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Economies Of The Tragically Hip: Reflections On How I Didn’t Get Fired From The Job I Lost | Daniel Bazarian
Daniel Bazarian is a recently-graduated student of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a writer of both creative and journalistic work. You can find recordings of his most recent project, a staged audio play entitled “Close Your Eyes and Look,” online at closeyoureyesandlook.bandcamp.com.”
**First Place Award Activist Reflection**
I had worked for three years at Unnamed Hip Location when the Owner (also Unnamed1) came to see me during a shift I worked alone. He proceeded to shout at me like a Junior High School bully. “You piece of shit,” he said, standing in the doorway of the backroom. I didn’t feel physically threatened, but was very aware that there was only one door out of the room I was in. “You motherfucker.”
Before jumping to any conclusions, you should know that I brought this Gen Xer Tantrum upon myself – I had, several minutes earlier, expressed disbelief that Unnamed Owner would instruct me, as he had, not to pay the house band that night on account of their being late. Incidentally, the band had informed me much earlier in the day that they would be late, and I had personally relayed to every customer coming in that night that the show would begin a bit later than usual. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, and it had never previously aroused any ire on either the customer or managerial side. But you can’t blame Unnamed Owner for not knowing all that, I suppose, since he never bothered to ask me about any of it before screaming. If he had, maybe he would have understood my surprise at his demand that I break with our consistent practice of paying the professional musicians who played regularly and reliably at Unnamed Hip Location. We paid them shit, of course, but it had been regularly-dispensed shit for at least two years.
“I can’t just not pay them,” I had said. Later on in the somewhat one-sided “exchange” that ensued, Unnamed Owner asked me what right I had to say that I “wouldn’t” not pay the band, and I found myself in the position of having to correct him. I’d said “can’t,” not “won’t.” In spite of this, he still told my manager later that I had said I “wouldn’t” not pay the band.
Quibbles. Anyway. I never worked another shift at Unnamed Hip Location after that night. In fact, I haven’t even been back as a patron since. I was not, however – and I find it pertinent to note this – fired. Because of course not. Fired? Firing? That’s something old people do. That would’ve been, like, way uncool.
And believe you me, this place was cool. Like, farmer’s-market-every-weekend cool. Like, Kombucha-on-tap cool. There was this one time that a vegan chili recipe was lunch special of the week, and it was so good that not only did I eat it for five straight days, but it almost convinced a degenerate meat-eater like myself that maybe making that jump to vegetarianism I’d long felt guilty about not considering could be easier than I thought. That’s how cool this place we’re talking about is.
I’m not being facetious. I legitimately thought, for a very long period of time, that Unnamed Hip Location (or UHL as it shall henceforward be referred to – not to be confused, I hope, with the United Hockey League) was just about the coolest place I had ever been, and that I was lucky to be working there. My shifts matched up perfectly with my class schedule, I generally liked my coworkers, and I even got free coffee sometimes. I was naïve, is what I’m trying to say – or, alternatively, I was a student.
Actually, pretty much everyone who worked at UHL was a student, in one form or another. That is, “student” if you use the generous interpretation of the term, which seems to be the one that fits much better in the modern period. “Student” means, of course, somebody taking classes at a college or university, either full- or part-time. That’s the classic definition. But in my experience, it also means somebody who just got their undergraduate degree and never planned on going to grad school, but who can’t seem to get any jobs that aren’t in service right now. “Student” also means somebody who was taking classes last semester and hopes to be taking them next semester (or the one after that), but has to work full-time right now in order to pay for it. It additionally means, or can mean, somebody who will be making the move from a community college to the university that just accepted them, but who can’t quite afford it right now, as well as somebody who had every intention of taking classes this semester but the registration deadline got lost in the shuffle of shifts and rent payments and their advisor never emailed them about it because they’re a transfer and admin must’ve screwed something up with putting them in touch. Occasionally, it can just mean somebody who owns a longboard and took a campus tour once. I’m sure I’m missing a few more.
