Proletarian Novel?
A friend of mine claimed that you could call The Academy of Reality proletarian lit. I had never thought beyond the idea that the manuscript was some kind of “spoof, a joke on the corporate chain of command, everyone from executives to managers to workers. At times, I think that it makes fun of myself. I never stopped to think that I was writing a so-called proletarian novel. Working-class people are not necessarily propertyless. To be fair, some modern corporations treat their people well, but the divide still exists.
Back in the 1990s, my son, a college student, recommended that I read Generation X, a great book by Douglas Coupland. Its 1990s characters work McJobs for low pay, low prestige, low benefit, and no future. I was a copier tech at the time. My most memorable line in the book involved a McJob worker conveying a privileged attitude toward another working-class member,, the proletariat:
But of course, plants in offices get scalding hot coffee poured into their soil by copier machine repair people, don’t they?
Bourgeois
I got my first introduction to upper and lower-class structures in the Navy. I was assigned to the Indoctrination Division, to learn my way around my new home away from home, an aircraft carrier with maze-like passageways and ladders. It took time to acclimate; I got to know the other new transfers, among them, a man whose last name was stenciled “Bourgeois” on his denim shirt. Since I couldn’t pronounce his name, he pronounced it, then defined it as a simple matter of fact. “Bourgeois” means rich.
We were assigned to different divisions. After the Navy, I went to college. I remember an intro history prof lecturing about the working proletariat and capitalist bourgeoise classes in France. Once in a while, my mind would wander, and I’d find myself wondering if the navy guy, Bourgeois, happened to be rich too.
Broken links in a command chain?
Proletarian? Bourgeois? Sometimes it doesn’t matter. As an onsite tech at a large corporate account managing everyday details, what happens when too many broken links in a command chain break? The onsite warehouse manager wanted my company to pick up a surplus copier, still new in the box. It was a surplus machine that belonged to my company, but accepting returned equipment worth a couple of thousand dollars didn’t fit anyone’s job description, no matter where they fit into the command chain. People who thought it wasn’t their job were offended. Throwing the new copier in the dumpster would have been ripping off my employer. I gave up, put it in my pickup, and dropped it off with my supervisor, giving him the freedom to do something that wasn’t part of his job description.
