My Low Wage Job

Dock Boy

I love the ocean, and because of this I choose to spend a great amount of my time in or on the water. Unfortunately, aquatic activities are not always cheap, so during the summer I need to take part in many jobs to pay for my shenanigans. These jobs include sailing instructor, Captain, and one summer as a dock boy. All my jobs are pretty great, most of them paid well because they require some sort of certification, but the summer as a dock boy was probably one of the hardest, and most degrading jobs I’ve ever had.

A dockhand isn’t paid much, about 8-9 dollars an hour, and they are constantly in the sun doing some form of manual labor. This goes from maintaining the dock and making sure all the boards are securely fastened, to scraping hulls, and pilings. Everyday I would wake up at five in the morning, so I could ride my bike and make it to work by six, and once there I would prepare the dock for arrivals and fueling. Once the dock master arrived my co-worker and I needed to have the lines ready to receive him, and make sure the dock was clean of any bird dropping or dead seaweed. The dock master always had a list of things that we needed to complete by the end of the day, and until we did, we wouldn’t go home. Everyday I would need to go into the disgusting water by the dock, and swim under boats to scrape barnacle or untangle lines from propellers, and If it weren’t that, I would be holding boats in place while the owners would fuel up, or working on an engine. Everyday I would finish at a different time, sometimes I would work till four, and other times eight, and lunch was forty-five minute, whenever I found an opening.

At the end of the day this was a part time job, just for the summer, but for my co-worker this was everyday life. It was his form of income for his wife and himself; he depended on this awful, brutal work, while the reason I was there was to make money to get my captains license, and never have to work there again. He was stuck in an endless loop of sweat and disgusting canal water, a loop that he needed to keep his family under a roof. I must have cursed the job every night before I went to sleep, but he must have been happy to even have that job. This man deserved more than to be over worked and under paid, he should have been rewarded as the hard worker that he was, but because he needed the job, and the job could replace him, he was exploited and forced to do whatever was asked. I see why this occurs in these scenarios, it makes sense for the company to exploit these men/women for more profit, and unfortunately fairness is not a necessary accommodation for employers.