In other words, if you find yourself in the position of being ages to 19-30, with the possible corollary of living in a college-saturated East Coast state like I do, there is a quality of Perpetual Studenthood in which you are probably living, engendered by a distension of the boundaries of the term “student.” The edges have had to be moved out on either side to accommodate the ballooning cost of college tuition and the shrinking buying power afforded by wage labor, minimum- or otherwise. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I go to a state school and not a private university, but I have known vanishingly few people who attended college for eight consecutive semesters, lived in dorm rooms, attended stimulating lectures and/or toga parties every weekend, etc., etc. Most of the people I know have spent some not inconsiderable amount of time in the grayer areas of Perpetual Studenthood.
Myself being one of them – I took a semester off in order to spend a year working full-time at UHL, where every iteration of “student” I’ve mentioned here was represented by at least one of my coworkers.
***
Should I be clearer about what I mean when I say “Hip?” It’s a broad category, and one whose
specificities have been debated at least since the mid-aughts.2 I’m fairly uninterested in rehashing tired complaints about modes of dress and tastes in beer, crafted3 to assume the superiority of both complainer and audience despite the fact that their respective possession of sufficient leisure time to write, read and become worked up about something so pointless places them in a similar category to the dilettantes onto whom they’re projecting. What I am interested in, however, is the convergence of this designation with a certain type of vaguely progressive politics.
It should be relatively unsurprising that Hip Locations would position themselves fuzzily within the arena of what we call “the left” in America. These places don’t occur in a vacuum, after all – they require a consumer base of patrons willing and able to pay somewhat higher prices for goods and services that are possibly niche, usually well-made, and presented in spaces with an elevated design atmosphere. This demographic primarily converges with the demand for eateries and cultural centers like theaters, cinemas and specialty shops in relatively prosperous urban areas, particularly ones which play host to colleges and universities. These towns especially are havens for Hip Locations, but in order to appeal to the set of people who would be regularly spending money in college towns, businesses need to ensure that their appeal extends to this very politicized portion of the population, the majority of which identify somewhere along the spectrum of left politics in America.4 This is becoming increasingly necessary as political positions become more and more deeply enmeshed with popular culture and consumption habits.
What we get, then, are businesses which go out of their way to show off their culturally progressive credentials. UHL was certainly one of these places, though I’m going to refrain from pointing to very many specific examples, as I want to avoid seeming like I’m criticizing practices oriented towards greater inclusivity. I should hardly need to state that honest efforts to make spaces more inclusive should be applauded and supported. This practice only becomes a problem when the façade of cultural progressivism is stripped away from its underlying principles – equity, justice, community, etc. – and used as branding, belied by the actual business practices in which these places sometimes engage. The appearance of “woke” language in the Twitter feeds of corporations like McDonald’s and Whole Foods while they still utilize prison labor as a major facet of their business model is one large-scale example of this phenomenon. Really, what we see many of these businesses engaged in is the same flavor of soft-left pandering that the liberal class has been performing since it was essentially evacuated of content towards the end of the twentieth century, and in different ways beforehand as well; the only real distinction in most Hip Locations is the design packaging.
And I don’t want to underplay the importance of that packaging! Anybody who’s ever found themselves a Hip Location (as well as pretty much anyone who’s heard about them from their friends) will understand the vital importance of aesthetic choices to both the business model and general vibe of these places. There are a lot of weeds which can be unconstructively gotten into around the specifics of this aesthetic tendency – as the above-cited n+1 publication states, “all descriptions of hipsters are doomed to disappoint, because they will not be the hipsters you know” – and I want to avoid having this essay operate on a level of empty aesthetic criticism, but I think there are broad enough similarities in the “look” of these places that briefly outlining some of them can be a worthwhile exercise.
There are the obvious indicators. The brick wall, usually only one out of four but occasionally found in full quartets. Pseudo-industrial detailing including-but-not-limited-to exposed ducts and steel girders. The Edison bulbs. (The constant fucking Edison bulbs). My own feeling is that the best way to understand the parameters in which these milieus are operating would be to think of the general feeling of late-period Victorian and Edwardian architectural preferences with a nod towards the Industrial Revolution that occurred during these periods. If you don’t know much about late-period Victorian and Edwardian architecture, that’s even better, because the details borrowed are inexact. It’s an overall feeling, not a well-researched historical reconstruction. One of the main differentiating factors between this style and what is known as Steampunk, which in certain instances it could be mistaken for, is an orientation on the part of Hip Locations towards “Americana.” Practically, this means less brass and more wood grain, as well as the occasional faux-taxidermy wall animal5 and a dedication to the chrome-and-neon flourishes of midcentury design principles. Try to imagine the Platonic ideal of “24-hour diner,” and you’ve pretty much got this understanding of both midcentury design and “Americana” pegged.
