Toronto Life’s very dickish take on “scut work”

Comic by Brett Lamb for Torontoist. Click to see the source.

If you live in Toronto and wore a uniform to school, chances are that you’re part of Toronto Life’s target demographic. It’s the Toronto version of that sort of city magazine for people in six-figure-income households who like reading about First World Problems as seen from the corner table at Daisho. I find it a generally interesting read, but every now and again, its Upper Canada/Trinity College/Crazy Go Nuts University/Western-bred prejudices rear their ugly head, as it recently did in an article on the new blitz on illegally parked cars during rush hours.

As a long-time resident of Toronto, and having travelled through it for decades on foot, bike, transit, and in my car, I’m pleased to see that the city is finally enforcing these laws. Many of the biggest offenders, if you look at the “See who got towed today!” photos on the city’s @TrafficServices Twitter feed, are service or delivery trucks. The Toronto Sun’s Joe Warmington has written that while the blitz will help smooth Toronto’s serious traffic problem, the people paying the price are the small businesses whose lifeblood is these service trucks.

Philip Preville, the Toronto Life article author, counters with this Mitt Romney-esque paragraph:

If those businesses want to stay downtown, they will have to adjust. As I parsed the logos of the offenders last week, one infuriating question rose to the surface: What are any of these trucks doing anywhere near downtown during rush hour? The services they offer are all forms of provisioning or disposal. It’s scut work, the back-room support that allows the more important, economic-engine-of-the-nation work to proceed efficiently. In many cases there’s no good reason any of it should be done during daylight hours, period.

“How dare these people, who would be cleaning the king’s chamberpots in a more civilized age, do their work at a time that inconveniences us economic engines (which presumably includes smug arts majors doing magazine writing for the country club set)? Can’t we simply time-shift them out of our way? We’re the makers and they’re the takers, after all!”

There’s no attempt in the article to find a win-win solution — the only proposed one is “kick the 47 percenters to the night shift.” What. A. Dick.

The best response to this I’ve seen comes from Edgar Dennehy, a friend of my friend Jess Wood and it can be summarized as this: If it’s the work that makes the other work possible, how the fuck is it not equally important? As for there being “no good reason any of it should be done during daylight hours, period”, how about health, safety, and social mobility? When you work nights only, you’re ghettoized because you can’t engage the world and its “economic engines” in the same way.

Steven Hilton reminded me that this scene from Fight Club exists. I’m posting it to remind Toronto Life and Philip Preville:

Thanks to Jess Wood for the find!

Joey deVilla

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View Comments

Insomniaforlife says:

January 21, 2015 at 1:26 pm

I don't know why you posted that clip. It's obvious you're not a shift worker. I am and I, for one, welcome the increase in/better 24 hour services that the demands of more shift workers will bring.
Edgar Dennehy says:

February 22, 2015 at 5:53 pm

Hey fellow shift worker!

First off, I love my night shift job - I come to it from a lovely Bay street office law clerk job, after a few other stints at other things, and - I - Love - It. I took a $15,000 pay cut to do it, and I mean, next year I'll only be behind by $5,000.00, but that wasn't a light decision.

But, as any google search and friends and acquaintances have told you when you mention you work nights, this shit is bad for you.

It messes with your actual physical brain and heart. It shortens your life span. It raises your cholesterol, and increases your likelihood of developing diabetes and heart disease. It is much harder to sleep properly, which has many degenerative health outcomes. Your body does not digest food properly. Depression goes whooooosh way up in likelihood, your memory declines. All this shit has been scientifically proven.

As a single 30 year old, I can promise you that having to be at work for 11:00pm 5 nights a week cramps my dating life, and like, its really hard to put the moves on a guy at 9:30 am over sober breakfast okay? "Mmm after these scrambled eggs want to come back to my place and not under any circumstances have coffee because I really need to be asleep by noon . .". And I mean, good luck finding someone who wants to sleep over between 11am and 8pm. I now have to book off all my book club meetings because they won't wrap up in time, and if they did, I still basically got up at 5am to go discuss a book. When I meet friends anywhere for drinks - its basically drinking at 5am, and I just want to go back to sleep, which then messes up my sleep the next day, which messes me up for work. I used to volunteer with a convention, and since all those meetings start around 6pm? uhm I have to get up in the middle of my sleep cycle. This all sucks are it is just some of the social crap right? Then there is the assumption I am dumb and not smart enough to get a better (daytime) job and the intellectual snobbery about that is huuuuuuge. I've had people offer me jobs in an attempt to help me out immediately after I tell them what I do. And then when I say thank you but I love what I do, I watch the disbelief. Because people think this is gross.

The only lack of 24 hour services I experience is that there is no pizza delivery at my 5am break. In many ways my access to services beats that of people in 9-5 jobs because I can go see a dentist or a doctor anytime I can wake up, and often before I go to bed, at 9, or 10, or 11 am. I can go to government offices and not stand in line. People are still high on coffee and hope that the humans they interact with that day are not going to be terrible and no one is irritated that 50 people want to come in between 11am and 1pm 'because that is their lunch hour' in a masterful embrace of self absorption that totally disregards that everyone who makes what they do on their lunch hour possible, ALSO needs a lunch hour, and there is no magical lunch hour fairy coming to relieve them so that your life isn't inconvenienced (I worked in a Dr's office and seriously? Asking when our lunch hour is so we can squeeze you in then? Are you having a medical emergency?).

I needed 24 hour services far more as a daytime centered full time student with two part time jobs than I ever have as a night shift worker, and the fact you think working nights makes you need 24 hour services sincerely makes me go da fuq? What are you doing at your night shift job? Tim Hortons and McDonalds and an assortment of 24 hour diners will feed you, and there is a lot of retail open from 8am to midnight in the city, many Sobeys are 24 hours, and so are lots of shoppers drug marts.

Indeed, I had to quit seeing my psychologist when I left night shifts previously because my new work place was unable to accommodate the extra time to go see my shrink on a weekly basis, so - I think working nights gives you far better access to services.

So. Nah. I can't get behind the idea that more people should have to work on a schedule which is contrary to their biology, especially based on the idea that it will increase demand for better 24 hour services to help them out.

As for the video clip, I like it. And I sincerely wish that everyone who is busting their ass making everything possible for everyone else would unite, unionize, and demand fair wages and working conditions and oh! Respect For What They Do. Because honestly? All the people doing 'scut' work? They are Just as important if not more so, than anyone in 'management', and vital to 'Finance' 'Trade' 'Commerce' and uh basically everything. Without us, the bus doesn't go - no matter how many drivers you put on it.