American Wage Slave

Wage Slave is driven from job to job, from vocation to vocation, never finding stability or success for long. Although he is well educated, his mental and physical health are disastrous. Unable to get any career momentum, he is relegated to low-paying high-risk jobs for which he is temperamentally unsuited. He vainly trudges on trying to find ever-elusive stability and unattainable social acceptance. Driven further down by his insecurity and vulnerability, he is subjected to continual danger and humiliation and must use every resource available to make it from day to day. But during these long seasons of economic exile, amidst much isolation and frustration, there are moments of joy, adventure and deep satisfaction. Wage Slave is essentially disabled but unable to deal with the unwieldy and punitive disability system, hence he must work at odd ours and in strange locations that no confident person would tolerate. And yet Wage Slave keeps reinventing himself in hopes of finding an island of occupational peace in workplace environments filled with predatory sharks. His prayers for mercy go largely unanswered, but he does everything he can to keep faith alive.