After returning to my hometown of Honolulu for a year of figuring
out what was next, I came to the same conclusion I had come to 21 years before.
Get. the. fuck. Out.
Returning home after living on the mainland, I accepted a job
because I needed the money. I should
know better, but since I was looking at a MINIMUM 50% wage cut, I figured I
could handle, since that was apparently a “cherry” position. (Mainland translation – growing up we had a
culture of “cherry” trucks and cars.
Tricked out old Toyota trucks (with the lettering scratched out so it
said “Toy” and VW bugs that somehow held 45 Samoans) so the term cherry means
neato.
I am an idiot as anyone who ever watches me dance can attest (SHUT
UP JESS), but I guess I at least expected to be treated as a relatively
intelligent idiot in the job market. I graduated the top of my class, had
my entire tuition paid for by the state, got extra money as a Ka Leo writer and
funded the rest by living on old coleslaw I took home at the end of every
night's shift at TGIF on Ward. Please see "Confessions of a
Waitron" the best feature's story from 1993 written by (blushing) me
because I don’t like to brag.
I hated it back in Hawaii.
In Seattle, I had worked in academia and high tech and, as a director,
was able to call my own hours. Work load
demanded that I work at home at night, every night for years. One day, after working until 3 a.m. the night
before on a policy document, I decided to leave work at 4 p.m.. I had arrived at 7:15 a.m.. The next day, I showed up for work at 8 p.m.
rather than 8 a.m. and was so blurred out that I couldn’t differentiate night
or day.
My first job in Hawaii for a major local retailer lasted 3 weeks
before I literally walked out – and I don’t do that. After putting in 9 hours in the office and
4-5 hours at home at night to fix the glaring legal and compliance issues left
by my inept predecessor, I left at 3 p.m. one Thursday to hit a farmer’s market. My boss, a very traditional third generation
Japanese American who owned a large chunk of the ownership of the company, was
pissed.
You would have thought I stole the Linderberg Baby or
something. She called around looking for
me (never actually called me), put a GPS tracker on my car and then lit into me
the next day. “Where were you at
4:15?” I left? “Why?”
I was done? “What if we needed to
reach you?” You can call my cell? “Did anyone tell you that you could
leave?” No, I am exempt, I put a note on
my door and an out of office message for people to email or call me if they
needed anything? “I heard you were
talking to the employees!” Yes, of
course I am. “You can’t do that!” Why?
Look,
I am the kind of person that gets 2 years of work done in 3 months. This sitting my ass in a chair and counting
it as productivity was clearly not going to work for me. I am not Glen Miyashiro and I will never
be. Despite the constant headaches, I will always
be the nail that sticks out the furthest that gets hammered down the
hardest.
So
I walked.
I
decided to take an academic approach to job searching. I surveyed employees and employers, requested
multiple interviews and was actually told by three different companies that I
was “too haole” (too white, white people).
This kind of shit would land you in court in Washington or California,
but I knew better here and reconciled that if they were racist, they were at
least honest. I regularly used the term “haole”
which literally means “without a soul” to jackasses from the mainland who made
me ashamed to share their pigment. The
fact that I am obnoxious and loud and frequently insensitive has little to do
with melanin and more to do with the fact that I am loud and obnoxious and
often insensitive. It is one of my most
endearing qualities.
The
thing that really drove me batty, was the overwhelming drive to dumb down
anyone and everyone in school and the workplace. My step brother, another haole that worked
for Honolulu City and County was told by the head of HR that his efforts to
improve quality were great, but he needed to back off because he was making
everyone uncomfortable and feel bad. I
am not kidding and I am not surprised.
The
fucked up thing is that this culture of mediocrity hurts the Hawaiian kids the
most. The Asian kids just zip their lips
and play along and know they will be able to persevere and prosper – and they
have done AMAZINGLY well and should be commended for taking their grandparent’s
status as basically indentured servants to the managers of the business and
government world in 40-80 years. The haole
kids just say ‘fuck it’ and plan to move to the mainland. The Hawaiian kids, who tend to learn best as
a group and like to discuss answers collaboratively and not cause anyone to
lose face because they said something stupid before making a decision (this is
based on research into how kids in Hawaii learn, not the usual crap I make up
to back up my opinions), are seen as ‘dumb’ or ‘disruptive’ and they are not AT
ALL. They are doing exactly what we all
should be doing in a small community with a variety of stakeholders with a
variety of backgrounds.
But they get the
short end of the stick.
One
of my best friends from high school is an elementary school teacher. She is Portagee and her son is
Hawaiian/Chinese/Haole (the trifecta of localness, IMHO). I went to her house one day to find her
gluing pictures to construction paper. I
asked her what she was doing and she said she was completing the kids’
assignments. “How old are they?” I
asked. Seven, she said.
You
have to be fucking kidding.
At
seven, I was making dinner for my mom and cleaning the house. By 12, I was babysitting other kids. At 16, I traveled to Europe by myself. At 17, I lived in my car when one of my mom’s
fucked up boyfriends was around. Any one
of things today will get CPS at your door.
I am not exceptional, I did what I had to do. But I learned how to figure shit out and that
has saved my life to this day.
I
don’t have kids, so I don’t have the same passion about safety and stranger
danger and paste. I guess I figure that
if we could pull it off, they could too.
I could use paste and glue and scissors at age 5, and I have the haircut
photos to prove it. I knew how to take a
trans Pacific flight alone at age 6 and got to sit the cockpit with a little eyelash
bat. I took a bus from Minneapolis to
Shreveport, LA by myself at age 7 – and I am not exceptional. Trust me, I am NOT exceptional and I still
eat paste and sniff glue. But I was
allowed to TRY.
I
sure picked a hell of a day to quit sniffing glue. (bonus points on the reference…)
My
step brother and step sister told me that they had to walk with their suitcases
2 miles through Kailua to go to their first field trip. They are about 10 years older than me, but I
am so stoked that they had to do it, alone, and figure it out. They are both amazing parents and human
beings. They let their kids screw
up. They let their kids fall down and
break things and get burned on the stove and feel the consequences of their
actions. Because THAT IS HOW WE
LEARN.
Humans
learn the most and most important lessons in painful ways. They could be physical (touch a hot stove and
it burns you) or emotional (treat a friend in need like crap and try to go to
them when you need solace), but we do, very effectively, LEARN.
You
have to learn how to make up your own games and own interests without being
programmed. I am grateful that I was
allowed to fail – as a child and as an adult.
It has taught me so much.
I
need to know I can fall down if I am playing tag. I need to know that going in at Makapuu on a
big day will cost me my swimsuit and perhaps an arm. I need to know that reporting a big violation
at work may cost me my job. And I know
that I am competent to take these risks BECAUSE I know the consequences.
So
what is the coherent thread in this rant?
Humans need to take risks. Humans
need to be able to figure things out on their own. Humans need to get hurt in order to learn
sometimes. Humans, whatever their age,
need to be able to be human.
Oh! And unlock the fucking gate at Kailuana
already, you people are getting annoying.
I hope you don’t have to learn the hard way.
