BLOG #7: Women’s Titles,
Jury Duty, Precarious Employment, and Penis Envy (again)
Today, September 21, marks three months since I left SAIT
and semi-retired. I have to admit that I am still processing how I feel about
moving from being a fully employed person to an unemployed person (because
being retired is being unemployed in the traditional sense). I still feel as
though I am on a long vacation, and I expect that won’t change until I return
from England at the end of October.
WOMEN’s TITLES
A couple of weeks ago I was on 17 Avenue SW meeting a group
of fabulous women for brunch. This was the height of summer so pretty summer
dresses and sandals, shorts, muscle shirts were normal attire for most folks at
this point and it was blisteringly hot by 10:00. I was arriving at
a rather upscale establishment, and I was the first to arrive. The doorperson
greeted me and called me Ma’am. Thereafter, however, the wait staff called me
Miss.
Were the wait staff trying to be polite to an obviously
matronly woman thinking calling me “Miss” would make me feel better?
What’s going on?
You’ll notice that men don’t ever change their titles.
Perhaps we need a new title for retired persons who are
female. Open to suggestions on this one.
JURY DUTY (and ageism)
Discrimination takes many shapes and forms and ageism is just one of those forms . . . and
the latest example for me is to discover that I become exempt from jury duty
once I turn 65. Why? Does my brain suddenly atrophy at 65? Why at 64 am I
considered capable but suddenly at 65 I am not.
I’m pondering on this piece of information because I
recently received a summons for jury duty, and if I’m called to be assessed for
jury duty, I’m not sure if I should work hard to demonstrate that I am
cognitively and physically capable of performing my civic duty or if I should
just let bias have its way and use this as a get-out-of-jail-free card (pun
intended) so I can avoid jury duty.
PRECARIOUS EMPLOYMENT:
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how my reentry into
the workforce will take place and in what format it’ll be. Coffee with a friend
really got me thinking about minimum wage (in
Alberta this goes up to $15/hour this October) and what type of work I want to
do. My friend mentioned that she didn’t think she could/would work for minimum
wage. I have to ask myself, “Would I?”
The term “precarious employment” has entered our lexicon in
the last few years.
In terms of precarious employment, I have my daughter’s mid-twenties friends and coworkers to gauge
by, so my observations are hardly scientific. What I observe is that very few
of them have been or are currently enrolled in post-secondary courses/programs
that would lead to professional positions and that most are under employed,
employed part-time, or employed part-time and working two or more jobs.
This is not a criticism of their life choices, merely an observation and a
convenient platform into observations about employment. Leap back about 25
years and long before the term “precarious employment” was coined, and I was
working as a part-time contract instructor. Now, it’s a sad fact that many
post-secondary instructors/professors start out their careers as casual or
sessional instructors. This is also the time when these folks are establishing
their careers, paying back student loans, possibly looking at settling down
(think mortgage, partner, children). It’s also a sad fact that for budget
management reasons many institutions take advantage of this group of folks. I
know, I was there for seven years . . . although, to be fair, I also had a
baby/toddler at the time and working part-time somewhat worked to my advantage.
But looking back on this experience I realize that apart from these seven years
of very iffy employment, most of my work has been full-time work that included
a decent salary, employer benefits, and a pension plan, and those features
definitely lift a job out of the realm of precarious employment.
So, here I am on a short-term contract working part-time as
a provincial enumerator for minimum wage. I’m enjoying the work, actually. I
can tell you that your provincial government is working very hard on your
behalf to ensure that you can exercise your right to vote. This contract
provides me with a purpose for my daily walking, I get to work by myself with
not a committee in sight, I’m getting to know a part of Calgary I didn’t
know existed except in passing, and the money I earn will pay for the
plants in my new Chinook-hardy flower garden. On one side of my zone are
multi-million dollar homes with gorgeous front gardens and high-end vehicles
parked on the streets and up the driveways . . . and on the other side of my
zone are dwellings where the occupants are clearly struggling financially and
the vehicles are what one might refer to as beaten up bangers. No judgement on
my part (I hope) . . . sometimes it takes a while to establish oneself and one
must live the way one needs to in order to make ends meet. But I couldn’t help
reflecting that many of the folks on the “wrong side of the road” are probably
precariously employed and also that if I weren’t retired how I, too, would
qualify as being precariously employed. I’ve also been chewing on how many
hours at minimum wage it’s going to take me to earn around $450.00 (around 30
hours) and how quickly I could have earned $450.00 working in education.
This knowledge won’t stop me from taking on other
short-term, minimum wage positions if they interest me because there is at
least one big advantage: limited responsibility . . . limited responsibility
from me around organization and planning vs. actually doing of the job.
And I’ve been chewing on this new knowledge a lot recently.
Not that I’ve arrived at any logical answer, but the chewing in itself is
interesting as I’m having to confront a whole bunch of assumptions about the value
of work, value of a profession, value we as a society place on different
professions. And having the opportunity to walk around two very different
communities divided only by one road has got me thinking about life choices,
access to opportunities, taking advantage of opportunities, expectations of
oneself, what career decisions I might have made if I hadn’t made my way into
education. And I’m beginning to wonder if my return to work will be back into
education (either teaching or curriculum work) or whether or not it will take
some totally unexpected shape that I haven’t even considered.
