Member-only story
My Life as a Low-Wage Worker
And how I finally escaped during the pandemic
I was constantly exhausted. That’s the reality of low-wage work, and I spent five years doing it. When COVID-19 hit, I was laid off from my barista job. Like so many other Americans, I received unemployment benefits. For the first time in my life, while on unemployment benefits, I was both making a living wage and not experiencing continual fatigue.
Despite what many conservative economists and politicians would have you believe, unemployment benefits didn’t turn me into a perpetual couch potato obsessed with leveling up on Mario Kart. Quite the opposite. While on unemployment, I was busier — and my life more full — than when working at a low-wage job. I began doing things I truly wanted to do. It’s as though I picked back up where I’d left off many years ago. As my creative yearnings poured forth like an opened floodgate, I met myself anew. I began writing and reading again; played my guitar more seriously; learned to sew and opened my own Etsy store; began exploring photography; learned to play piano; grew herbs; ate healthier; became more involved in the lives of others and started running again.
I did spend the first several weeks of the COVID-19 world simply recovering from years of burnout accumulated through my time in the service industry. Finally, I began to…
