Some thoughts I wrote down today after my shift ended.

My job is different from most types of jobs. In most jobs, you have tasks and deadlines, quotas and commissions, uniforms and professional guidelines to follow. Not in my line of work. Yes, there are rules. But there isn't any possible way to enforce them aside from good faith and the occasional pop-in check up to see if you've been keeping things up to par. My boss is in an office on the second floor of a building 15 miles from where I am. There is no fear of being caught doing something I shouldn't be doing. There is no reason to bother with working throughout the day, when I can show up, screw around all day, then do my daily paper work in the last hour of my shift. It is a laid-back job. But there's a catch.

I work with people with mental disabilities. Now I have a choice. I have the choice of regarding my job as a waste of time, or taking the meaning of my job into consideration. It is simply too easy to slide by and get paid for things that do not benefit my company at all. Believe me, I know how easy it is. But then there before me I see the reason that I am here. My client. Now I think twice?

This choice I have goes beyond morality and right or wrong. It isn't about milking the benefits of being out of sight from my boss and justifying it by calling my company evil for all of the wrong-doings I experience as an employee. It's not about sticking it to the man. This choice goes into the deep phenomenological aspect of self-consciousness; it is a matter of being-in-itself. Here we go. Buckle your seatbelt. We're going to talk Hegel now. Stay with me.

In Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel discusses the Master-Slave Dialectic. This is described in terms of two people meeting for the first time. There is a decision to be made, as the strangers experience the initial encounter. Should they ignore one another, no self-consciousness is formed and the two perceive one another as mere objects. However, should they recognize the other as another conscious form, a struggle then ensues to assert one's will over the other. By recognizing the other individual as a conscious being, one's control is compromised. It becomes a threat to one's self-certainty. Therefore, the struggle is one of dominance. The master is defined by the individual who has no fear of death. The slave emerges in the individual who submits out of fear for his own life. The two exist in a contingent relationship, giving each other self-consciousness so long as they recognize the other and its position in the relationship. It's not about who is the master and who is the slave. As Hegel ends up telling us later in the chapter on Lordship and Bondage, it is actually the slave who is free. The part we need to see clearly here is that the relationship is contingent in regards to self-consciousness.

Ah, Hegel. All good and confused, yes? Let me explain. In my job, it is far too easy to get away with things?to talk to friends, to read a book, to watch TV, to write an entire essay on Descartes' Meditations on the First Philosophy. Yes, I'm guilty of all of these things. And I will admit it honestly with a mixture of disappointment in myself for ignoring my work for a while as I take care of personal things, and pride for actually getting away with it. Here's the thing. When I put my work on a back burner, I actually put my client on a back burner as well. My work isn't about a customer. It's not about looking at a person and calling them a number. They aren't a patient in a bed, they aren't a table I need to wait on, and they aren't a sale I need to make. In my work, I actually treat human beings as human beings. My work is about a relationship. A contingent one, at that. I cannot treat my client as an object. My client will not go away once my service for them is completed. My client won't leave a tip. My client won't say "oh, what a nice worker you have there on the register." Or complain about my attitude. For my client, I am her friend. I am with her every day. I cook her dinner. I take her to the park. When she is sad, I comfort her. When she's happy, I get excited for her. She is not an object to me. And I cannot treat her as such, even if I wanted to.

Let me say something about this. It is easy to treat people with mental disabilities as objects. Yes, I said it. Stone me. But it's the truth, and you know it is. People with mental disabilities can be manipulated and ignored by someone with a higher level of intelligence with great ease. In fact, it sometimes seems absolutely rational to dismiss a thought or idea from someone with a mental disability, because they are seen as irrational individuals. Just silly characters that bring a sweet smile to our faces. "They may not be smart, but they know what love is." That's my favorite one. But it must be remembered that even though these individuals have a lower IQ than "normal" individuals, they are conscious beings. Heidegger calls human beings Dasein, German for being-in-the-world. Dasein gives meaning to the world. It is the being that reaches out and cares. Mentally-challenged individuals are Dasein as well, they are being-in-the-world. They give meaning to the world and take meaning from the world just as much as any other Dasein. According to Hegel, when I treat another self-conscious human being, another Dasein, as a mere object, I in turn lose the very thing that makes me self-conscious, or Dasein. Because of this contingent relationship, I depend on my client just as much as she depends on me. She is not a number to me, she is not an object to me, she is not to be ignored or manipulated no matter how easy it is to do so. In order to remain human, I must treat humans as humans. It seems simple, but when applied to a job like mine, it is remarkable.

So there it is. Yeah, I hate my job. It's frustrating trying to reason with a person who is by nature unreasonable. It's hell to put in hours and hours of teaching and get no comprehension from the person you are trying to help. It's so easy for that lovable individual to become a mere object in the eyes of the person who day in and day out oversees their medications and behaviors. I don't think all of this is what Hegel had in mind when he wrote the Master-Slave Dialectic in order to explain how self-consciousness comes about. But it is an interesting side point that I realized when my client attempted to arrange dishes in the dishwasher, then asked me the same question seven times about my plans for the weekend, seemingly unsatisfied with my simple answer of "oh, not too much." She is my client. She is a human being. She is a self-conscious individual, aware of herself and me. And I treat her as such because if I did not, my self-consciousness would cease and I myself would lose a little piece of what it means to be human.

So Hegel, you've put me through hell this semester. But thank you for this. You've made me look at my job and the people I work with in a very different light.

Since you hate your job, why don't you look for another line of work?

I fear you misunderstood my post. I find my work frustrating and at the same time easy to slip outside the bounds of good work ethic. It's easy to neglect the autonomy of a human being that I work with because of her limited mental capabilities. I do hate my job for these reasons, but it teaches me something about myself and the world, as you can see in my post above.