Language and work. Now there's a good one. I've worked a slew of different jobs; some less abusive than others. One particular one that falls into the category of "what was I thinking working there for so long" was a banquet waiting job in a beautiful 14th century monastery in Cologne, Germany. We would host weddings and the like with shifts that would run at least 10 hours averaging about 13. We didn't get scheduled breaks but were "allowed" to drink on the job.
One day I was rather sick of being treated like a slave (pay was terrible) so I said to some of my co-workers "I don't need this job!"
They were pissed. They looked at me in a way the water might look at the water wheel. It did not go down well with my colleagues who felt I was distancing myself from them. I did not mean to imply they needed the job while I didn't. I felt strongly that the more we got yelled at, the more apparent it had become to all of us that this place was not a career move and we should all get out or at least complain before becoming complacent. As a classmate of our mentioned in her blog post, we have two choices, either we believe when someone who tells us we suck at our job (can't dance) or we don't and tell them to go suck it.
I did the latter. The others were still so far away from knowing they had a choice that they took it as a personal insult and felt I was looking down on them. It didn't help that my demeanor, language, ethnicity and family background put me in a position where from a classist point of view I would traditionally have been inclined to look down. Let's not forget though that I was working the same job they were and my feelings toward our working conditions never affected my work. Compared to the language used in Housework conversations in my family, while still warm, were far more correct in nature. Crude language was not that common until my brother and I started cursing all the time (boys will be boys), but we knew when it was inappropriate. We learned from Terkel's Working, that sometimes strong language can be used to express respect. Paraphrasing here he said that some guys say "good morning" and you say "good morning" back. Others say "fuck you" and you say "fuck you" back. The ones you say "good morning" to, you don't like. Those you say "fuck you" to, are your friends. It's signifier and signified all over again.
[edit:]
A more striking resemblance to our reading would be to Eurylochus' plea to his comrades that dying of hunger is no fun. He gets up while his boss isn't around and tries to rile up the crew. In doing so he damns them all. I got up and tried to talk to my comrades while the boss wasn't around, telling them that we were all hungry. I didn't have the street cred with my comrades though; I couldn't pull it off. The problem was that due to my language, they perceived me differently, not as one of their own. In their eyes I was more like Odysseus, going through the same motions and pains as the crew but for very different reasons. Odysseus' words are echoed by Eurylochus when he says "Listen to me, my comrades, brothers in hardship." but because the crew feel a stronger connection with Eurylochus, they break their word with Odysseus. The words were the same, the class of the person saying them changed and with it their weight in the mind of the crew.
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