Earlier last fall, walking in San Francisco, from the Caltrain station to Embarcadero, I came across a scene that is now etched in my memory. It was about 430 pm before the rush for evening dinner began. A group of restaurant workers, most of them Hispanic, stumbled out of a side door and were settling on the pavement of a by-lane, opening up packets of Chinese food that had just been delivered. They were clad in prim white kitchen wear, clean and tidy, which only highlighted the exhaustion on their faces, perhaps in anticipation of a long evening of toil. I continued walking around and came across the inviting doors of a Michelin-starred restaurant, emphasizing a contrast that is shockingly commonplace in SF.
I was reminded of that scene while reading Down and Out in Paris and London. Down and Out is a semi-biographical fiction, in which Orwell narrates about working in restaurants, living in poverty, treading the thin line between disillusionment and hope.
Orwell contrasts Paris and London as no one else does. In Paris, he examines the ardor and disappointment stewing in back kitchens of fancy restaurants, sleeping in metros, on park benches, and under bridges, pawning shirts and utensils to pay rent, tobacco, and alcohol. In London, he explores tramping, collecting cigarette ends, and gathering meal tickets to get tea and two slices of bread, staying in lodging houses and spikes. In both cities, he dissects, with the astute scalpel of a studious scientist, how to make a shilling (or a franc) last.
Orwell, unsurprisingly, is also a master of precision. In 220 pages, he examines the dignity of work and life of penury, threading ponderous life questions with searing observations of the minutiae.
Here’s Orwell waiting to get in a “spike” (homeless shelter) in London.
Most of the men were too bored even to talk; they just sat packed on the benches, staring at nothing, their scrubby faces split into two by enormous yawns. The room stank of ennui.
Here’s Orwell talking about the role of a plongeur.
Is a plongeur’s work really necessary to civilisation? We have a feeling that it must be “honest” work, because it is hard and disagreeable, and we have made a sort of fetish of manual work… I believe it is the same with a plongeur. He earns his bread in the sweat of his brow, but it does not follow that is doing anything useful; he may be only supplying a luxury which, very often, is not a luxury.
Orwell asks questions about the nature of service jobs, that are labor-oriented. In the infant days of Amazon Go, there are skeptically titled articles (for e.g., Amazon’s New Supermarket Could Be Grim News for Human Workers). But, such nostalgia for all jobs confounds both the nature of progress and the meaning of labor.
Here is Orwell again, on the danger of overvaluing the labor content in all jobs:
People have a way of taking it for granted that all work is done for a sound purpose. They see someone else doing a disagreeable job, and think they they have solved things by saying that the job is necessary… Some people must feed in restaurants, and so other people must swab dishes for eighty hours a week.
While the march of progress eliminates some jobs, as it always does, it is important to examine without romanticization, the laborious nature of the jobs that are eliminated, and plan for what meaningful new livelihoods can be created in their place. I hope to write more about this shortly.