A shallow interpretation of this would summon up the specter of the word “vintage,” a very important term for HLs, as an excuse for this mish-mash of markers from bygone eras. But I think this ignores the fact that there is a thread running through what would seem to be an otherwise disparate set of poles around which Hip Locations tend to organize their designs. As a fair-weather historicist, I can’t help but point out that these two periods of time, roughly the 1910s and postwar years, are both times of deep reaction in the American political sphere, particularly against labor. I’m not trying to be conspiracy-minded here – of course there is not some cabal of very cool people rubbing their hands and cackling about periods of capitalist reaction against organized labor. But I also can’t consider it a trifling coincidence how a coworker of mine phrased a complaint once, after we’d briefly joked about unionizing the employee body and going on strike, deciding that if we did so upper management would simply replace all of us with newer and more obedient employees no doubt culled from the local student population.
“It’s like the 1800s in here,” they sighed, rolling their eyes.
A fascinating moment: there we were, surrounded by the dehistoricized architectural echoes of exactly the era my coworker was referencing as a gesture towards its anti-labor historical content. Is this what Walter Benjamin meant by “constellation?”6 Certainly, we weren’t dealing with anything in our jobs like the robber barons of the railroad companies. Nothing rose even close to that level of malice, and the existence of labor laws has tempered mightily the capability of employers for such abject cruelty. But there were still numerous infractions, unsavory behaviors and slights on the part of the people who signed our paychecks. Late and incomplete wages weren’t uncommon, and if employees did not specifically address this with Unnamed Owner, an intimidating thing to do considering he had a monopoly over decisions about their future employment at Unnamed Hip Location,7 these wages would go unpaid. I am also aware of employees who regularly worked over 40 hours a week without benefits or overtime, which is illegal in the state where I live. I think it’s worth considering that part of these businesses’ constant currying favor through the rhetorical gestures towards inclusivity and lefty political positioning is an attempt to shore up some sort of Wages of Wokeness which could be spent as goodwill when the shoddy business practices in which they engage come to light. Our joke about unionizing masked, or expressed in the acceptable couching of irony, a real wish on the part of me and my coworker for greater leverage against management afforded by collective bargaining.
It’s difficult not to think of Karl Marx’s writing, in his piece on the Eighteenth Brumaire, on how the bourgeoisie compulsively cloaks itself in the robes of their outdated antecedents upon reaching the limits of the progressive reforms it can enact without deconstructing its own class privileges:
The tradition of all the generations of the dead weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem involved in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something that has never before existed... they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow names, battle cries and costumes from them in order to act out the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language.8
Perhaps this can account, in some way, for the ever-increasing uniformity of the aesthetic projects which Hip Locations across the country, dotting the landscape in a pattern coordinating with the diaspora of the university degreed, seem to be engaged in.
Or, y’know... that and Instagram.
***
I myself make no claim of having been a perfect employee. Or, if I’m honest, even an especially good one. It may surprise you to learn that somebody interested in writing an essay on the relationship between contemporary hip-kid culture and capitalist exploitation would happen to have a pretty miserable head for business, but I stand before you as testament to the incompatibility of these two skill sets. If I had simply been fired from my job for poor performance, I would have understood. But, as illustrated above, that is not what happened, and firing, while unpleasant, is in a very different category from standing in a doorway and shouting insults at a 21-year-old until he feels he cannot reasonably remain in this job anymore and is compelled to quit “of his own accord.”
