轮不到你开口: what it means to be working class

Hi there guys, I would like to do a follow up on what it means to be working class given the popularity of my last post on the subject. Today, I am going to focus on one very specific aspect of the issue - the very definition of what it means to be working class. The world has changed so much within my lifetime that traditional definitions of the working class no longer apply - so back in the day, if you were working class, it meant you were employed in an unskilled or lowly-skilled (also sometimes referred to as semi-skilled) profession. It implied that working class people were not  educated enough (or at all) thus they had to use their muscles to make a living rather than their brains. So to give you an example from Singapore's history, a hundred years ago in 1921, when Singapore was a thriving port, the big ships would anchor just outside the mouth of the Singapore river, the goods would then be taken in smaller boats to the shores of the Singapore river where the goods would be unloaded off the boats by labourers and stored in the warehouses. This process was very labour intensive and relied on a virtually endless supply of men willing to do hard labour for very little money - these men were known as coolies and the word 'coolie' is thought to have originated from Chinese as the word '苦力' is pronounced 'kuli' and it means "hard labour". It was a very hard life for the coolies back in those days but they had little choice but to do this backbreaking hard work because they were simply not educated enough to do any other kind of job. Thus the coolie will be your stereotypical working class labourer - much of Singapore was built using such coolie labour.  

Let's fast forward to this present day and Singapore is still one of the world's busiest ports in 2021 but the whole process has been mechanized and made a lot more efficient. Most of the goods are loaded up in containers and these containers are taken off the tankers by cranes, even when the containers are finally opened up for unloading, often it will be machines like forklifts doing a lot of the heavy lifting - so the forklift will take the heavy boxes of goods out of the container and load them onto a lorry which will then bring these goods to their next destination. So at no point would a human actually lift anything using his muscles - instead the entire process has been mechanized as we have super efficient machines that can now do this job far quicker and more efficiently than humans. So let's talk about one the the workers involved in this supply chain: is the forklift driver working class? Well if we were to compare him to your coolie from way back in 1921, then he doesn't seem to be. In sharp contrast to your coolie, our forklift driver has received some education but to be fair, it is virtually impossible to find anyone who is totally uneducated these days. Likewise, our forklift driver has received some training and I couldn't do that job without first having received the requisite training to operate a forklift, thus it is not an unskilled job by that definition. Certainly, if we asked the forklift driver, he would probably insist that the technical nature of his job would class him as a skilled worker and so according to the traditional definition, then he wouldn't be considered 'working class' at all. But if we do not even consider a forklift driver working class, then actually we're left with the situation where very few professions today could be considered properly 'working class' jobs. 

Let's take another profession we're all familiar with and analyse it: would you consider a taxi driver a working class job? Allow me to tell you about a taxi ride I had in Singapore on my last trip there in 2018 - I was meeting up with my sister and she was running late, so she got a taxi (I think she used Grab). So when my sister showed up in a nice car, at first I thought it was her friend giving her a lift because the lady driving the car spoke to me in fluent English which wasn't what I would expect of a taxi driver. I then talked to her about living in England and it turns out that she attended university in the UK as well. Now she didn't come across as particularly working class at all - she has a degree from a British university but she was driving a taxi (oh that confused me but I didn't dare to ask her why).Now you could also argue that this wasn't an unskilled job - you need a license to drive a car, you need to know how to operate the app to find your next passenger and you need social skills when interacting with your passengers so they will leave you a good review. If we went back to 1921, the equivalent of a taxi in Singapore would have been either a trishaw or a rickshaw - those were powered by muscle and not machines (see video below) and it was bloody hard work; whereas my taxi driver was actually very fat given the fact that she was driving all day and not using her muscles to do her job. By that token, if we declare that forklift operators and taxi drivers are no longer 'working class', then who is working class anymore in 2021? 

Let's look at the barriers to entry for each job: it takes on average about 3 to 5 days to complete your basic training to become a forklift driver - that's a ridiculously low barrier to entry compared to a doctor or a lawyer, who would have had to spend many years training to become qualified. This is of course reflected in the fact that a doctor and a lawyer earn a lot more than your average forklift driver because the very high barriers to entry for doctors and lawyers means that there aren't that many doctors and lawyers around - thus they get to command a much higher salary, this is economics 101: supply and demand. So could we can define working class jobs those with low levels of barriers to entry (such as a forklift driver) because this clearly differentiates them from the lawyers and doctors of this world? Perhaps, but then again, this doesn't work with my job! Putting my fancy job title aside, I essentially work in sales and one of my colleagues is a 23 year old guy (whom I have referred to as 'young Dave' in another post) and he has earned about US$1.66 million in commissions in one sale just last month and he's expected to make even more in September. Dave doesn't have a degree - he just looked at the prospect of university and said, "fuck it, I'm smarter than all of those losers who end up as teaching staff at a university, what can they possibly teach me when I'm far smarter than them?!" And he's right, he is earning far more than his peers who went to top university (he's certainly earning more than me) with no formal qualifications beyond his A levels; he has a lot of raw business acumen and great social skills, but so few people can do what young Dave does. There are few barriers to entry in sales but you need to be exceptional to earn as much as Dave.

