Perspective

       So, I know that the "open letter" by the chick from Yelp is almost a week old and the response from the bartender/writer lady went viral on Monday, and there has been many other accompanying articles, but the all are missing something. So, I also keep reading the comments on all the articles about this subject trying to find it and am just appalled by the mindset of so many people in the country. It pains me especially because they all are missing the one thing that could turn their arguments into solution. That one thing is perspective.

        Everyone, and I mean everyone, has their own anecdotal story. The story about their own life, their own journey and the path they took, but it is just theirs. That is what makes it anecdotal. Nobody else has the experience and I am getting the sneaking suspicion that there may be something wrong with me, since I tend to see more than one side. It is not a "millennial" problem,  it is not a story of getting rewarded for hard work, it is not a story about a how bad corporations are, it is a story about the systematic failure of our economic system that has been trudging along this trajectory for at least 40 years. We can all find ways to work within this new framework, while simultaneously working for change. Some people have and are really good at it. Some people are not, and I will be the first to admit that, I guess I am just not good at it. Which is probably why I am more sympathetic to all sides of the argument.

        I have been working since the age of 11 and at the age of 33 I am making 100% less than I was at 25, and have varied somewhere between 0-60% in the intervening years. It is not because I do not want to work, but because I literally do not know how to make these "opportunities" or "chances" for myself like the bartender/writer lady. I am not inept, or lazy, or dumb, or entitled. I am pretty sure, despite applying for job after job everyday that I can even get someone to actually read my resume. I just do not have a family friend to pick me up when I am down. However, unlike the Yelp chick, I have always worked multiple jobs to support myself. Jobs I have not always enjoyed or been proud of, and I will have to do that again soon. Which takes away experience and wages I should be getting perpetuating this horrible career tilt-a-whirl I am on. So, I get how frustrating their stories are to each other. But it is not as easy as being one way or the other and like I said before it certainly has nothing to do with generational differences.

        Wages have been stagnating for years. Baby boomers cannot afford to retire or they cannot afford to give up their benefits. Gen-Xer's are stuck in middle management because of this with kids rapidly approaching college days that they cannot afford and many Millennials are in entry level jobs and cannot keep up with their cost of living which has dramatically increased in the past 2 decades. (I am 33 and yes when I started driving gas was still less than $1 a gallon in 2008 it was almost $4 a gallon.) I guess my point is that we are all get screwed by the current situation. I am relying on a robot to read my resume, you might be relying on that person that just won't retire to get a desperately needed promotion or raise, and your neighbor might only be working because they lost their retirement saving in the 2008 financial collapse. It is all a freaking tilt-a-whirl and I think we owe some grace to each other, if not a hand.

        So why this one-ups-man-ship about who is getting screwed over worse and why? Is it a corporations problem if the cost of living somewhere is unattainable in relation to their entry-level wages? Probably not. But, it is something we should be working to figure out instead of crapping on one another over who is better, works harder, or who has it worse. And scarily that seems to be a novel thought. It is one thing to give advice and support to someone struggling, and it is more than fair to give kudos to those are on the up and up, I am not sure why it has to be either or for everything in this country. From my perspective I just feel like we should be less inclined to constantly criticize or ignore our problems and more open to realizing that everyone has had different experiences, different opportunities and as a result a different path in front of them. Negative criticism begets nothing, positive criticism can result in an idea. But then again, I will probably get crucified for thinking differently than someone else. It is what we do best-