It's an interesting experience to be overqualified for a job that pays better than the job one currently holds, especially when the current job requires all of the skills that have made one overqualified for the better-paying job. How is it that a job that requires vastly less skill and experience could pay better than one that requires technical savvy, an ability to write well, copy-editing skills, graphic design skills, the ability to script and markup web pages and applications ... and so on and on?
The short answer is: I'm being robbed.
The longer answer is one that, if I wrote it, would surely get me fired should someone stumble across this bog of negativity and cholera. And, woefully undervalued as I am, it would behoove me none to dispense with my sole means of income, however deleterious and humiliating to my sense of self-worth it may be.
Still, making forays out into different worlds is interesting for the perspective it applies. It's astounding that I've managed to become so short-sighted. I've spent so much time in the dark cave staring at the wall that I've forgotten it has an opening and that there's a world outside of it. I've been dwelling in this dank, dark pit of despair where it is a matter of course to disregard and undermine the well-being and confidence of one's employees too long.
In the outside world, there seems to be money to be had. There are certainly those that have money. Regardless of any available funds one might assume exist at a multi-national media empire, it seems there are other, perhaps less wealthy (but still astoundingly rich) employers more willing to part with portions of their personal fortunes to better the earnings of those they employ.
I saw an ad while walking up 3rd Avenue the other day. It said: "If it was your company's business to CARE, they'd be in the CARING BUSINESS."
I suffer from the unfortunate delusion that my humanity matters in every aspect of my life, not only to myself but to other human beings. In New York, this simply isn't so. My humanity means so little to every other sad sack who populates this festering metropolis, whether to rank and file citizens on the train who are perfect strangers or to those with whom I interact daily on a human level. To stranger or acquaintance, friend or foe, boss or coworker, I am a commodity.
While my delusion makes me think that there is not only intrinsic value in my human qualities, it also leads me to believe that -- on an entirely objective, unemotional level -- my skills and talents have greater monetary value than the figure being applied to me. That would imply an employer cares about anything more than that they've been able to get a bargain in paying far less for skills they would have to pay anyone far more to use.
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