Blue Collar Brilliance Summary

When you think of work, what do comes to mind? Perhaps a retail job in the mall, or even an accountant crunching numbers. Now, think deeper. What is the true definition of work? Is it the physical characteristics and capabilities that define work or is it the mental aspect? Typically, society tends to classify work as “blue-collar” (physical wok) or “white-collar” (mental work). In the article Blue Collar Brilliance, Rose describes his uncle and mother’s “blue-collar” jobs as both white and blue collar. I didn’t necessarily believe him. I was stuck in the narrow mindedness of “white vs. blue”. But something changed. When Mike Rose (author) states that “Our culture—in Cartesian fashion—separates the body from the mind, so that, for example,

we assume that the use of a tool does not involve abstraction” (250) it resonated with me. His theory of separation of body and mind in the workplace is extremely useful because it not only shows that there isn’t broad categories of work, it also sheds light on the difficult problem of stereotyping occupations and the people who work them. Now as I am looking more at my jobs and work experiences, I do not see the work force as “white-collar vs. blue-collar” I see it more as a “white and blue pinstripe collar”.
Rose stated “More than once I’ve heard a manager label his workers as “a bunch of dummies” (247). In my personal work experiences, I have had customers perceive me as less intelligent and have discriminated against me based on my job alone. With many retail jobs, you are required to exhibit certain values and attitudes to reflect the ideology of the business. For example, when I worked at ToyZam! as a sales associate, we were trained to put the toys as our first priority no matter the quality of the product. When the product received negative reviews, patrons would come in and perceive us as money driven dummies. We in turn had to strategically think of and deal with the customer’s attitudes and complaints in unique ways. By retail workers like myself doing this, I am showcasing a general example of a “pinstripe-collar” workplace.
“Generalizations about intelligence, work, and social class deeply affect our assumptions about ourselves and each other, guiding the ways we use our minds to learn, build knowledge, solve problems, and make our way through the world” (Rose 247).

Mike Rose sets the tone for his argument in this sentence alone. In his article Blue Collar Brilliance, he describes how his mother and other family members would be stereotyped as working “blue-collar” jobs but excellently proves that they in fact do more than what meets the eye. I can attest to doing some of these ignorant assumptions with a lot of various occupations. However, the more I look back at my personal work experiences, some of my most challenging jobs could be classified as only doing only one to two mundane tasks, but in reality are much more complex than that. Case in point, my job as a store associate at The Cookie Store. Since I was only a store associate, people often think I only baked the desserts, ran the cash register and left. In truth, I had numerous managerial responsibilities. I was responsible for cleaning the store up to FDA standards, counting the cash register every night, calculating the daily bank deposits, as well as dealing with the psychological needs such as Mike Rose’s mother did. In retrospect, white-collar jobs can involve physical work too. When I was a dressing room attendant at Spirit Halloween, I was mainly responsible for putting costumes and other merchandise back on the shelves and

loading in new inventory from our freight trucks every week. Although most of my work was physical, it was also mentally challenging. I had to strategize the best ways to put up the inventory to create more space, how to efficiently manage inventory work to helping customers, and how to deal with customer’s complaints with dressing room policies.
In my eyes and in Rose’s eyes, dealing with the public can be a strenuous job.

In my job at Spirit Halloween it showcases that public service work can combine physical work such as caring for their every desire and demand, and mental work by dealing with complaints. Another example of this crosshair of physical and mental is dealing with ethical issues. In Blue-Collar Brilliance, it was ethical issues in cases such as his mother taking care of orders in a timely manner when she thought it was taking too long. At my job at Lane Bryant, it was dealing with shop-lifting coworkers. As a seasonal sales associate at Lane Bryant, I did not get a lot of respect because I was new. I was only 18 and my other coworkers were all in there mid to late 30s. We had extensive training on how to deal with shoplifting coworkers and customers. Into my third week working there, I caught my coworkers stealing a hefty amount of inventory. I was put into a tight ethical dilemma. I was forced to choose whether to tell my manager and possibly be exiled by the rest of my coworkers, or keep the secret and possibly be fired. Now on the surface, this may not seem so “blue-collared” but indeed it was. Because I knew this secret, I was caused to stealthily avoid drama with these coworkers by physically placing myself on opposite ends of the store, requesting separate days to work to avoid conflict, and most of all avoid social outings with them since they threatened to physically attack me. This

“pinstripe-collar” combination of dealing with ethical dilemmas was tough but I eventually decided to tell the manager and quit the job. This work experience taught me that it is very valuable and clear to think about the industry and type of work I enter into. Whether it be blue-collar, white-collar or pinstripe-collar. Industry type is very important to think about. In addition, it is also important once we have been working at a company, to evaluate the individuals working and their jobs as a whole.
Rose states “If we think that whole categories of people—identified by class or occupation—are not that bright, then we reinforce social separations and cripple our ability to talk across cultural divides” (254). Evaluating my job experiences in correlation with Rose’s Mom (Rosie) and his uncle Joe’s jobs have caused me to evaluate previous co-workers and their seemingly “easy” job tasks. I find that I used to judge people based on their work description and not as a human being. I was under the stigma: if there job is easy then that just means they are lazy and do not want to work hard. That is completely not the case. I never looked deeply into a complexity of a job until I read an article like Blue-Collar Brilliance. Individuals have a variety of different backgrounds, education, and intellects. Until one truly looks deep into a person, they will never really know their potential as a worker and as a human being.
“To acknowledge a broader range of intellectual capacity is to take seriously the concept of cognitive variability, to appreciate in all the Rosie’s and Joes the thought that drives their accomplishments and defines who they are. This is a model of the mind that is worthy of a democratic society (Rose 254). In short I say Rose is trying to convey that being a part of a “pinstripe-collar” workplace means being a part of the workplace period. I order to live in a united front, their needs to be no more separation of workplace. There needs to be no more bias towards how many degrees you hold or how many skills you’re certified in. As a society we all need to come together and just work together, succeed together, and make the world a better place for us all to live in not just one individual to live in. To be united, we must work united.