Take This Job And..., 13

I have worked as a mental health peer support worker for the past eleven years or since 2004.  I had recently been fired from the homeless shelter where I was working for the previous year and seeking new employment, hoping my savings would hold out before my first paycheque.  I had been off welfare for a year and a half and was determined to stay off it.  While doing research about prospective new workplaces I came across a listing for peer support work.  I seemed to have all the qualifications: years of support and care experience in the community and a mental health diagnosis as well as my experience of a stable recovery.

The interview held my first great disappointment.  The wage was going to be ten dollars an hour, two more than the then eight dollar minimum wage.  I would be allowed to work a contract of twenty hours a month with a mental health team.  This was hardly the fulltime or livable work I was looking for.  When I mentioned my hesitation the program co-ordinator, who was part of the interview panel, tried to encourage me to stick with it, given that I would be allowed to work as many contracts as I wanted.  I was sold and accepted for training.

Following an intense six weeks of training I did a practicum with an organization that decided to keep me.  I still work at this site.  I applied and was interviewed for other positions and was turned down.  I had not expected such a competitive field for finding simple underpaid work.  I was eventually hired for an organization in Richmond where the pay was a bit better.  The director of this site was also frustratingly argumentative, opinionated and pig-headed.  It was a nervous connection and I resigned six years later.  In the meantime I was hired in other sites through the back door.  I would be recommended as a candidate, they would try me out and convinced of my skills and ability would hire and keep me.  I have almost never secured employment in this field through a competitive  interview.  It has always or almost always occurred through connections and reputation.

Despite the low pay I loved my new job and held out in hope about eventually moving on to a better paid, more prestigious position in the mental health field.  No such luck.  The reality never lives up to the propaganda.  I was still pumped on the whole recovery philosophy of our work and quickly gained a reputation as a very talented and able worker.

A year or two after I was hired we were given a raise to eleven dollars an hour.  Two or three years after it was raised to twelve dollars an hour where it has remained frozen for the past six years.  I have already mentioned that I was nearly fired after telling someone in upper management that prolonged low wages and underemployment entrench marginalization and stigma.

The honeymoon was over.

The honeymoon is still over.  I still love my work, the interaction with clients and the pleasure of working with awesome people.  The obstacles to advancement, low pay and other disadvantages have taken their toll.

I could have done much worse.  I could still be on welfare.  Or homeless.  Or stuck in meaningless work.  My outcome has been so much better.  In five years I can retire but I still might continue working part time. And yes there is a God.  And I have a job.