We need a new way to classify jobs into 'working class jobs' given the way it is virtually impossible to find a worker who is completely unskilled these days and I do have a suggestion. There is a Chinese saying, "轮不到你开口" - it literally means "it is not your turn to speak" but it means shut up, nobody gives a shit what you have to say because you're a nobody. That sounds harsh but you get the idea. A very simple example of how this works in the real world is in the army: so when the commanding officer gives an order to a lower-ranking soldier, he isn't looking for a discussion, he doesn't want any kind of feedback or suggestions - no, the only acceptable response is "yes sir" and then do as you have been instructed. Now let's look at a job where you have to follow instructions: if you worked in the kitchens of a McDonald's restaurant, you would have to follow recipes to make the burgers on the menu and you would not have the chance to improvise or try to create new burgers! No, it is a 轮不到你开口 situation. You're not a chef at a Michelin-star restaurant who is tasked with creating special dishes for the VIP guests, no you're working at McDonald's. I also remember an incident at my local supermarket where the manager angrily scolded a new guy who not following instructions - the manager had told the new guy how she wanted him to arrange the products on the shelves but the new guy didn't follow her instructions. He improvised and she got extremely angry, yelling at him in the middle of the supermarket, "take it all down, then do it again, do it the way I told you to! And next time I give you instructions you make sure you pay attention!" 

There is a hierarchy in every organization whether you're talking about the army, a fast food restaurant or a supermarket. The closer you are to the top, the more responsibility you will have and the more decisions you would have to make. But the closer you are to the bottom, the less power you have to make any kind of decision and for many in this position, it is a case of 轮不到你开口 - just shut up and do as you're told. So with my new definition of the working class in 2021, it depends on whether or not you're in a 轮不到你开口 situation at work all the time (whereby you're expected to just follow instructions) or if you are the one issuing instructions to others or working very autonomously without anyone giving you instructions. Are you trusted like an adult to make any decisions or are you denied any decision making privileges? Let's look at the situation in the supermarket to analyze a classic example of a typical working class job. Having every worker simply obey instructions and do as they are told can be an extremely efficient way of running a big supermarket - contrast this to the situation whereby everyone has the right to make decisions, too much time would be wasted when inexperienced workers make poor decisions or waste too much time trying to work out what the right decision should be. Such an approach is a necessary evil: if you are striving to achieve consistency and a certain standard across all supermarkets, then you have to quash any power by individuals working there to make decisions that could make the supermarket deviate from the corporate image that has to be fully uniform across every single supermarket in the chain.

This does have its downsides of course, workers in such situations feel like they have no decision making powers whatsoever and it can be disheartening to be in that kind of situation. In a supermarket, all staff have to wear a uniform to work - there are strict rules about what their attire and appearance. They have to stick to their work schedule and even their breaks are determined by that schedule. I was at my local supermarket when a customer was arguing with the cashier - the customer had bought a packet of biscuits which she didn't need and wanted a refund but she had lost the receipt. The customer insisted, "I was here earlier this afternoon, you were the cashier who served me, surely you remember me? I don't have the receipt but as you can see that this product is clearly from your supermarket." The cashier didn't have the authority to offer a refund or exchange without a receipt, so the cashier had to say, "please bear with me, let me get my manager to help you." Unfortunately for the cashier, the manager was busy so the customer was kept waiting for a while which displeased the customer. So the customer started complaining, "you're telling me, they don't  allow you to make a simple decision like that, even for that small amount of money? That if you gave me a refund without your manager's permission, then they would sack you for that - you would lose your job?" The cashier then said point blank to the customer, "yes, that's exactly the case. I am not allowed to do that." The customer then rolled her eyes at the cashier and said, "how old are you? You must be at least 40? Maybe 45? And you let them treat you like a young child at work? Only children are not allowed to do anything without asking for their parents' or the teachers' permission." 

