You’re right, my skeptical grad.
Your next destination is wretched:
The world of work.

It’s as bad as you say,
this work world of ours.
It produces gizmos we don’t need,
exploits the vulnerable,
discards people in favor of AI,
clogs our rivers and arteries.

You’re also right that, meanwhile,
shareholders don shoes pricier than your parents’ home,
float their siliconed bodies in infinity pools, and
gloat over ever more lucrative portfolios.

And, yes:
Employers expect you to pull the lever of
normalized shareholder greed.
The same one that created the
questionable products,
injustices,
inequality,
contamination,
and billionaires.

You would be forgiven for pulling the lever.
Most people do.
Not because they’re wretched,
just caught in the gears
of an apparatus that is.

Yet,
Wretched work is not absolute.
Truths rarely are.

A rarefied minority do not pull the lever,
at least not the way the apparatus wants.
They eschew private profit in favor of societal gains,
in favor of a fulfilling life,
a meaningful existence.

One in four investors won’t buy stock
in tobacco, firearms or oil companies,
no matter how lucrative.

The leadership at Dr. Bronner’s,
a SoCal soap company,
pays twice the wage the law requires and
limits executive salaries to
five times that of the lowest paid employee.

Greystone Bakery in Yonkers hires everyone.
No application, résumé, interview or background check.
Predictably, it has a waitlist.
But once your name reaches the top,
you have a job.

The owners of Taylor Guitars
gave the company to their employees.

When selling his manufacturing company, Fibrebond,
Graham Walker gave his 540 employees 15% of the proceeds,
roughly $240 million or $443,000 per worker.

Lincoln Electric, a Cleveland-based publicly traded welding equipment company,
has a guaranteed employment policy.
They won’t lay off workers,
and haven’t since the 1950’s.

Dick’s Drive-In, a Seattle hamburger chain,
keeps its meals affordable at under $6, and
offers every employee
free health and dental coverage,
unlimited transit cards,
a $36,000 scholarship, and
free meals.

Yes, my young cynic, some people in power counter the apparatus.

Some people not in power do as well.
A sales rep
won’t sell the sugary product in the catalog,
a procurement assistant
convinced her boss to make suppliers pay a living wage,
a manager
got hundreds of coworkers to sign a petition requesting that their employer reach net zero emissions,
a product development team
schemed a way to eliminate all plastic from their products.

You’re still right, my bright grad.
The wretchedness is dominant,
it has herded the majority into compliance.

Yet,
Even within the apparatus,
there’s a way to transcend the insignificant life it has fated for you.
There’s a lightly trodden, brighter, path
where you act beyond your job description.
There’s the way of the contrarian.