ve now received a demerit point. Keep getting those and you’ll be cut off permanently.

I knew someone who had lost a letter stating that their local community college was closed for the holidays. They went without money for a month. They found out two days before Christmas that they hadn’t been paid while in line for groceries. 

I’d been unemployed for a couple of years, so I had no references, no experience and no real hope of finding another job. I searched for “achievable” or “survival” jobs, as I was told to accept anything, even if the conditions were bad or unsafe. A work-support employee told me, “You’re just a better person if you work.” Basically, they thought the unemployed were bad, despite it being their job to help the unemployed.

As part of my unemployment benefits, I had to commit to a work placement. The jobs there are similar to, if not the same as, the jobs for those on parole or working on a community corrections order. They include warehousing, telemarketing and working in soup kitchens, as well as reception or computer work. You’re practically punished for being unemployed.

I ended up getting lucky. The placement allowed me to get the confidence of working with others again and acquire some references. After a month, I got a job teaching adults. I had the qualifications, the employer was desperate, and I was the only qualified candidate—but a majority of the other unemployed people were not as lucky, surviving on their third or fourth round of placement. 

During one work placement, I sat in a 41-degree warehouse, dismantling machines, surrounded by everyone from homeless people to Ph.D. candidates. Each of them had a story, but for whatever reason (mental health issues, flooded markets, non-English backgrounds, zero qualifications or experience), they had been unsuccessful at landing a gig for at least a year. One person had escaped an abusive relationship and raised their kids alone—they couldn’t find a job because they had no “relevant experience.”

Another had worked in an industry for 25 years. His company had gone bankrupt and let him go, leaving him with a very specific job experience. Another had a psychiatric illness and was unable to stay in one work environment for more than a month before it became too overwhelming. Some had been in prison; others had dealt with substance abuse issues. Even when you’re employed, you don’t know if the person next to you shoots up before work or if they just have to have a few bottles of wine when they get home.

During work placements, I would hear supervisors call other people “fucktards” and “useless cunts” and tell somebody they were too fat to work. When some supervisors would comment about a woman’s breasts, they shrugged off complaints as good old-fashioned “boys will be boys” culture, demoralizing a vulnerable person because of a natural occurrence. Again, these were supervisors, apparently trying to prepare and show us how to behave in a workplace.

The unemployed are not less than you—they may be depressed, bent, spent or broken. But don’t assume that they sit at home watching TV, taking advantage of taxpayers. Sometimes, circumstances happen completely out of our control (like a pandemic). And looking for work is hard—each knockback makes you feel a little less heard, a little less important, lowering your confidence one rejection at a time.

When you do get an interview and an employer asks for references, well, that kind of breaks your heart. Because there are no references. I’ve spent hours on one job application and one cover letter addressing each key performance criteria, and I heard nothing from the potential employer. 

After working for another few years teaching English to adults and preparing seniors for tertiary studies, I lost my job at the end of 2020 due to the pandemic. Now I receive benefits for setting up a writing business, but I’m scared, as I know that eventually, the payments will stop and I will have nothing. I may apply to go on benefits again, but then the stigma will resurface. 

The choices between being able to pay rent or eating are not easy. I feel like I’m back to square one; I don’t have references or recent experience. So I’m not asking for a raise. I’m asking to be seen and heard and not be judged. To be assessed on my accomplishments, not my lack of references.

I’m Overeducated and Unemployed

Even in the 21st century, it's difficult for society to accept a couple in which the man stays at home to manage the house and kids and the woman goes out to earn. Gender stereotypes are still deeply rooted in people’s minds.

My wife works as a metro train operator, and I work as a content creator for a nonprofit organization. The nature of my work allows me to work from home, while my wife has to go out daily, commute to the station and then travel across the city. We both enjoy what we are doing and take pride in our work. We share a loving bond. We have been happily married for the last six years, and we have huge respect for each other and for the roles we play in managing our house and our daughter. Over time, as our careers have moved forward, we figured out the roles we would want to play in living together. 

