I used to “spit on” on blue-collar workers
Once upon a time, I felt like I was above blue-collar workers. It’s one of the most haunting confessions I’ll ever make. Here’s why I no longer feel that way.
When I was 21, I’d already snagged my dream job at the time as a personal trainer. I left what I called that “godforsaken grocery store” and the manager who dropped that atomic truth bomb on my head, and set my sights on eating, sleeping, and breathing fitness.
And damn, was I good at it. So good, in fact, that come 2014, at age 23, I started thinking I owned the world. I had at least 30 hours worth of clients and group training classes every week, I prided myself on never taking a vacation because the gym was life, and worked out two, and occasionally three times a day.
Meanwhile, those I liked to B.S. with were busy telling me about their dreary lives. These people were all older than me, stressed to the gills, and talking about how they needed to work a job they’d rather not be in to make ends meet.
To the brash 23-year-old I was, I thought I outsmarted the world and was at least a cut above the “normies.” And I let them know about it in subtle ways, like talking about going on my third workout for the day, reading magazines and surfing the internet while someone else cleaned the place, or goofing off with the other staff in the manager’s office and making fun of members.
Hell, some of those members thought we got paid to hang out, and we’d gossip about how stupid they were. But, by age 25 in 2016, I started distancing myself from that same staff and even the owner, who’d been so kind to let me make the place my second home, believing they were equally as stupid since I’d successfully wrapped their trust around my finger.
I thought I was “too good” for that small-town gym
I was training in a town known to be very “blue collar” in Northern West Virginia, but I knew, or thought I knew, I was destined for something better. Better, and with more intelligent people with college degrees and white-collar desk jobs, and those showing off a much-higher social status than what I was going to leave behind.
I let everyone in that place know my intentions and it led to internal strife, to the point the manager quit talking to me. As I set fire to nearly every bridge I ever built down that way, I went into Pittsburgh and, well, let reality sink in.
