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Apr. 4th, 2020 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pearwaldorfYesterday I took half a volunteer day and half a vacation day to go help sort food at a big local food bank. It's the first time I've really been out anywhere except the grocery store in about... three weeks? It was a little weird, ngl. Making small talk with strangers, asking about how their lives have been affected, it felt like flexing a muscle starting to atrophy a bit.
I was put to work sorting bread. I did my best to place like with like, although by the end of it the sliced bread cart was getting stuff thrown on it every which way as room allowed. I don't know why I was surprised there was bread of all sorts, from the cheap, squishy, store brand sandwich slices to fancy artisan bakery stuff. I mean, there's always leftover stock, and it should go to somebody who needs it. It actually made me feel a lot better knowing people who go to food banks get a chance to eat good, high-quality food, in some cases much nicer than things I would purchase for myself.
There was also some weird stuff I'd never seen before, the strangest being a tiny loaf of rye from a local craft bakery that had the density of a fucking neutron star. I have never felt bread that heavy before and I'm pretty sure you could kill somebody if you cracked them over the head with it. I have absolutely no idea what you would do with it culinarily. Maybe slice it up and put lox on it? Eat some with pelmeni? It looked a lot like the Russian black bread you get at the pelmeni place in Fremont but so much denser.
After volunteering at the food bank, I will tell you that it makes their work so much easier if you just give them money and not the dusty cannellini beans in the back of your cupboard. Companies are happy to give this food away, or sell it at greatly reduced rates. Nothing I saw looked like it was donations from the public, except maybe the pet food and supplies. According to my contact, the team I was with processed ten thousand pounds of food that shift. They'll give away about that much during pantry hours.
This is the sort of thing about jobs vs work--the sorts of things we do for money vs the stuff that actually needs to get done. It's not that my job is useless or bullshit in the way David Graeber defines a "bullshit job", but it is vastly less important than making sure somebody hungry gets fed or a homeless cat is taken care of while it waits to be adopted.
“I’m thinking of a labor movement, but one very different than the kind we’ve already seen. A labor movement that manages to finally ditch all traces of the ideology that says that work is a value in itself, but rather redefines labor as caring for other people.” --David Graeber
I was put to work sorting bread. I did my best to place like with like, although by the end of it the sliced bread cart was getting stuff thrown on it every which way as room allowed. I don't know why I was surprised there was bread of all sorts, from the cheap, squishy, store brand sandwich slices to fancy artisan bakery stuff. I mean, there's always leftover stock, and it should go to somebody who needs it. It actually made me feel a lot better knowing people who go to food banks get a chance to eat good, high-quality food, in some cases much nicer than things I would purchase for myself.
There was also some weird stuff I'd never seen before, the strangest being a tiny loaf of rye from a local craft bakery that had the density of a fucking neutron star. I have never felt bread that heavy before and I'm pretty sure you could kill somebody if you cracked them over the head with it. I have absolutely no idea what you would do with it culinarily. Maybe slice it up and put lox on it? Eat some with pelmeni? It looked a lot like the Russian black bread you get at the pelmeni place in Fremont but so much denser.
After volunteering at the food bank, I will tell you that it makes their work so much easier if you just give them money and not the dusty cannellini beans in the back of your cupboard. Companies are happy to give this food away, or sell it at greatly reduced rates. Nothing I saw looked like it was donations from the public, except maybe the pet food and supplies. According to my contact, the team I was with processed ten thousand pounds of food that shift. They'll give away about that much during pantry hours.
This is the sort of thing about jobs vs work--the sorts of things we do for money vs the stuff that actually needs to get done. It's not that my job is useless or bullshit in the way David Graeber defines a "bullshit job", but it is vastly less important than making sure somebody hungry gets fed or a homeless cat is taken care of while it waits to be adopted.
“I’m thinking of a labor movement, but one very different than the kind we’ve already seen. A labor movement that manages to finally ditch all traces of the ideology that says that work is a value in itself, but rather redefines labor as caring for other people.” --David Graeber
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Date: 2020-04-05 02:23 am (UTC)And that's an excellent quote. I've never heard of Graeber before but now he's on my radar and twitter feed, so thank you!
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Date: 2020-04-05 07:57 am (UTC)