I had laid the groundwork for being a stay-at-home dad by once joking about it to my wife before our marriage, telling her that: “I don’t think I’ll be able to ever work from an office without missing and worrying about the safety of our first child.” My wife and I talked about our general desire to have a parent be her primary caregiver, but it was always with the understanding that it was my preference to fulfill that role and not my wife’s. And after our daughter was born, because of my wife’s busy schedule at work, in the initial weeks, it was I who started taking care and spending more time with our daughter compared to my wife. It was I who started setting up the food, hygiene and sleeping time for the baby and managing my work accordingly. Gradually, it became very important to me to be with her, so somehow, with my initial efforts, we had child care miraculously lined up through sheer determination and luck. 

For me, on a day-to-day level, just moving through the day with a joyful and exploratory sense of adventure and my family falling asleep peacefully and well-fed is a great success. I’ve never felt overwhelmed with the work and responsibilities I have in taking care of our house and daughter, as my wife and I try our best to support each other in whatever way possible—sometimes even without being asked for help. That’s the level of understanding and empathy we share between us.

But I’ve had to defend my choice to stay at home! It certainly raises eyebrows and causes heads to shake. Being a stay-at-home dad requires being a team player, ignoring sexist stereotypes and putting most of your ego, some hobbies and interests aside for a bit and seeing the big picture. 

Our neighbors laugh at us and ridicule us, as they find it really strange that I stay at home, cook food, take care of the child and plants, do cleaning and wash clothes—all the while my wife is operating a metro train and traveling across the city, carrying hundreds of passengers safely to their destinations. During a social event in our neighborhood, one representative from each family was supposed to bring a homemade sweet and put it in front of our common peepal tree and gather there to worship the tree together in a circle. I had gone with the idea that maybe by this, I’d get to talk and introduce my family to everyone. But since I was the only man there in the gathering, our neighbors started calling me names, and I clearly heard one of them calling me “woman of the year.” It was humiliating.  

We get ridiculed by the society members where we live who, still after centuries of economic and social development, are fixated on the gender-based roles that they have created in their minds without any openness to hear new ideas. Changing mindsets is difficult and almost impossible for those who are not even open to hearing the different perspectives. Now we are not invited to any gatherings of the neighborhood group anymore. After the peepal tree incident, there was another instance where my wife and I got heckled by the neighbors on our way to the main gate. We decided to fight back to defend ourselves from the mocking, which resulted in the society committee unanimously deciding to ban us from any social gatherings, which is ironic, as the society committee exists with the sole aim to bring families together for peace and harmony and to support each other in any kind of adversities. Of course, my wife and I felt dejected by this decision and the behavior of the members, but we take pride in our choices, and we try to be happy in our small family of three.

A lot of people, before the baby was born, asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this. My mother would ask me if I was sure I wanted to do this, if I realized what I was getting myself into. Now sometimes, my friends, distant relatives and colleagues ask me how it really is being a stay-at-home parent, and I tell them that it can be hard and definitely tiring and frustrating, but it’s never stressful. I feel lucky to be in this situation. We together want to raise our child to be an open-minded and empathic person who will have the courage to accept the differences in the perspectives of the people in the world.

I always had a very unloving relationship with my own dad, where most times, communication issues were compounded when both wanted a better father-son relationship but neither one knew quite how to go about it. He wasn’t super emotionally giving but was certainly not a bad parent; he always took care of all my material needs. To know that my daughter is going to be so much closer to me than I am to my own dad makes me really happy. People always say they want to learn from their parents’ mistakes in raising their kids, and I feel like so far, I’m doing that by having my daughter growing up close to me emotionally, and that feels really amazing.

I believe we should celebrate the ever-changing role of fathers in society. Stay-at-home dads aren’t just looking after the baby. We are the feeder, the storyteller, sleep negotiator and much more. We aren’t trying to be mums, and stay-at-home dads shouldn’t ever be perceived as a threat to the role of mums. Both parents have a role to play, and stay-at-home dads should be encouraged and celebrated, not prejudged.

