National low-paying job day?

When you go to a fast food restaurant, do you appreciate being able to get such a tasty meal so quickly so cheap?

Me, too.

When you go to the clothing store at the mall, do you appreciate being able to immediately purchase precisely your size and the color of clothing you want from an available inventory?

Me, too.

Do you like pens? DVD players? Toothpicks?

Me, too.

The reason I ask is because in our society, we tend to value things largely based on their price tag, if only for the very understandable reason that the whole point of a price tag is to tell you something’s value. But one problem that comes from this is that people who work in a wide variety of retail, customer service, manufacturing, or other relatively low-paying jobs don’t feel valued for what they do and often wind up not valuing what they do themselves.

In part this is because they may feel the work itself isn’t very stimulating. However, I suspect that if helping people buy groceries paid $100,000, very few checkout clerks would complain about the meaninglessness of their work. It’s funny how much more satisfying something can seem when it pays well, a byproduct of both the enhanced lifestyle it enables and also the significance-signal carried by the pay grade. But back in this real world where many jobs pay quite little and don’t fulfill every desire reality TV and self-help gurus have sold our culture, it’s easy to forget that we all enjoy being able to do the things such jobs make possible.

So if it’s your low-paying, under-stimulating task to sell us food, clothes or anything else, ignore the pay and take a moment to consider the blessing of being able to help satisfy people as much as you do. And if you have a “better” job, perhaps the next time you do any of these things, you can convey to that person how glad you are they make it possible. Their sacrifices, so to speak, are perhaps not on par with those of military personnel or teachers, but we do tend to take them just as much for granted even while we cherish what they make possible. And the cool thing about expressing gratitude for people who don’t get paid very well is that it costs absolutely nothing but can still purchase quite a lot.