Something that’s been on my mind a lot lately is the way that society, and more specifically the average joe’s like you and me who make up society, degrade the people who provide us with services that we use. There’s definitely a spectrum of the severity of the criticism, and how often people use the service that they’re demeaning. It differs based on the job and the people who are doing that job, but people tend to rank certain careers as “better” than others and then proceed to put down people who aren’t in those specific careers. What they fail to recognize though is that they are able to live their lives the way they are because of the people following career paths that they didn’t choose.

For example, you see it when people talk down about working in the fast food business despite the fact that two nights before, they were probably rolling up to the McDonald’s drive-thru at midnight for an order of chicken nuggets. The same mentality is seen when people speak of custodial jobs as though they are “beneath” them, even though without custodians and garbage men and everyone in that field we would all be sick because of bacteria and all kinds of diseases because they keep our world sanitary. The way that people talk about blue-collar work, despite blue-collar workers being the backbone of our society, is atrocious.

On a different but equally obvious scale, you can see this happen with the way that people talk about strippers, porn stars, and sex workers in general. Even though thousands of people go to strip clubs, and exponentially more people than that watch porn, you see the people who are in these lines of work constantly being degraded and talked down to. It’s not exclusive to the people who opt out of going to strip clubs and use PornHub, either. The men and women who are streaming porn and going to strip clubs are the same people who will talk down about the women in those clubs and in those videos.

Everyone is just out to make a living, pay the bills, and put food on the table. There are a ton of different ways to do that, and what works for some people doesn’t work for others. Regardless, the fact that everyone is out there doing their job is what keeps our society going. Some jobs out there ensure our safety and others exist for the sake of convenience; but either way, they are jobs that we have grown to depend on and take advantage of. Since that is the case, it’s time that we as people start to step back and really analyze why we ascribe a certain level of worth and dignity to some jobs and not to others. The reality of it is that we reap the benefit of other people working the jobs that we aren’t. Sometimes we benefit more directly than other times, but whether it helps our days flow better or it’s a source of our own entertainment, these people are staying employed in part by the same people who don’t appreciate the work that they’re doing.

If someone is pursuing a job or career because it’s what works for them and they enjoy it or are passionate about it, what does it matter whether or not we would want the same job? A job is a job, and a paycheck is a paycheck. There are people out there waking up every morning to do the jobs that you speak so negatively of just so that you can have a safer life or an easier day or whatever the case may be.

People need to start realizing that they should be extending respect to anyone out there working and doing their part the best way that they can. Especially because more often than not, the people on their high-horses are constantly taking advantage of any and every service being provided to them by the people they refuse to respect. “You can’t demand a service while simultaneously degrading those who provide it for you.”- C.