America doesn’t manufacture anything anymore other than AI hype and obnoxious social media-y names for simple everyday actions, ones that often mask how depressingly tragic the action is. Case in point, this Associated Press feature about how more and more Americans are “polyworking,” or taking on multiple jobs just to stay afloat in a world catering exclusively to the super-rich.
A word so obnoxious it’s enough to make your eyes roll so far back in your head that you can see your brain recoiling in horror.
As wages stall and layoffs loom on the horizon in nearly every industry for a variety of reasons, the idea of a “career” is being tossed into the trash and replaced with people stacking jobs and side gigs just to make ends meet, and it’s all being collectively presented under the overly workshopped, deeply inhuman word “polyworking.”
How quickly “poly” has fallen, from implying that you are in a polyamorous relationship with multiple partners to now being shorthand for living in a capitalist hellscape in which you’ll never retire and you’ll likely die of a massive heart attack at one of your several menial gigs.
The AP article speaks to a handful of young adults living the polywork life, like Katelyn Cusick, a 29-year-old visual merchandiser for Patagonia. Patagonia is a pretty big company, and she has a full-time job with them, but one that does not pay enough so she has to supplement her income by managing social media influencers for a shoe brand while supplementing that with paintings she sells on Etsy, and all while being an usher at concerts just because it gets her free admission, which in itself is an incredible savings considering that concert tickets have become so preposterously expensive that the only people who can afford to attend a Harry Styles concert are the exorbitantly rich.
Her extra income helps with student loans, but the real appeal is, unfortunately, diversification. She needs them all because if one dries up, she’ll have another one right behind it to take its place.
Some deranged lunatics reading that might think it’s brilliant and forward thinking, and congratulations to her for being such a go-getter. Those people should be fired into the sun for not realizing that all of it is indicative of a deeply unhealthy, fundamentally broken system that necessitates anyone to work that much just to stay alive.
Also, unfortunately, according to the AP article, sociologists say this mindset is spreading fast. With salaries frozen and inflation stretching paychecks thinner, workers are building financial safety nets out of multiple revenue streams. Instead of a single, linear career ladder, it’s more like a patchwork.
Maybe one day we’ll live in a country and world that prioritizes the health, safety, and happiness of normal people instead of catering to the whiny, inhuman whims of the uber rich, but until then, we’re all going to have to work ourselves into an early grave just to barely afford the coffins we’re going to be buried in.
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