Taking Care

Heading out to work soon, in almost the coldest morning I've yet biked in this winter: 
 15ºF/ -9 C. 

I. Face Mask

I feel more prepared than in other winters, though, because for the first time, I have a wrap-around face mask--a wind stopper, designed for winter sports.

It closes with velcro, so you can open it if you get too hot:

A great thing about working at a thrift store is you've got a good chance of finding anything you need--eventually--and for cheap. (We're not supposed to, but coworkers--even my Big Boss--set prices low for one another.) 
This brand is $50+ at outdoor-sports store REI--my coworker priced it 99¢ for me.

I got a new set of windbreaker sports pants too (what do you call those?)

OK, then! Google tells me they're called "windbreaker pants."

II. Living Wages

If I could change one thing about the thrift store, it'd be to pay the workers a living wage--closer to $15/hour than the $10.25/hour we make. 
I'm supplementing my salary with money from my father who died last year. A lot of my coworkers supplement it with Social Security, and food stamps and other aid programs--or just do without. (Lot of them are missing teeth, for instance.) 

I talked to Big Boss about this, quite a while ago. He said the store can't afford to raise wages. 
I've seen the annual report and know that's true--the society is in the red, since they started a big food bank in 2015. It's great--it's a central supplier of individual food shelves, but it is underfunded, to put it mildly.  (Fundraising is in the works, supposedly.)

I said we could at least have a living wage in our sights, as a goal.
It seems he had never thought of it.

Like many of my coworkers, Big Boss came up in extreme poverty and... well, his political philosophy is a bit murky to me:
it's a blend of faith in God's agency + awareness of racist factors... but also a sense of ...mmm... I don't know... the inevitability? of poverty.

You know, your own experience sets your baseline for Normal.

(Btw, Big Boss reminds me slightly of the original Star Wars' Landro Cairissian (Billy Dee Williams):

 III. Me, Getting It Wrong
 
It's interesting at work, because I am really the cultural outsider. 
My coworkers are mostly working-class, white lady volunteers, aged 70 to 92 [housewares]; 
Hispanic women from or with relatives in Mexico [clothing]; 
and a lot of older, poor black guys [furniture and everything else].

My class background is mostly the Academic class. 
Though my parents came from different backgrounds, (I always say it's like the Godfather married Scarlett O'Hara), I grew up being a Professor's Daughter.

I feel wary saying much analytical about my workplace culture because I am missing so much!

Here's a good example, from yesterday, of how I get it wrong:

Big Boss had recently recommended a movie he'd rented from Red Box for his kids, thinking it was a regular Winnie the Pooh movie: Christopher Robin. 

Turns out it's a live action film about what happens to Christopher Robin as a grown man, including going to war...

I asked him who's in it, and he said didn't know any of the actors."Maybe you'd recognize them," he said.

I looked up the movie. Ewan McGregor plays Christoper Robin.

Yesterday Boss was in my area, working and chatting with coworker Mr. Rogers about, among other things, relatives of theirs who are in prison--I'm seeing how that really is a normal (and much mourned) feature of poor, black American lives.

I mentioned to Boss that Christopher Robin was played by the guy who played Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels. 
I chose that over Trainspotting, thinking Star Wars would be a shared cultural reference, but neither he nor Mr. Rogers knew who Obi Wan Kenobi was.

"You're talking to the wrong people!" Mr. Rogers said.

We all laughed.

I'm speaking lines from the wrong movie!

  
IV. Getting Some Things Right

Later in the afternoon, there was a special delivery from our central warehouse (where the food bank is too).
The managers set it up on tables:
it was all-new sets of stuff designed for gift giving, like big-faced watches and sparkly jewelry, donated by–– I don't know, maybe a place like K-Mart or Costco?––and the store was offering it to staff first, on sale for very cheap.

Boss said to me, "You said we should take better care of the staff, so I asked if we could have this for everyone to buy to give to loved ones."

I was amazed--I hadn't realized he'd even agreed with me that was a good idea, to tell the truth. I just don't GET some of the social cues of my coworkers.

He invited me to shop, and to be polite I looked it over.
I told him that my loved ones like the stuff we throw away at the thrift store––for instance, I'd saved two moth-eaten sweaters from the cloth-recycling bin for a mending friend (Julia)
"She likes to darn the mends in different colored yarns, so they show."

He laughed.

I don't always agree with much less understand Big Boss, but the thing I like best about him is that he never takes umbrage. 
I've never seen him puff up and sputter in self-defense (like I'm always doing). [UPDATE: I've seen him now, years later. But it's true, mostly he doesn't.]

Mostly he approaches people with curiosity and humor, or just patience. When he's dealing with a difficult customer or staff member (me, sometimes!), he says things like they teach telemarketers:
"Thank you for pointing out how we could do better."

Ha!

And now, I'm off into the cold.