What choosing the hardest and lowest paying job taught me?

When I say the hardest and lowest-paying job, what do you imagine? Maybe a stiff office without air conditioning in the middle of a desert, or a hellish kitchen with Gordon Ramsay’s doppelganger shouting and throwing fat beef onto a heated oily pan right at your side? Whatever it is, I assure you, my version of the hardest and lowest-paying job is something else.  

This summer, I decided to change my routine and for some reason, the idea to change my routine brought me to the idea to sign myself up for the most tiring and emotionally draining job of my life. I became the youngest of six women in a farmworkers squad.

Each day, we would start our donkey work early at 6 a.m. and keep working nonstop till afternoon. Under the blazing sun, we would carefully gather cucumbers into plastic buckets and then carry those to the tent, where the other person would take care of sorting and packing them for the potential buyer.

No one would care about all the chemicals that get on your hands and face and that you breathe deep into your lungs. No one would care about the risk of getting sunstroke or worse, skin cancer. Signing for the job like this means you cannot complain anymore.

Paying for this hellish labor at the end of the working day would be the most depressing and unfair thing of all. It would cost less than 1 dollar and 5 cents per hour. Can you believe this?

Well, maybe I need to clarify that 1 dollar and 5 cents for America is not the same for Russia, but even for a Russian, 1 dollar and 5 cents per hour for a job like that is nonsense, rubbery, and shameless slavery.

This kind of job is not regulated by the government, which can be a good and a bad thing at the same time. I can only imagine what the payment for this kind of job would be if the taxes were included.

It’s 2019. Slavery was supposed to be officially gone a century ago but people all over the world are still working for 1 dollar and 5 cents or even less, risking their health to simply survive.

Of course, we can look at this from another angle and tell that today, everyone is able to earn as much as they want by putting in a little more effort and by regularly upgrading their professional skills. BUT. Despite the widespread opinion, not everyone can be everything they want. And not everyone knows or has the right person nearby to unravel their human potential, support, and guide.

Mindset is a real thing and not the simplest one.

The reason I made this life-changing choice and signed for such a low-paid job, risking my health when I easily could make five times more by working two times less, is because my ancestors had been working like that for decades. At some point, I had to know what it was like.

It was hard and unworthy. But I learned a lot from this experience.

First and foremost, I learned the real power of gratitude.

I’ve never been more grateful for my intelligence before. Past years, I’ve been so rough and demanding more and more and more: more things to remember, more skills and wisdom to learn.

But during those hellish hours of the backbreaking job, I realized that unlike most of the people working there, I had all I needed, intellectually and physically, to be and to do anything I wanted.

I also learned anger control and tolerance for the people who lacked knowledge or other experiences and, therefore, had poorer perceptions of the world.

I learned to respect money, no matter how this might sound, and today, I have broader respect for each penny my clients pay me. You never know how hard someone had to work to earn 1 dollar and 5 cents that any of us can easily consider a mere trifle.

And the biggest lesson I learned is there is nothing worse than working for survival, doing things that don’t inspire you or contribute to your further progress as a human being. And it’s wrong that such hard labor is still in the list of lowest-paying jobs.