I’ve lost count of the number of times that I have had to remind myself that a job is just a job. It is a means to an income that is a means to paying for the things I need in my life. My name is Robyn and I have a tendency to get attached to things. And to people. And also to places. Seemingly insignificant encounters will scatter all kinds of crumbs all over my otherwise flinty heart and I must often face goodbyes that, in the moment, are a much greater struggle than I had previously anticipated. I believe that everything I do is a reflection of me and my values. Of course, as that old adage about numbers not defining one’s worth would attest, I don’t determine who I am based on the things I do. Rather, if my actions are a representation of the kind of impact I want to leave on the people and places around me, then it would make sense to care as much about my work or my school project as much as I care about the world at large. I saw the same thing at the Park District; I would go home and worry about the flowers and whether I had planted them correctly. I would worry about the trash cans and think that maybe I should have changed that one almost-full bad instead of leaving it be. I would go home and worry about these tiny matters for a job that was paying me just over minimum wage. Honestly, each instance of this would take a lot of mental backtracking and self realization before I safely returned to a more practical state. These things were not my problem. In the moment? At 8:00am when I am actually checking the trash cans? Yes, it is my lowly problem. Otherwise, when I am not on the clock, when I am not in a position in which the park’s trash situation is a reflection of myself? Then I don’t gain anything by worrying about job-related issues and nobody else expects me to be worrying about job-related issues. Of course, if I was in charge of the park, then the situation would be different. But as a low-level, slightly-more-than-minimum-wage employee, my responsibility to the park’s trash levels and flower plantings begin when I clock in in the morning and end when I clock out at 2:00 in the afternoon. This is line is more difficult to define when I am a nanny though. To what extent do I care about this baby and this family’s matters just because I work for them and to what extent do I care because that is just my natural instinct as a human being? Is my level of care restricted to what I believe my pay grade entails? Should I barter my level of caring for a higher hourly wage? What duties do I perform because I am being paid to do them (ahem, washing dishes) and what duties do I perform because it is actually fun to play with a baby hooman bean? And, regardless of my own inclination to play with a baby, at what point would my natural, non-working motivated inclinations actually clash with my work inclinations? That is, is there a point at which I am doing more for the baby than I am supposed to, given my status as an employee in this house. At which point am I adopting the more of an aunt or a cousin when I should be stepping back and restricting myself to the role of a nanny— to the role of someone who is getting paid to care for the child and does not have any extraneous, personal interest in how this child is raised? It goes against my nature to not care. It baffles me to think that this world is built on millions of relationships and interactions that are motivated solely by mutual fiscal goals and the desire to go home at a reasonable hour. This is why I could never work in the medical profession. To take a patient’s vital signs one day and then announce their time of death the next? Death is always personal. I cannot understand a world in which this one final all-too-human act is regarded so efficiently and with so little humanity.
