I am blessed to live in an area, that though rural, has an incredible amount of community theater.<\/p>\n
I saw a production of a musical called Working last night. The musical is adapted from the book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do<\/a>, and is more a series of vignettes where characters discuss their working lives, and has some brilliant segues between different points of view.<\/p>\n While I enjoyed it, one scene kinda hit me between the eyes. It’s about a factory worker who makes luggage. As I was watching it, I ran my hands over a purse I bought at Wal-Mart many years ago because, well, it was cheap. I thought about all the interim steps to get that purse made, packaged, shipped to my local Wal-Mart, stocked, then checked out when I bought it. I thought about how many of those purses the person needed to make an hour to earn her (it was probably a woman, after all) wage.<\/p>\n The point of the musical and it’s an important one, is that every single thing you own, every product you use, every service you need, has a real, live human being doing that work. That’s an important point.<\/p>\n Go see the musical. It’s not just a Heavy Message. Parts will make you laugh.<\/p>\n