Mikey was on the road somewhere in Fountain Valley, looking for the 405, a ceramic saluki in his right hand and a big forced smile on his face, teeth and all. He’d heard from the entrepreneur and motivational podcaster Greg Charridan that smiling, even fake smiling, sent signals to your brain that helped to keep you upbeat. It was important to stay positive, although Mikey knew that the ceramic saluki was probably going to ruin his day.
Fragility. Everything in this story seems so fragile: the ceramic dog, Mikey’s smile, his positive attitude, his potential ranking increase to third place, his relationships with his clients.
I know little about the gig economy; I’ve never used it or participated in it. But Mikey’s all in. He’s on an app similar to TaskRabbit, except it’s expanded for this story and includes doctors and lawyers (if you pay attention to Medical Twitter you might be surprised to find that doctors think private practice is becoming untenable, so that isn’t completely off the wall) and, for people like Mikey, the category of General: Unskilled. On this day for Mikey, that includes some internet research for a recreational genealogist, reading sentences for a university linguistics researcher, delivering groceries and listening to an old man talk for a while, role-playing a job interview with a nervous applicant, and delivering a small, fragile ceramic figurine of a saluki between 3:45 and 5:00 pm.
If you listen to the news about the gig economy, you might think his very economic survival is fragile as well. But Mikey doesn’t really see it that way: he sees himself as gloriously free.
Mikey’s heart broke for his housemates, all of them sitting on their asses, throwing resumes into help-wanted dumpsters or chasing after degrees, delaying the inevitable. Look where they were, and look where they could be…. Everyone was wedded to some analog, old-world path to success, too focused on the left-foot-right-foot to realize they were walking into a hazmat wreck. Or else they’d been unemployed for so long that they were independently reinventing Buddhism, learning to free themselves from want.
Like the man said, Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
Because it provides the narrative and thematic backbone of the story, let’s start with the dog. As a former devotee of the Westminster Dog Show on tv, I had some vague idea of a saluki, a sort of cross between an Afghan hound and a greyhound. Wikipedia has its origins in the middle east, with ancient Egypt developing the breed. The ACK says:
Among the world’s oldest breeds, the slim but rugged Saluki was the hunting hound of kings for thousands of years. Salukis are swift and agile sprinters who love a good chase. They make gentle, dignified, and independent but loyal pets.
So they look more fragile than they are. Maybe that’s true of all thr fragility in the story. Salukis sound like Mikey in personality: independent and loyal, active. And, of course, bred for use by the elite.
When I think of General: Unskilled work, I think of, I don’t know, stuff I could do if I weren’t so clumsy and old. Cleaning out the garage. Washing windows. Sure, deliveries, though I’m not sure I’d turn over a $200 figurine; I guess it’s insured.
But Mikey’s day goes beyond that stuff. Grocery delivery is one thing, but providing companionship to an old man is something else. Mikey does his best, hoping for a 5+ rating, but you have to wonder, where is the guy’s family, friends? Is this a gap the gig economy is meant to fill? The $19 cross between an errand boy and a therapist, because there is no one else?
The most interesting gig is with the job applicant. Mikey’s first pass with him goes fine: he only signed up for 20 minutes, but Mikey did his best to instill confidence, and he thought he’d done a good job. But they guy calls back and is in bad shape. This doesn’t seem like just another gig to Mikey; something else has eclipsed his push for a 5+ rating, something like caring:
Mikey waited for Ethan to say something. All at once, he was furious, just existentially miserable that Ethan should have to say anything, that there wasn’t some other way to figure out what he needed. How awful to talk. How awful to have to. What Mikey wanted was to hook this guy directly into his veins, to pass this guy’s pained, anemic blood through his own hearty organs and make it clean.
I’m left confused by this story. It seems to be pulling in several directions at once: fragility, independence, human connection for profit, human connection in spite of oneself, automation of human resources, availability of multiple levels of services. All imprinted on the current moment, which has gig believers and gig doomsayers. Maybe it’s diffuse because it’s all in there, and how it works, or doesn’t, for you depends on your own situation and, let’s face it, luck.
It occurs to me this could be turned into a TV movie very easily: Mikey gets hit by a truck, leaving him without income and without insurance, at which point all the clients he helped come together and crowdfund his recovery. Happy ending, sort of, if you think relying on the kindness of strangers to pay your medical bills because no one can afford insurance is happy. I’m in too cynical a place to be objective right now.
Addendum: I wrote this post pre-COVID; I’m even more cynical now. Jake Weber wrote his post in August as we hit 166,000+ COVID deaths and 5 million cases.
A Just Recompense 