I Am a Stay-at-Home-Dad and I Am Proud of It

In the South, unions are often a touchy topic—not much is known about them, and what is known is often shrouded by anti-workers’-rights propaganda. My personal journey with unions started when I was a cast member at Walt Disney World. Unions had already been established for many years, but “The Mouse,” as co-workers not so nicely called it, was trying to push them out.

Being a union member there saved my job against a management team that didn’t want me, and that's when I realized just how underrepresented workers without unions are. When I was wrongfully accused of intentional misconduct and disregard for safety, my union rep had my back and made sure I had all the information, protection and community I needed. Knowing that I could have easily lost my job—and that there were people in the workforce who face much worse because they don't have support or assurance of their employment like that—ignited something in me.

Amongst the other megacorporations, Starbucks is one of the best employers. As a shift supervisor, the benefits and pay are better than most chains, and if you're queer like me, then oftentimes, it's a safe haven—a home away from home. Being a barista introduced me to a community and a family that I may not have met otherwise. However, more recently, Starbucks baristas have found themselves in a chokehold. The company’s benefits are just good enough not to leave (because no other place can match them), but the working conditions are falling faster than a landslide. 

For a time, it looked as if Starbucks was going to be ahead of the curve, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Then, things like hazard pay, food and drink markouts, and other benefits were pulled out from beneath us. This is where the push for a more forward moment in labor rights really began at Starbucks.

Talk of unionizing had occurred at my location since I transferred there in July of 2020. At the time, there were only a handful of people who were fed up—not only with how our district manager overlooked our store and its hazardous working conditions but with Starbucks’ corporate leadership, as well. The concerns ranged from the store’s mold to its cracked flooring to its increasingly volatile customer interactions. Funnily enough, our store manager at the time supported our hope to unionize. I even sent an email to the local AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) during the summer of 2021, but I never got a response. 

Once news broke that some Buffalo-based Starbucks franchises had filed for unionization, the game changed. At this point, my location had brought in new management. We went from a store that had an almost all-queer staff to one with an uneducated store manager with several transphobic shift supervisors. There was a lot of tension between partners (what the company calls its employees) being misgendered, being singled out for being transgender and being scared to come out to other partners. When the first Buffalo store won their election to unionize, we knew we needed to act.

Our hours had been cut, so partners were doing more work for the same amount of pay, and customers had become frustrated with our inability to move as quickly as we once did. We felt the same frustration. This also affected our drink and food quality, something both we (as partners) and Starbucks corporate cared very much about. It felt like we were using a bucket to scoop water out of a boat with a major leak. Eventually, you're going to sink. Things had to change. 

In December, I was able to get a hold of the lead organizer, Richard Bensinger. We came up with a plan that has now become the mold for organizing at Starbucks: Get a committee made entirely of Starbucks partners to discuss how much support our store has to organize a union. Forming the committee itself was a relatively easy task—I picked peers who our co-workers and I could trust and who could keep information between themselves. Our committee was ultimately formed: three are shift supervisors, two are barista trainers and one is a barista. Having partners on the committee who weren’t only knowledgeable about unions but were also able to communicate and reassure others was key for us. 

Once we formed the committee, Workers United got us union cards. We knew that there were certain partners we couldn't talk to until after our filing went public. We knew that we'd have many partners who would be eager to sign. We also knew that we'd face some adversity from partners who were anti-union. Since the committee formed, we'd been slyly feeling partners out by asking if they'd heard about what was happening in Buffalo and what they thought about it. 

After realizing we had a store majority, we got to work and signed union cards. There are rules when it comes to signing cards, such as, "It cannot be done when a partner is on the clock," or, "It can take place in the back of the house, so long as it does not disrupt business needs." The committee members at my location put in a lot of work and time to get our cards signed quickly and as quietly as possible. We were transparent with our partners who signed that management absolutely could not know. Personally, I met with partners on my (unpaid) lunch break—I'd have them meet me in the parking lot, since my store manager would often be sitting in the cafe doing administrative work. 

We asked partners who had questions to arrive early or stay a bit later after work if they were comfortable. One partner was even out with COVID-19 at the time, so I dropped the card off at their house and then retrieved it after they had signed it. With all the work our committee put in, we had our store majority sign cards within 72 hours and filed the next day.

