I have been at my new job for three months now, full-time. I think that possibly I have put in more hours of non-self-employed work at this job than from every other job I have had put together. I talked to my dear Aunt Vicki a few weeks ago and somehow she had gotten word that I had had a job for a few weeks, and she said that she was surprised. She is a strong believer in the American dream – that a person who works hard for wages can somehow turn a lifetime of drudgery into something successful. I feel strongly about my having used food from dumpsters to fuel my nutritional requirements to get through school. My grades were bad enough without my working and I could not have even gotten into university without attending community college while studying in my always waterless, usually powerless home in 2003-4.
I was thinking about this when I signed up for medical insurance at work this last week. I pay $20 a month and I get some kind of medical and dental plan. I was looking at the paperwork and my first thought was that it was $240 a year, and I have not spent that much money on doctors or prescriptions in the last 10 years, with the exception of getting tropical disease vaccines which insurance would not cover anyway. I thought it would be a waste for me to pay this. Then I thought about social status – maybe it would seem strange for me not to have health insurance, and it would look bad if I got sick in the office and was not insured. Certainly the clients seem to be sick often – it is a chemical dependency treatment facility and someone might sneeze at me or something. Also my coworkers are always sick, so probably this is an unsafe job. I still gagged a little when I was signing the papers because it seems so restrictive. I like the job but I hardly spend my salary and I think about taking what I have and booking to Paris.