working to travel

by BMK

I don’t believe in travel. I think a lot about the carbon emissions and the money lost whenever someone goes on vacation. When people talk about how many places they’ve been to, I get bitter and judgmental. For your flight to Thailand, you could have started a retirement fund. You could have bought a good bike and a year of French lessons. You could have paid for vitamins for hundreds of malnourished kids out there.

I feel vindicated by the coronavirus. I decided in my heart that travel was a kind of sin, and now everyone else thinks so too. I felt smug to see the photos of people packing the airports to rush home, people whose response to an international pandemic was to gather in a huge crowd and shoot themselves across one last border. I had proof, now, that these globetrotting people were actually less globally conscious than the people who stayed at home.

My old job, from 2019, was with a small business. The clients paid $56 for an hour of my time. I earned $20 per hour, and I felt guilty earning that much, because I knew the clients weren’t rich. The office expenses couldn’t have been high, so I knew the other $36 were mostly profit, and I knew the owners were spending the profit on travel.

The owners were my friends, but that’s often how a small business exploits people: your boss is your friend. There were lots of fajita parties, which is a nice treat, but it’s just a treat. I’d get called away from my desk for fajitas, and then for an hour I’d try to make some awkward banter or overhear something meaningful about the work. And later on, I’d see a one-hour period scratched off my timesheet.

The owners were fun to joke with, and they helped me with the work whenever I could get a hold of them. They had great families, and they listened to hard rock and told me about country life. And they travelled a lot. They said travel was their passion, and I understood that. One of them had done some gigs as a travel writer and photographer. They did road trips nearby and island vacations far away.

Where I live, almost everyone can afford Disneyland, and maybe most people can even afford Europe sometimes. So the owners’ vacations weren’t really extravagant, compared to what everyone’s neighbours do. But they were extravagent compared to what the employees and clients could afford to do.

That job was in a far corner of the city. I was up before 6:00 and working before dawn and waiting long stretches at the bus stop, through a pretty nasty winter. A few times, I was the first to arrive so I’d be locked out in the cold. If I’d had some days off, I would have spent those days at home in bed.

I wondered sometimes if the owners were really interested in foreign countries, other than as destinations. They would have loved to take a trip to Brazil, but I think neither of them would have ever watched a Brazilian movie. Neither of them would ever click on an article about Brazil, unless it was 10 Things In Brazil You Must See Before You Die. And once they got to Brazil, they would have loved the view from a hilltop, but they might not have been comfortable eating the food.

One of the owners booked time off for a trip to Jamaica, and I tried to ask her fun questions about her plans. I told her about an NPR story I’d heard, where resort beaches were paying for the nicest white sand and trucking it in from across the island. I asked her if she liked reggae and jerk chicken. I was trying, clumsily, to be friends with her, and she was trying to be friends with me.

She said she went on a different vacation every year for her birthday. She said, “I think everyone should get to spend their birthday on the beach.”

Everyone. She thought everyone should get to do it.

When she bought something nice for herself, her idea was to show a warm spirit about it — she thought everyone should get something so nice. And the way she expressed this generous wish was by taking lots of vacations for herself.

I would have never had the courage to argue with her to her face. She was good to her family and her dog, and she employed me, and I knew she dealt with her own real problems in life. But all the wealth she built, she ploughed it into spending her birthday on the beach.

I had to quit that job after five months and at least five breakdowns. It bothered me a lot that every time an hour ticked by, I was taking $56 from someone who couldn’t afford $56. When senior employees were upset with me, which was often, they scolded me by saying how much my mistakes were hurting the clients.

I was lucky that I could afford to quit the job. Lots of the other workers had kids and debt and no college degrees. Eventually I found a nicer job, a government job where there was no such thing as an owner.

There’s a pandemic now, and most things are closed, and travel is now forbidden. I am being paid to stay at home, and I like it at home. It’s still cold outside.

At my old job, the business is probably in trouble now. The clients must be drying up, and workers must be stuck in their homes — though I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them were still sneaking in to work. Everyone is probably trying to figure out what kind of relief they can get from the government. I guess I got my government relief before the pandemic started.

I just wanted to be safe at home the whole time, and my bosses wanted to be far away having adventures. None of us wanted to be at work, and now none of us is. I hope they’re learning to enjoy quiet days on the couch with their dogs.

BMK doesn’t usually write much or travel much. In his spare time, he likes to stay at home and tend to his furniture.