millennials are killing capitalism.
variations of the headline repeat ad infinitum, sometimes condemning, others congratulatory, as if the majority of the demographic does not still kneel before the 40 hour work week, chin to chest, lacking the words or the deity to whom they might direct a prayer. these metaphors leave the killers nameless, always framed as either heroes or heretics, always depicted as cleaving the head from the corporate hydra — but this is ignorance. regeneration is a foreign concept to us when we fail to even define the word ‘relax.’ so if and when one does behead the fiction presented, another grows, and it all goes serpentine. the exploitation simply learns to slither rather than stalk.
kid gloves type words like ‘core values,’ managers grin with the myopic promise of candy and vouchers as payment for increased hours and limited staff, ignoring inquiries, handling dissent with bagged shoes, doggedly pragmatic in every syllable used. but these first world hurdles don’t strike me as problematic so much as thematic, as common as the score when the scenery turns dramatic, the quiet hum that offers context rather than the silence that is symptomatic of the cause, the terms we accept for fear of a retaliation more climactic than the lives we’re given just enough leash to lead. whoever breaks from the mold is the exception, not the rule — and society passes judgement on the one that cannot leave. the one paying the rent and not the mortgage, who clings to the copay while the checks still return, accepting the burnout when it comes, because all it costs is what’s already been given. the clock doesn’t even tick because it has been rendered inefficient, gone digital. instead we serve our sentence to the tune of telephone static and the clicking of keys, throats cleared beneath the hum of electricity.
how do you quantify that in a spreadsheet? what arithmetic in what cell can divine the sum total of trading years of wasted hours for the benefits, the slimmest kind, obligatory humanity glimpsed between policy lines, ever a commodity . . . you have the right to use your vacation when your sick pay runs out, the few accrued hours you’ve broken your back about, working overtime without a complaint, because you are used to showing restraint. used to biting the tongue which withers further into your throat with every day, learning to justify the corporation and equivocate, losing sight of who you are trying to convince. eloquent as ever in the effort, as though you can make it make sense.
our willpower is stored not in our spines, but in our fingers, spurring the wheel of the mouse as indeed refreshes with a lethargic spin, paralyzed with the uncertainty of a changed pace, consumed with indecision, the grueling task of learning your place. my mouth’s dried up from claiming that i’ve had enough, walking backward circles around my own rationality attuned to the workplace guilt i’ve grown to carry with something almost like tenderness, because this i am familiar with — even when i keyed out the FMLA request that stole less than two hours weekly from the score i have already bartered and traded, I felt the cold hand of it encircle my ankle. a warning, because you cannot cause trouble. you cannot be a nuisance. the squeaky wheel does not get the oil, but rather, is removed quietly from the cart, and no one really notices the difference, do they? coffee bar talk has been replaced by cubicle whispers, knowing looks — we shake our heads but daren’t say a word when the demands are made under the illusion of a request, ‘or else’ lingering behind, on the edge of the unsaid
stay late
come early
skip lunch
work your comp day
our irises on fire with the words we want to say, the indignation that stirs and yet the will, at our fingertips, merely clicks to like the offending message. our will is to survive. it turns off the alarm in the morning and lifts the badge from the hook. there is no will, beyond perseverance. beyond the paycheck. my debt does not take shy bites of my deposit but ravenous ones, yet i still have it better than most. striking is a luxury of a bygone age, it is for the passionate children of middle income parents, the ‘anarchist’ that bears no fear for the consequence, the student with loans comfortably deferred. i’d like nothing more than to be fearless, but my savings bleed into vehicles and groceries and insurance and utilities, and whatever fight i might have utilized is now employed to hold me upright, to swipe my card for the psychiatrist and at the cvs where a pavlovian reflex wets my palate at the rattling clatter of pills, a different color of slow-release capsule every time.
i am so tired, but no amount of sleep feels restful.
i rise and fall like the tide on a schedule slowly becoming less certain, solar gravity diminished as i drift gradually closer to the consuming night, and though the times change the reality is ever the same; work, sleep, therapy, recycled shows and movies i know the words to, certainties i prefer over the ones that condemn me to continue at this pace.
capitalism did not have the decency to kill me, merely held my feet to the fire and called it a favor, heating at a fraction of the usual price.
and i will say thank you, my will now caught between my teeth, tucked discreetly in the crookedness of my bottom row, where the braces failed me, another collection on my mother’s credit and, i suppose, another reason to be ruefully grateful that my bills, after all, are paid. and my bed made.