PENIS ENVY (again):
September in Calgary has seen below average temperatures
and some snow (anything from a skiff to a dump depending where in the
province one lives). Our normal daytime temperatures this time of year are
around +15C to +18C . . . not hovering around zero. September has really been
the month that didn’t happen. This follows a blisteringly hot and incredibly
dry summer and weeks of forest fire smoke from British Columbia limiting
outdoor activities.
This abrupt change in weather and temperatures has proved
difficult for the horses who are in the process of changing coats . . . which means they are still shedding their
summer coats and have grown only the start of their fall coats (which, by
November will be heavier winter coats).
What does this have to do with penis envy? . . . hang in
there, I’ll get to it.
So, horses who are not normally rugged at this time of year
are already in rugs or at least wearing rugs till the weather normalizes, and
horsey humans are dragging out every piece of barn clothing so they can stay
warm when working with their equid buddies.
In addition, in my work as a provincial enumerator till the
end of September, I’m bundled up like the Michelin Tyre man as I complete
my routes.
All of which has got me looking for my long johns,
Stanfords, woolly combinations – whatever you choose to call them.
Are you starting to see the connection?
So, woolly combinations for men: often all one piece so the
waist band area never gets cold . . . possibly with a bum flap for more serious
stuff, but still minimizing exposure to the
cold . . . and a fly to, again, ummmm minimize
exposure to the cold.
Check out the union suits (a new term for me) from the
LLBean catalogue https://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/47356?page=two-layer-union-suit-men-s&bc=12-26&feat=Long%20Underwear-SR0&csp=f&searchTerm=Long%20Underwear (and a word of caution: if you are going looking
for woolly combinations online, please be careful just which website you select
to look at!!!!!).
Women’s combinations: ummmmm, well, unless a woman wants to
divest herself of snow suit equipment, several woolly sweaters and such, a
one-piece combination would require that she completely undresses in order to
pee and that means maximum exposure to the cold. Which is probably why women
have two-piece combinations . . . but there’s still a lot of skin exposed just
to take a whiz. And let’s not forget that younger women are often managing
small children (also wearing multiple layers of clothing) in public bathrooms,
so that adds another layer of complication.
Gentlemen, once again . . . please realize just how lucky
you are. . . and please give some thought to
your horsey women friends as we manage our combinations.
And on a side note, have you ever noticed that no character
in a novel ever has to visit the facilities? Recently I was reading a
futuristic novel (and like all futuristic novels it was depressing, bleak, and
not at all positive), and the protagonist had to pee, outside, in the forest,
and she was worried about privacy and getting her boots wet (refer back to Blog
#6 if you don’t get the reference). I wish I’d noted the exact paragraph and
the protagonist’s comments. Good job she wasn’t also coping with her woolly
combinations.
MISCELLANEOUS
Recently I was watching one of Rick Steves’s travel
programs. This was part of PBS’s drive for viewer funding, and Mr. Steves mentioned
that his travels abroad to exotic countries were, in some ways, safer than
staying at home. Tactful, careful, and mindful of his audience, Mr. Steves’s
comments were still pointedly obvious (he is American) and his feelings about
his current government were all the more powerful for his tactful, understated
comments. I will keep his comments about the safety of travelling abroad in mind as I shall
shortly be packing for a month-long stay in the British Isles.
Even though I don’t have my birth year plugged into my
Facebook profile, its algorithm (?) must be picking up on comments about
retirement because a lot of the pop-up
adverts are to do with things of interest to retired persons. This got me
thinking about a book I recently picked up at the library. I tried
(unsuccessfully, again) to read a book by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg. This one
is called The Little Old Lady Behaving Badly, and it’s translated into
English from Swedish. I love the title! Despite loving the concept of a
gang of old folks plotting to and then successfully robbing banks to support
their charitable endeavours, I’ve not been able to get into the two books I’ve
tried reading. Not that I’m considering a post-retirement move to a life of
crime, but I do love the concept of elderly folks behaving badly.
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I’ve been spending rather a lot of time at SAIT recently dropping off or picking up my currently carless daughter from her
photography courses. Somehow, in the last three months, I have managed to
completely disconnect myself from campus and I feel no more than I would feel
moving around Mount Royal University’s or University of Calgary’s campuses.
Which is a tad odd because I’ve spent so much time and so many years on campus.
Next week, I’m on campus visiting and lunching, so it’ll be interesting to see
if I feel any different or if I feel like an outsider? Odd that a place that
took up some much of my emotional and intellectual energy now neither takes
anything from me nor gives anything to me.
. . . and in the category of things I can now do:
1. Popping
out to the barn for an appointment with the farrier (blacksmith) on a weekday
without booking a flex day or vacation day or negotiating with a barn buddy to
bring the horses in for me.
2. Running
out to a hardware store during the quieter weekday hours (in this particular
case shopping for some wood).
3. Rolling
over in bed and going back to sleep because it’s still dark/cold/wet/miserable
out. Now if I could only train my Canadian husband and Canadian daughter that
the British idea of bringing mum tea in bed is acceptable in Canada.
4. Playing
Mum’s Taxi Service without having to negotiate days off work or juggling work
commitments because my daughter Heather was recently involved in a traffic
incident. She’s okay (we’re still not sure about her car, though), but having
one parental unit to drive her around to various medical appointments is a big
bonus and clearly a bonus linked of my being semi-retired.
How did we move so very
quickly from hot, sunny, long summer days of summer dresses and sandals to
the cold, crisp, short fall (autumn) days where I’m thinking of woolly
combinations? Is there a parallel here between moving from being a
full-employed professional to a semi-retired/ unemployed person and moving from
summer to fall?
