The bizarre case of the self-worth and salary mixup

When I was growing up, everyone worked for the state, and so salaries were not a big thing. They were quite abstract, prescriptive, entirely formulaic. It wasn’t possible to get paid more than your colleague if your boss liked you more. Each job that needed doing had an assigned salary and that was that, you didn’t concern yourself with outperforming anyone for monetary reward. And so how much you earned could newer be dressed up as a reflection of you. It was a reflection of the job, and the bureaucratic process that led to how much you had to spend each month.

When I was a child, I moved a few thousand kilometers to a different place, another culture.

Imagine the reaction I got when, as a newly employed graduate, I kept casually asking new friends in one of the most individualistic societies in the world how much they earned. It was as as if I was asking them to describe that morning’s shit to me. Or how much their grandma loved them. I thought I was asking a question on par with comparing electricity providers, but I started to sense that I was actually asking them how good a human they are and…crucially…what other, more powerful people, think of them.

And so of course the energy changed and everything got weird. Every time.

I rarely ask anymore. Largely because I no longer care. I have asked enough to understand that the disparity between meaning, effort, and knowledge and how often you can afford to eat well is huge and utterly nonsensical (social care workers, the very people keeping us alive when we are at our most vulnerable, are routinely paid minimum wage). But also because it’s devastating watching intelligent adults have feelings on the pride-shame spectrum related to their earnings.

Who does that benefit? Enough of this nonsense.