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• Tuesday, April 3, 2007 08:50 AM

  It's all about corporate America

  Having just quit my job when the small company I worked for was sold to a big corporation that follows practices I'm morally opposed to, some would say I'm not qualified to talk about how to be successful in a career or how to make sound financial judgments. But when success in a career and sound financial judgments come at the expense of our core beliefs, I think it's time to reevaluate success and rethink those financial judgments. My husband supported my decision even though we'll be scrambling for money for a while. I've supported his decisions with regard to living up to his code of ethics when it meant less money, too. I've watched friends of ours work their hearts out so their companies could keep biggering and biggering, and then those friends got tossed away like used tissue when their jobs got outsourced. Success in corporate America too often really does involve prostituting ourselves, men and women alike. I'd rather work on an assembly line than in a higher position in the same company, making or quietly supporting decisions that outsource those assembly line jobs.

  I grew up in a lower class home, working at a factory some summers, and I worked my own way through college--I only got to go to college in the first place because my teachers got me a scholarship. I've never been close to upper or upper-middle class. The women I knew growing up were occasionally stay-at-home moms, but more likely worked checkout at the National or Jewel or Rexall, or were hairdressers, or switchboard operators or worked an assembly line or other jobs that were exhausting but somehow didn't rob their souls. They put their time in and came home and had a drink and a smoke and got back into their real lives. Teachers were the only women I saw who worked jobs that allowed creativity and freedom of expression via work, and they were the only women I saw who brought work home with them. The women I see working those much more financially rewarding careers today have a lot more visible wealth than the working women of my childhood, but they're somehow ALWAYS at work--taking calls or emails at all hours. The working class women I knew back then had far fewer choices than we do now. But those women knew exactly who was in charge of their souls. They worked because they needed money, not because they needed some artificial construct of "success."

  Moms, dads, do what you need to do to live the life you believe is the right one. Financial security is all well and good. But you'll sleep better at night knowing you're living the GOOD life. Meaning one you truly believe in.

  —chickadee Read chickadee's other letters
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