Differences

Blue collar jobs are better than white collar jobs. For everything but money, anyway. In every blue collar job I’ve ever had, I’ve liked my coworkers, they’ve liked each other—for the most part—and we all hated the customers. In every white collar job I’ve had, I’ve despised my coworkers, most of them have disliked each other, and I left hoping I never had to deal with “any of these cocksuckers” again.

When I was a bouncer—in addition to some other like-minded jobs I’ve had—coworkers looked out for each other. If you saw one of your guys in trouble, either with a customer or with management, you helped him out by fighting for him. I’ve worked with several people over the years that I’ve taken a vested, personal interest in protecting—and vice-versa. That’s powerful—and when it’s gone, it’s missed.

At my last job, the idea was to get ahead by ratting your coworkers out to management—and to kiss management’s ass while you did it. If you saw a coworker in trouble there, the idea—at least for the people I worked with—was to compound the problem and try to get the guy demoted or fired. Most people in white collar jobs seem to spend more time on this shit than they do working.

When I bounced, we all shared similar circumstances, and nobody begrudged anyone making a few extra bucks any way they could. At my last job, people obsessed over everyone else’s salary. Meetings took place, during which people discussed how to fuck over coworkers so they wouldn’t get promotions or raises. I know, because I’ve been both privy to these meetings and targeted by them.

With bouncing, you come to work to get the job done, you enjoy the company of like-minded people—i.e., you get to hang out with a bunch of normal fucking people without having to be a politically correct pussy—you collect your paycheck, and you go home. At my last job, everyone was constantly in everyone else’s business—criticizing, gossiping, undermining, and essentially doing everything but the job they were being paid to do.

When you do something notable as a bouncer—like acquit yourself well in a fight—you’re congratulated. Multiple people will come up to you afterward, pat you on the back, and tell you that you did a nice job. With our guys, this was usually accomplished through ballbusting humor—the kind that would get you fired from a white collar job. At my last job, quality work fell into a sort of vortex. There, people root for each other not to succeed. The guy working in the office next to yours wants you to do badly, because he wants to use your failure as justification for asking for a raise or a promotion.

Of course, at my last job, that’s the only way anyone could ever get ahead—through sabotage, nepotism, and bullshit. The don’t have the skill level or work ethic to go any higher on their own, so that’s what they do.

I left because it was tiresome, and because people shouldn’t act that way.