It was a cruel comment to that cashier but unfortunately that was true - that cashier was being treated like a child at work. So by extension, the question about decision making powers is more about whether or not you're treated like a child or an adult at work and so the working class today like that cashier are treated like children at work. This doesn't necessarily mean that all people in this position earn very little, allow me to deal with a profession which is rather well paid but they have no decision making powers at all. Train drivers may command a respectable salary in the UK but they have zero decision making powers. To begin with, they can't even wear what they like to work - they have a uniform that they must wear. They have to undergo training to learn how to operate a train and they have to do exactly what they've been instructed to do when driving a train. They're given a work schedule and have to drive the trains according to the time table which they have no say over. Even if there is an emergency, say there is a landslide and the track ahead is blocked - the standard protocol in such a situation is to contact someone a lot more senior to report the incident and await further instructions. The train driver would never have the right to make any kind of decision in that kind of situation as any change to the train's plans would affect other trains on the network; so all decision making during an emergency has to be centralized. This makes our train driver no different from the cashier who had to ask for her manager's permission before giving the customer a refund, even if the train driver is paid a lot more than a supermarket cashier but they are both effectively treated like children at work - even if the train driver has far more complex instructions to follow. 

Now you may ask me, hey Alex, you think you're so freaking intelligent and you work in banking, but don't you also have a boss who would tell you what to do at work? Well yes, I do have a boss and he does give me 'instructions' at work but they usually involve some kind of problem solving like, "hey Alex, we have a big problem that needs solving, I don't have the solution but I expect you to solve it by November." Allow me to give you one such 'instruction': my company had created a Shariah-compliant product to target Muslim investors in the Middle East but somehow it has not been as popular as we had hoped, sales for this product have been disappointing compared to all of our other products so I was tasked with finding out why this product has been performing poorly and come up with a plan to fix the situation. So sure, I was told what needed to be done but I sure as hell have not been told how to do it. Oh I am expected to do my own research into the Islamic banking market in the Middle East and get the help I need (for example, by speaking to experts in the field) in order to deliver my solution. So contrast this challenge with the man working in the kitchens of a McDonald's restaurant preparing the various burgers: he simply needs to follow the recipe given to him for each burger and just do as he is told (ie. how many burgers to make, what time to make them etc). I get instructions from my boss but they are very different in nature compared to those in typical working class jobs, that's why I am paid a lot more than people who work in the supermarkets or fast food restaurants: they're not expected to solve complex problems but I am. 

The problem with this definition is that incompetent people can treat a job which requires serious problem solving skills as one where they simply follow instructions. Teaching is one such example: if you get a class of brilliant and enthusiastic students who have already done all their reading prior to stepping into your classroom, then teaching them would be so easy. But if you have a mixed ability class with some students who are struggling because they have learning difficulties, then the teacher has to figure out how to communicate that knowledge with the weaker students and that can be a really hard challenge. I have tried everything I can to help my nephew with his A level economics and quite frankly, I'm not sure I'm the best person for the job, but at least I am making a genuine effort; unlike his awful teacher at school, who has no desire to help my nephew and is quite happy to let him fail the subject. Her way of dealing with weaker students is to simply punish them by giving them more homework instead of taking the time to give them more personal attention and help - she is such a shockingly incompetent teacher who has a terrible attitude towards her responsibilities at work. Such is the problem when you put very working class people in jobs where you actually have to think and use your brains to come up with a unique solution to the problem - such working class people are unable to do that and simply default to cookie-cutter solutions rather than invent a bespoke solution. Thus my nephew's economics teacher is so atrociously bad at her job is because she has such a typical working class mindset; she is better off making burgers McDonald's than teaching, if she is neither prepared to do nor capable of delivering what is required of her as a teacher. 

So allow me to talk about another job which by this definition is so working class but you wouldn't normally associate it with working class folks: acting. When you're on set, the director calls the shots - the actors are completely in a 轮不到你开口 situation because you're often battling against time: you have two hours to shoot this scene at the location before the sun sets and if everyone starts offering their opinions and starting a discussion about how the scene should be performed, then you will never ever get anything done if you start asking everyone for their opinions! No, instead to actually complete the shoot in time and to work most efficiently, the golden rule is that everyone has got to be like a soldier in the army whereby the only acceptable response is "yes sir" when you're given an instruction by the director and you never ever open your mouth, you never ever say anything back and abide by the 轮不到你开口 rule. Sometimes you may be asked for your opinion and you're only allowed to offer it if invited to do so, but otherwise the rule of 轮不到你开口 is the default position for everyone. However, acting is not a profession that we would normally associate with anyone working class because of the very high barriers of entry - training at the top drama schools can be very expensive and you face a period of economic uncertainty as a young actor with little experience, so unless you have rich parents who are willing to support you through this period, this is an option not available for working class kids. Yet for the rich kids who go into acting, they're forced to adapt to a 轮不到你开口 environment, even if that's not the way they normally think.  

