Feb 28 2008
Everything is class, even if class isn’t everything.
Via this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists, an article on professionalism for salespeople that talks about why folks don’t think of sales as a profession. He touches on something that’s dreadfully important, which is that the respectability of a given line of work depends heavily on class perception. You can make damned good money selling things, but I think you’re supposed to feel just a bit dirty for having done so, rather than being able to enjoy the fruits of your labor the way that you could if you had, say, invested an amount of money that produced the same income.
Everything is class warfare. Everything.
Amen! Like, as in, um, you know, how much I’m DEVALUED as a person if I’m “just staff” in a law office but yet elevated to a higher level if I do essentially the same thing (i.e. type their drivel) yet WITHOUT the daily headache of actually dealing with the lawyers on a daily basis as a self-employed typist? (Oh, and for the record, with my special brand of clientele, you can add “marketing strategist” and/or “doctor” to the mix and you’d be saying the same thing, because I type for all those people.)
Boggles the mind.