The World Needs Ditch Diggers Too!
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The World Needs Ditch Diggers Too!
John Paul Derryberry
Caddy Shack, the classic movie released in 1980, has many great one-liners that I often repeat in regular conversation. "It's a Cinderella Story," "I don't think the heavy stuff's gonna come down for quite a while," "Big hitter the Lama," and "Don't sell yourself, short Judge, you're a tremendous slouch," just to spout off a few. But my all-time favorite line is when a down-on-his-luck character asks the wealthy judge about a college scholarship, and the judge responds, "Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too." The dismissiveness of the line, combined with the fact of the line, overshadowed by the economic standing of the two characters, makes it a funny moment because most, if not all, humor starts with truth at its core.
The world needs ditch diggers, construction workers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, caregivers, teachers, waiters, sanitation workers, farmers, judges, and fast-food workers. Yet as I went through that list, you judged some worthy and some unworthy. This is always an odd thought process because, let's say, you look down upon sanitation workers. Do you want to take your trash to the dump once a week? Most of us wouldn't; it would pile up around the community. Yet I have seen on Facebook, heard on the news, or had conversations with numerous people about saying because some people made more on unemployment benefits than at a job, these people are lazy. I didn't see too much of, "if people make more on unemployment, maybe the wealthiest country in the world can afford to pay people more."
Too many folks shout from their soapbox, "McDonald's isn't a career; they shouldn't make more than... (fill in the blank). Excuse me, McDonald's is a successful business that turns a profit just about every year; maybe they can afford to pay people more, which they just announced they would. And you don't mind it being a career for McDonald's executives. It bothers you that it could be a career for the people making the french fries. The long lines I see at McDonald's, Starbucks, and other chains, say maybe it's a more needed career than we want to admit. Plus, it's not just for teenagers; numerous homeless folks rebuild their lives through those types of jobs. Do you want less homelessness in your neighborhood? Pay people more.
There is value in every active career, and there is fair pay for an honest's day's work. That's where the line from Caddy Shack and the Ditch diggers of the world fits in with our world this week. It's an honest job, with its rewards, its pros, and its con. It's like every other job we ask people to do. Some people want to do that job and deserve a living wage to do it. To be a person who looks at specific positions and says, "it should be done for the sake of being done," means placing yourself above other people. And that's something no one should do. I don't know the correct wage for a McDonald's worker, but I know it's more than what they pay. We should be cheering for everyone employed and not employed to find themselves in a better place, whether that is switching jobs, going to college, or the leaders of their business realizing they need to share the wealth. If none of those workers had shown up during the pandemic, we would have been feeling the pandemic crunch way more than we did. They can't be essential heroes one day and then expendable the next.
The world was never going to be the same after the pandemic; expecting it to be is our fault. It's going to change and hopefully for the better. So maybe you’re right the government unemployment benefits are too high, I think I don’t really know. Recovery from a pandemic is way more complicated than we all realized. So As we figure this out, I hope we build a better world. Hopefully, a world that is more inclusive, economically fairer, justice is more even, and the notion that we need each other is more fully understood. The world needs workers of all sorts; best move forward figuring out how to value them correctly because I believe they are finally starting to understand their worth. Count me as one who is glad they did.