Beyond this, I need to take some umbrage at the foundation of an argument positing that I deserved what I got on the basis of my failing to live up to Unnamed Owner’s standards of “good employee”:9 That it is somehow incumbent on me to earn decent treatment from the people I work for by meeting the standards they set for me as regards job performance or “professionalism.” This is a particularly nasty development of the last thirty or so years of corporate thinking, and its underlying principle – that human beings are worthy of basic respect only insofar as they fit themselves to the needs and desires of the market – is frankly disgusting and anti-human.
I think it likely that my irritation with this line of reasoning will resonate with other people around my age (18-30-ish, a category which aligns neatly with the previously-discussed Perpetual Studenthood), who, as denizens of what is called “the gig economy,” have lived our whole lives in a world where this conception of “professionalism” has run rampant. Need I rehash the exponential rise in the percentage of average income which goes towards the bare necessities of personal sustenance these days? I don’t think so. Nor need I return to the subject of the inexorable increase of tuition fees which leave most of my peers in the sort of debt that necessitates their entry into this “gig economy,” and thereby their subjection to the shifting goalposts of “professionalism” consistently levied against them as an excuse for poor treatment and low wages. The decimation of the social safety net that has formed the core of America’s national legislative project since the 1970s should be proof enough on its own that somehow our cultural conception of who is and is not deserving of empathy and basic human care has been hopelessly colonized by the global market.10 None of us are laboring under the delusion that the current economy has any especial desire for our services, let alone any need, and I’m thus attempting to avoid didacticism at least in part because of the obviousness of this circumstance. Also, though, because the sort of up-punching snark I’ve tried to pepper this essay with is much more fun for us to read and write than quantitative analyses of our situation and possible futures, all of which would essentially amount to something along the lines of “shit’s bad, yo. Will that be cash or card?”
***
By way of closing, I think it’s probably a good idea for me to sketch out a few conclusions that I feel comfortable drawing from my experience and from having recounted parts of it here. I understand it’s generally advisable to give the audience a sense of closure or uplift before ushering them out through the gift shop, so I’ll do my best to be positive. Or something.
I should apologize for the fact that the conclusions I’ve drawn aren’t especially unique, but much of what I’ve attempted to do here is to untangle obfuscations, both intentional and otherwise, towards seeing that Hip Locations are still businesses and often still home to the shittier patterns inherent in businesses, no matter what their politics, advertising, and/or patron makeup would suggest. In fact, the rhetoric of small business, whether in its classic “American sticktoitiveness” form or the newer “not just an office” language of startup culture, can often be deployed as a way of deflecting worker criticism. In this way, it is not unlike the language of “professionalism.” Small details, like the use of the term “team” instead of “employees” is a manifestation of this. Unnamed Owner assured us, on more than one occasion, that our efforts at UHL were deeply appreciated, as we were all contributing to “building something together.” The fact of its newness, of its relatively unestablished nature, was the reason why he could not remunerate us in a fashion that reflected the level of appreciation he so deeply felt for our contribution to this project. Once, he even went so far as to pull out the hackneyed language of the workers, managers and himself constituting not just a workplace, but – wait for it – a family. This was stated in response to complaints against the behavior of one of the managers towards the employees, which he would not have known about had I not complained about it. That manager, unlike me, still works at UHL.
While most workers would, of course, like to work in a place where they have good relations with their coworkers and bosses, workers need to be paid for the work they do, preferably paid decently. This is why they are workers. It’s putting the cart before the horse somewhat to place the former before the latter, no matter how well-intentioned the reasons for doing so are.11 This is pretty much how the situation has stood since feudalism ended.
In other words, much of what I’ve outlined here is the proverbial lipstick on a very, very old pig, though putting it this way is probably insulting to pigs, towards whom I bear no ill will. Despite all of its affectations to the contrary, there is very little new under the sun when it comes to worker-owner relationships in the realm of small businesses and Hip Locations. Sadly, the increased proximity of owners to workers afforded by smaller numbers does not always result in the greater understanding and better treatment that we would like to think it should. This is not intended as a universal indictment of small businesses, or even of Hip Locations, many of which are well-run and treat their employees decently. There are many I frequent myself, not that I should be held up as any paragon of virtue. It is, however, a reminder that the worker-owner relationship is always lopsided, and the possibility for it to become oppressive is a constant. It is impossible to amend this dynamic and move towards a happier, more cohesive style of workplace relations of the sort that Unnamed Owner continually claimed to want without addressing that power imbalance specifically. The most obvious method of addressing it is through the unionization of the employee body for the purposes of collective bargaining.
