As a free service, I’m going to provide a truncated version of one of my best lessons here. Some of you might get some mileage out of it. It’s a basic tool, and many of my freshman students can use it with some confidence and a bit of prodding after about an hour. It’s known by the vaguely-scatological acronym “CRAAP.”
Read MoreThis is leading me back to a line of thinking that has occurred to me over and over again: there is this brain bug, among those people insulated by wealth and other forms of class privilege, that service workers are, in some way, not full people. We’re categorized in their minds as children, or as students, or as congenital f*ck-ups not worth consideration in the calculus of how to run a society. Ultimately we are categorized as acceptable casualties.
Read MoreLook, the assumption that public-facing jobs inherently suck is an outgrowth of the idea that your job should be the locus of personal fulfillment in your life. Americans don’t have hobbies; they have jobs — call it a “calling,” call it a “passion,” call it what the fuck you want, but at the end of the day, it’s just a fucking job.
Read More
