the hot button in our marriage: big business politics.

This weekend K and I discovered a fantastic way to get each other angry and emotional: we had an “accidental” conversation about corporate politics (don’t ask me how. I think it began with a totally innocuous reference to a childhood friend of K’s that had managed to skim thousands of dollars a month from the coffee shop he worked at during high school. I said, “Wow, I don’t think I could do something like that, I’d be terrified of getting caught the ENTIRE time. Wouldn’t make the money worth it.” From there, it became a quick discussion about the fact that apparently “companies deserve to get ripped off, they’re ripping off their employees left and right by paying them minimum wage and keeping them oppressed and beholden to the company that doesn’t give a damn about them as people in the first place”). So. I assumed my apparently typical position in defense of businesses, K stood his ground and went to battle for the little man (this entire conversation is definitely a microcosm of our entire political belief system, but I’ll blame it on his free-styled Alaskan upbringing and my vaguely Midwestern roots, since I can’t figure out how else I ended up so horrifyingly, unwaveringly politically conservative).

And then the floodgates opened. I was accused of being less than understanding of people treated poorly by employers who pay them in Cheerios. Well, metaphorical Cheerios. Cheerios that taste soggy when they’re all about The Bottom Line. Evil, capitalistic Cheerios. I argued that it hasn’t been all blue skies with fields of honeysuckle for me, either. I’ve worked hard. Employers have mistreated me (coming soon: a more specific account of a job I once held that may or may not have ended because of a box of Sweet & Low). I’ve been laid off ON MY BIRTHDAY. On the first day back from vacation. AFTER I gave them the flag-printed souvenir socks. I’ve been so broke I had to put milk and tampons on the last $10 of my credit card’s available credit because the $2.16 in the bank account just wouldn’t cut it. I’ve raged against corporate ideals. I’ve settled when I knew there was better opportunity. I’ve looked at a pay stub and thought, “is this what I’m worth at the end of the day…is this all there is?”

BUT, as someone that aspires to own a business that’s able to support me entirely, as someone that aspires to wake up in the morning and set my OWN schedule and determine my OWN bottom line and give or take based on my OWN decisions, I can’t help but jump to the defense of business that are taken advantage of and robbed, because behind every faceless corporate entity – large OR small - is someone that at one point laid everything they had on the line, took a leap of faith, believed that their company was viable, and built that business from the ground up – blood, sweat, tears, sleepless nights and all. It’s naively optimistic, sure. But I can’t help but put myself in the place of the coffee shop owner who’s afternoon employee took off with tens of thousands of dollars that didn’t belong to them – someone that in the end, got away with theft and justified it by saying, “they should have paid me more. This wouldn’t have to happen if I got a bigger slice of the pie.” I don’t think that being a thrifty employer, cautious about their revenue, expenses and operating costs is necessarily greedy because they pay an entry-level employee something close to minimum wage. It’s a fact of life afforded business owners: the discretion to pay their employees a “fair” wage, whether or not the employee is happy about it. Doesn’t give Joe Coffee Maker the right to steal.

Do people get ripped off? Every day, on both sides of the working relationship. Is the minimum wage high enough? Not in every case. Would it be terrific if every one made enough money to send their kids to college, to cover their medical expenses, to take a vacation every year? YES! Should every single person working for a company get an even share? Show me a scenario where that’s actually profitable for the life of the business and then we’ll talk.

Anyway – my dull opinions on the politics of employment aside, K and I discovered one area where we can’t even come close to seeing eye-to-eye. I’m married to Robin Hood, and taking the side of the “Office Space” cubicle Nazis. It’s a strange jungle to navigate, knowing that any time this issue comes up we get both painfully defensive and unusually belligerent. We repeat ourselves, we exaggerate, I cry. It’s so out-of-character we SHOULD be laughing about it. I’m sure we will, soon enough.

Ah well, here’s to the beautiful, painful experiences we have on a Saturday evening while washing dishes. Here’s to unexpected philosophical exchanges. Here’s to the conversations that teach us more and more about each other every day – conversations that help me appreciate the nuances of K’s values, the strength of his convictions and force me to look a little closer at my own. Here’s to sitting on the bedroom floor in the middle of the night figuring out why we feel the way we do, figuring out WHY this issue always makes us angry and figuring out how to appreciate each other’s opinions. Here’s to disagreements, to apologies, and to 3 fantastic months of married life. On top of that, my Robin Hood even scrubs the kitchen floor and does our laundry. Beat that.