Money for nothing, no chips for free

Growing up, I was never particularly concerned with the way in which I was going to accumulate wealth. I just assumed that things would work out – probably evidence that I’d won the privilege lottery (white, straight, male, able-bodied). I remember my Year 9 maths teacher, Mr Nathan, trying to encourage me to put in more effort in class, imploring me to consider the fact that maths would be some integral part of whatever career I eventually settled into.

“I’ll just be a TV weatherman or something,” I said, obliviously blind to the meteorological implications (though, when it’s possible for your TV weatherman credentials to come via the University of Sticky TV, I’m not entirely sure that my 13-year-old self didn’t have a point).

After I finished high school, I took acting classes for a year, then, to further limit my career prospects, I moved to Auckland to study playwriting. I’d been raised to believe that making practical decisions should always come second to “following my heart”, and that following vocation was a perfectly acceptable thing to do. So that’s what I did. I got my degree, an obscure and infinitely useless Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts. Since then, I have been writing and performing shows for koha in the nation’s dive bars and tramping clubrooms.

It’s a poor business model that has garnered a lot of good reviews, plenty of good karma, and not a lot else. I haven’t done the things you’re supposed to do as a performing artist, like make a Facebook page or get an agent, not because I can’t or don’t want to, but because I’ve bought into the nitwit fairytale our generation was treated to – the one about how you’ll achieve whatever it is you want to achieve if you only work hard and “strive” and don’t compromise on your goals. I’ve clung tightly to the idea that the world will reward people who follow their dreams, above all else.

As much as I like performing for koha – it means anyone can see my work, and value it according to their experience of it – it doesn’t pay my rent and expenses. After I graduated from university, I got a job working at an intermediate school in Auckland. I work as a “literacy assistant”, a title that I can only assume came about because someone thought “teacher aide” was demeaning. I work Monday to Friday from 8:30am to 3:10pm in the school’s learning centre, where I assist students with intellectual and/or physical disabilities and/or any kind of alternative learning needs.

I like my job a lot, and I’m good at it. For the most part, it’s fun working with kids; I like being part of the school’s community, and I try to do everything I can to contribute to it. During my lunch breaks I run a homework club where kids can come for an extra hand if they’re struggling to get their work done at home. I coach basketball and softball teams and help the little 11-year-old rock bands try to learn Nirvana songs.

In some ways, it’s the perfect job, but I’d like it if it paid more. I get about $17 an hour, following a 50 cent pay rise I recently discovered I was entitled to as a bachelor’s degree graduate – which would be great, if not for the fact that I'm contracted to work a maximum of 25 hours per week. Further frustration arises during the ten-odd weeks of school holidays per year, in which I’m not paid at all. I could look for another job for those times, but I’ve been hard-pressed to find an employer willing to take me on in the knowledge I’ll be leaving within two weeks.

Last year I chanced upon the opportunity to audition for a Burger King ad. I’d previously felt uncomfortable with the very idea of doing so, given it would jar violently with my woeful ideals as both an artist and a vegetarian. But times were tight, and I decided to go to the try out anyway. Through either an accident or a miracle, I got the part, acting in two YouTube ads.

I was apparently so bad at acting that they decided to give my lines to my co-star, so I basically spent the day nodding in faux-agreement and having my hair and collar adjusted

There was one day of shooting, at a Burger King restaurant on the North Shore. I arrived on set at around six in the morning with my co-star. For the first hour or so, there wasn’t really anything to do, so we just kind of stood around as the crew set everything up. One of the assistant directors implored us to drink the free coffee and eat the free breakfast, which was muesli with yoghurt and some kind of egg-y breakfast burrito. So we did.

I thought about the three years I’d spent working part-time at another fast-food restaurant in high school. The job was at times unbelievably stressful, but paid the stone-cold minimum wage; once I got a written warning for eating a chip. This new approach to shilling fast food was already a lot easier and more pleasant.

Eventually, the two of us were sent to the makeup caravan, where they fiddled with my hair and face for about half an hour, then plopped me into my costume – a T-shirt that was actually a dress, which sold for $200 and had pineapples and weed leaves on it. We made our way to the set.

I spent the next eight hours sitting in a fake booth in a real Burger King, every five minutes taking a bite out of an onion ring and then spitting it out as soon as the cameras stopped rolling. I was apparently so bad at acting that they decided to give my lines to my co-star, so I basically spent the day nodding in faux-agreement and having my hair and collar adjusted. It was a pretty surreal experience.

I got paid just over $6000. It was the most money I’d ever been paid for anything. I actually called the production company to make sure they hadn’t made a mistake.

I couldn’t help but feel that I hadn’t earned it. It seemed absurd that, for putting on a shirt and pretending to eat onion rings, I’d been paid more than a third of my total annual income from my job teaching disabled kids at an intermediate school. In one day of nodding and eating free food, I made more than the total amount I’ve made from four years’ writing and performing theatre and comedy shows.

I don’t want to seem like I’m complaining. I love my job, and feel lucky to be doing something that I see as valuable, as well as enjoyable. Some people have this idea that being a teacher aide is photocopying and cleaning up, but in reality, I design and administer learning programmes tailored to individual students to fill in gaps in their knowledge so they can keep up with what they’re being taught in their other classes. I attend professional development seminars on teaching techniques and learning disabilities to research ways in which I can better support the children I’m charged with. I’ve learned how important it is to embrace each one as an individual, because a dyslexic child learns differently to one with ADHD or dyspraxia or ataxia or autism or anxiety or even just one having trouble at home. But for a day of pretending to eat onion rings, I was paid more than eight weeks’ wages.

 It’s odd being so directly confronted by the fact that the things you think are important and worthwhile are not valued the same way by the rest of society

I don’t feel like the fact I’m not getting paid particularly well is a reason to do anything by half. But as much as take my job seriously, it can be really difficult, and I often feel like the time and effort I put in is disproportionate to the remuneration. For that reason, I struggle to see the work I do as a viable career path – rather, it’s something people do before either training to become a proper teacher, or moving on to something different. This is a real issue within the New Zealand education system.

The whole experience doing the ad for Burger King left me feeling weird. It’s odd being so directly confronted by the fact that the things you think are important and worthwhile are not valued the same way by the rest of society. It kind of made me feel like I was a child, still unable to comprehend the way the world works, and it left me confused as to whether I’m wasting my time with the things I do and want to do. Then I was surprised by how an unexpected financial windfall could make me assess my own convictions, ideals and dreams, when I’ve never put much stock in the idea of wealth.

As workers in our contemporary world, we’re sort of forced into a contract we had no real hand in writing. Maybe this is a consequence of my naïve, implicit faith in humanity, but I’m sure we haven’t chosen to construct and abide by this set of values, where there’s more money for a fast-food restaurant than there is for the support and education of disabled children. Or maybe we just really love hamburgers.

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