How exactly small business employees would unionize is unclear to me, as it was to everyone I worked with, and how they would do so with any efficacy considering the ease with which they can be replaced by owners is a sizable complication. But the need cannot be denied. Any owners of small businesses who are actually committed to the progressive values they say they are will not only allow for, but actively encourage the unionization of the employee body to address this power imbalance. Of course, as anyone with reasoning abilities will tell you, the owner class cannot be relied on to encourage a process which would directly lessen their authority over employees, no matter how well-intentioned they seem to be.
The task of discovering effective unionization measures in our atomized economy must fall to employees, as will the rebuilding of a culture of worker solidarity in direct reaction to the sort of sadistic cultural turn that the globalizing market has precipitated. This must be a cross-industry project, regardless of the type of work being done and the income level of the workers. While many of the employees at Unnamed Hip Location came from backgrounds affluent enough that their quality of life would not be directly affected by the actions of management, there were sufficient number who would be that effective, democratic unionization could possibly make a real change in their lives. Beyond this, the unionization of workers anywhere strengthens union culture everywhere, and after decades of crushing attacks on organized labor, the necessity not only of rebuilding unions but of remaking them with more equitable and democratic principles is urgent. Both those footnoted Amazon office and warehouse workers should be able to bargain collectively, as they both have to contend with the same mega-corporate adversary, and their strength, which is in their numbers, cannot afford to be fragmented. As an article published not too long ago on precisely this subject (which I cannot recommend highly enough) quotes an ironworker participating in the recent graduate worker’s strike at Columbia University as saying, “every worker needs a union.” 12
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Greif, Mark, Kathleen Ross, and Dayna Tortorici What Was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation. Brooklyn: n+1 Foundation, 2010.
Marx, Karl “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” (1852), 9-10, http://www.marx2mao.com/M&E/EBLB52.html.
Press, Alex N. “Forget Your Middle-Class Dreams,” Jacobin,
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/middle-class-white-collar-unions-kickstarter.
1 I’m avoiding using any proper names in this essay. This isn’t a petty attempt at retributive essay-writing, but an attempt to use an experience I’ve had as a jumping-off point for analyzing a wider societal trend.
2 Mark Greif, Kathleen Ross, and Dayna Tortorici, What Was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation
(Brooklyn: n+1 Foundation, 2010).
3 The discourse, not the beer.
4 This is a difficult category to define, especially as the Overton Window of the American political spectrum has drifted further and further right in recent decades. I should additionally specify that nothing here is intended as a critique of leftwing politics – the purpose of this essay is to criticize political positioning (perhaps “posturing” is a better term), not any specific political position.
5 The tendency towards veganism and vegetarianism among the usual patrons of these places would make real taxidermy a liability, despite it generally fitting with the look.
6 I’m honestly asking, I still don’t feel like I’ve wrapped my head around that one. But I can tell it’s important. Probably.
7 “I don’t deal with groups, I deal with individuals” was something Unnamed Owner once said when I brought up the possibility of employee body meetings. I guess “dealing with individuals” is what he did the night I wasn’t fired. And sometimes he would wonder aloud why nobody wanted to meet with him when he was always so available for it.
8 Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” (1852), 9-10, http://www.marx2mao.com/M&E/EBLB52.html.
9 No straw men were harmed in the making of this rhetorical flourish. Or, well, maybe one or two.
10 Even further than it already was, which is saying something.
11 Not that one shouldn’t endeavor to have both – a business which pays employees well but treats them like crap isn’t necessarily better, as numerous articles on the lives lead by white-collar Amazon employees will attest to. Although white-collar Amazon employees can at least take comfort in the fact that they’re not Amazon warehouse (sorry, “fulfillment center”) employees, right?
12 Alex N. Press, “Forget Your Middle-Class Dreams,” Jacobin,
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/middle-class-white-collar-unions-kickstarter.