The hardest parts came next. Upper management began a series of captive audience meetings—filled with anti-union propaganda, misinformation and emotional manipulation—designed to persuade partners from unionizing. Soon, tension developed between management and baristas—even customers left notes of support on our community board, only to have them torn down hours later. Our location, however, got lucky. Management didn't know how to approach the situation because most of its members didn’t know (and still don't know) anything about unions aside from what corporate fed them. 

In a new wave of union-busting from Starbucks, we've watched partners across the country get fired for organizing, and we are putting plans into place in case we see the same actions against our store. As of right now, we have an election date and are in the process of submitting ballots. We cannot wait to join our peers across the nation to have a unionized Starbucks. 

There were—and are—so many moving parts that went and will continue to go into the effort for workers’ rights. None of it can be done by just one person, and none of this would have been possible without the courage and determination of our Buffalo partners, who made the brave decision to become union organizers. 

We can only hope to follow in their footsteps as this movement grows.

Collection

I'm a Starbucks Shift Supervisor Trying to Unionize

A few months ago, I had the privilege of writing about how COVID changed where we work. It helped us realize that work doesn’t always have to come at the expense of family and that by changing where we work, we could save time, save money and be more green. 

For my wife and I, we reinvested that time and money into our family and it’s helped us better move through the world together and be happier. COVID has probably been the largest work upheaval to have occurred since the creation of the workweek and workday. This pandemic forced us into an examination of how our work and personal lives interact. We should voluntarily continue that examination because the mindset of “it’s always been done this way” is always a strong one, and we should always fight that urge of complacency.

The standard workweek since the late 1920s has been 40 hours of work, eight-hour time periods spread over five consecutive days. It’s what both my wife and I have done for a very long time before COVID. Through the flexibility that working at home has provided us, we’ve discovered that we don’t need to work like that anymore. My wife is very much more productive at home. No one drops in randomly to socialize. There are fewer meetings, no water cooler conversations and other office distractions that happen regularly. She’s found that she can extend the Monday to Thursday workday by 30 minutes (which is shorter than her previous commute), and with the gains she’s made in efficiency, her workweek is done by noon on Friday. It’s two hours of extra work on those four days for four hours of extra weekend almost every week. She likes to spend that extra time in the garden, reading or crocheting. It’s what she likes to call the “extra sanity saucy” on her week, that bit of peace and relaxation that’s hers to claim. 

She has good supervisors who have had a very large shift in perspective and have started tailoring the time spent working to the employees. People are exceptionally different. There are natural night owls, early risers and late sleepers, people who work fast in spurts and people who work steady all day, no matter what gets in their way. With the disconnection from that office space, the employees have been able to tailor their work schedules to the strengths they bring. Some employees have started working at 6 a.m., some at 10 a.m. Some have moved their workload around like my wife has but to a greater extreme: They do four ten-hour days, and one of her co-workers does three 12-hour days, working from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Wednesday, because he found he works best having much longer, more productive days. He’s getting more work done because he was able to tailor his hours to himself. The same work he was doing in 40 hours in 36 hours and a four-day weekend.

My wife's workplace is very task- and milestone-oriented, and not every job can have that flexibility to define their own hours. Working the line in a factory or having a government office that needs to be accessible to the public have different requirements. That doesn't mean the traditional use of workers is the best way. If you were to search the term “four-day workweek,” you would see that there is a change in many places in the world. Some government offices have switched to 10 hours Monday to Thursday. This change allows them to be open for a wider swath of time that allows people who need government services to come in before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m. Extending government hours past the traditional bankers hours of 9 to 5 served the community better than having a fifth day with the same hours. It also meant the employees saved on gas, and the building’s lighting, heating and cooling could be minimized for a three-day weekend. It saved taxpayers money, it saved employees money and it was caused by disconnecting ourselves from “the way it’s been” and reexamining how we best use our time. There are a few companies that have made this switch, as well, and have found retaining employees to be easier when the competitors are still using a five-day week.

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