How would our nation survive without the work of thousands of manual laborers and immigrants who laid the foundation for everything to come. Similarly, what would society be like today without the workers inside a fast food restaurant like McDonald's, the average garbage man, or truck drivers?
Speaking of McDonald's, how many times have you heard ridicule of the people working there? Whether they are in the form of jokes, or even if your parents are trying to make a point (My friend's mom used to threaten her son with the phrase: "Do you want to end up as a worker at McDonald's? Is that the type of mediocre life that you want to live? Has all our hard work gone down the drain?" Whenever he complained about school.) It all hit me about how cruel and obscene these everyday comments are when I, a typical teenager, went to McDonald's to get a cup of coffee last weekend.
It was there that I realized that every single person in the world grows up with a dream of becoming someone, an actor, a doctor, a model, an engineer, a singer, and the list could go on forever. Yet not everyone reaches their aspirations. As I was waiting for my coffee I thought, "What about the people who do reach their goals, what makes them more worthy than others to receive what they want?". I quickly came to the conclusion that there really was no way to decide. In America, there are about 312 million people, and of that maybe a minuscule amount of people become who they really want to be. When my coffee arrived I began fantasizing a world in which everyone became who they wanted to be (because any human being probably would not want to be surrounded by the miasma of decay as a garbageman or garbage-woman does). Yet every scenario led to chaos.
Think about it for a minute; if every man and women achieved their desires, who would do the small, menial, and undesired jobs that are necessary for society to function properly? For instance, if there were no truck drivers, packages, shipments, and goods would never get to the places they needed to be at. Without any garbage men and women, there would be no one to get rid of a cloud of stink that would haunt our lives, and the streets would be spewed with trash. If there were not any workers in McDonald's there would be no such thing as fast food or even (this is a bit of a slippery slope) any restaurants. And without factory workers, we would be lacking everyday products that we take for granted (e.g. toothbrushes, cars, laptops, sinks, food etc.). Without any of these unwanted jobs, life as we know it would be altered quite differently. Even America itself was, as mentioned before, built upon the labor of immigrants, and laborers doing manual jobs. As mentioned above I was imagining every possible scenario, and in one, I imagined that without these jobs that we consider undesirable now, none of the occupations that anyone would want would even be possible because there was no food (starvation), no everyday products that we need, disease would be rapidly spreading (grave diggers, though it may pay good, it is not something somebody really WANTS to be), and there would be no communication between the peoples of the world.
After looking back to this moment, I have decided to name it "The Pyramid Effect". This is due to the fact that no matter what job you have, or even if you don't have one, you are a contributing member of society. Each of the 8 billion people in the world is a block in this pyramid. Those who are at the top (those who have reached their aspirations) are only there because of the strong foundation held by the bottom, the several people who work just as hard as the people yet are not recognized rather, they are ridiculed by those at the top of the pyramid, by those who would become unstable after one block fell, and those who would completely fall after a few did the same. The pyramid organizes society with the people with unappealing jobs, those in unemployment, as well as stay-at-home parents at the bottom, office workers (average office cube dwellers), in the middle, as well as those not doing as well as they wanted with the job they have, and with those who have reached their occupational dreams on top. In cheer-leading we have often seen that it is a mutual effect. If those on the bottom are sturdy and doing good, only then can the people at the top do as good as they would like (ex: without laptops produced in the commodities they are, or cars, or people who take care of cars, and if fast food wasn't available on the go, where would we be?). If the bottom is not doing good, then neither can do good, the flyer (a type of cheer leader) at the top if the pyramid becomes vulnerable and can fall. Without the base society would crumble, and nothing would get done.
This was my spontaneous eureka moment in the midst of buying a coffee from McDonald's, an average everyday activity for several American citizens. This whirlwind of thoughts occurred within my mind within a span of five minutes. A light bulb influenced by years of hearing horrendous remarks about low class jobs sparked and created "The Pyramid Effect". And that day that thought was captured in my mind, like a photograph, always allowing me to look back, and remember how important every single person in this world is. Next time I see someone ridiculed about their job because it is disliked in society I will conjure that picture and state, "Your job, or even your childhood wouldn't be here if it were not for this man or woman working at that job. Society itself would be sabotaged without people like him or her." And hopefully that message will be spread and the thought of society being a pyramid will capture the minds of others as it had done to mine.
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