Thus I want to point out that there's nothing really wrong with the 轮不到你开口 mindset - it is simply a ruthlessly efficient way to get things done when you are working with a big group of people. By the same token, the phrase 'too many cooks spoil the broth' comes to mind when you end up in a situation where everyone is allowed to offer their opinion and you can never ever get anything done if you're trying to please everyone like that. Let me give you an example of how this could be a problem. My company decided to communicate with our clients with a newsletter and so this task was given to our creative agency who came up with what looked to me like a fairly standard corporate newsletter - nothing all that exciting but it was exactly what one would expect. Our designer then went round asking everyone for their opinion and I thought, great - I feel like part of the team now, I shall make useful suggestions and be very helpful. To be fair, I'm really great at things like that and I even got our designer to change the main graphic on the front page of the newsletter because I found all kinds of faults with the original image he had chosen, but because it involved a black man, I don't think anyone in the office (who incidentally, are all white - once again I am the only non-white person in the company) dared to object to it lest they came across as racist. I pointed out that it was nothing to do with the model's skin colour but the way he was poorly dressed and that was why this image simply didn't send out the right kind of corporate image for us. But that simple newsletter took weeks to prepare because the designer wanted to involve everyone and he was trying to please everyone in the company with the final product, so that was a classic case of "too many cooks spoil the broth"! 

So what determines whether you end up in a 轮不到你开口 working class job or a professional role where you're counted upon for your opinions, ideas and problem solving skills? This does boil down to one's education and this is when I get incredibly frustrated with my nephew's situation. He is your typical Singaporean student who is so hardworking but doesn't score well in the exams because he isn't trained in critical thinking - my regular readers will know that I am currently helping tutor him for his A level economics exam and don't get me wrong, he studies very hard, oh he is far more hardworking than I ever was. But he is merely memorizing the entire textbook and all of his revision notes, so if a question requires him to regurgitate something from the textbook, he can do that perfectly but if it requires him to exercise critical thinking - to apply a concept he has learnt to a case study, that's when it all falls apart for him. You can't get through A levels simply by memorizing your textbook without understanding the syllabus. His education has prepared him for a very working class job, where he would obediently follow instructions but with that kind of mindset, he can at best do a job like a train driver, where he has to memorize complex instructions instead of doing a job like mine, where I am paid to be creative, inventive and solve complex problems. This is why I am scornful about just how poorly Singaporean students perform in the working world despite being seemingly brilliant academically - the whole education system is run by teachers and bureaucrats who would never ever survive a day in the harsh, competitive business world.

The irony of course is that my nephew's parents are not working class at all - they both have pretty good jobs and earn a lot more money than your average working class person in Singapore. So money isn't an issue here - they could have easily paid for my nephew to get a much better education than the one that he is getting in Singapore currently (be it by sending him abroad or going to an international school in Singapore). However, they made the foolish mistake of having too much faith in the Singaporean system (oh that's so Singaporean). Are there enough jobs out there for every single student to become decision making bosses? Of course not, think about a big business like a supermarket chain: the vast majority of the staff simply put on their uniforms, turn up at work and simply do as they're told, obeying the instructions they are given; they are never asked for their opinions or ideas and the only people who do make strategic decisions about the business strategy are those in senior management, who represent a tiny proportion of the total workforce in that business. Thus the Singaporean system could even be described as realistic and pragmatic as there are very few jobs available in senior management and so by default, most people are going to end up in very working class positions where all they have to do is follow the instructions they are given. So if my nephew is not in the top 1% or even the top 5% of his cohort, then by default, his education ought to prepare him for a working class role - to simply be an obedient soldier who simply takes orders and follow instructions as his fate is to be a worker ant as he is not destined for senior management. Whilst this may sound awfully harsh to most parents, if I were to take a step back and conveniently ignore the fact that we're talking about my nephew here, this does sound like a rather pragmatic way to deal with this situation. 

So there you go, that's it from me on this topic - what do you think? What does it mean to be working class in 2021? Do you have any real decision making powers in your job? Would you have a problem putting on a uniform and working in a 轮不到你开口 environment where you were simply expected to follow instructions? Would you react to the 轮不到你开口 proposition by saying, "phew, thank goodness, making difficult decisions would stress me out, I'd rather just be told what to do," or would you say, "I'm educated, intelligent, bursting with business acumen and so experienced, how dare they treat me like a dumb kid who can't be trusted?" Are there more useful or accurate methods to define who is working class in the world today? Would you consider yourself 'working class'? Leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.