“Display of superior knowledge is as great a vulgarity as display of superior wealth — greater indeed, inasmuch as knowledge should tend more definitely than wealth towards discretion and good manners.” – Henry Watson Fowler

After working to adjust from east coast time (-5 GMT) to Pacific time (-8 GMT), and then struggling to do my night shift job for the past 6 months, something akin to Guam at -10 GMT (sometimes closer to -12 GMT), I’m now back among the daywalkers; however, I have a terrible case of jetlag, combined with a natural disposition to be productive nocturnal. My shift started at 6:00pm and ran until approximately 2:00am, with occasions of working until 3:30am or 4:00am not unheard of.

Thoughts and observations from my night-shift experience:

1. Nightshift is not condusive to career advancement. I’ve only been here for 8 months (before I got “furloughed”), but I feel slightly stunted. Most of the execs are long since cashed out when I clock in to start my day. You are not around for those impropmtu meetings. Even among the peer level, you miss out on social events during work (lunches, after work outings, etc). You just need face time with people and night shift doesn’t allow that luxury as such during the day.

2. You don’t have a social life, or one that is severely crippled. Your friends, significant-other, and family don’t see you until the weekends, and even then, you are sleeping until at least noon. You can’t have dinner or after work-social with these people.

3. There’s not much happening in LA as I thought there might be, all hours of the night. The only food joints open are the sporadic greasy spoons. Even the ubiquitous traffic dies down at night. I had a 7 mile 20 minute commute going (at 530pm), and an 11 minute return commute.  I can often count the number of cars I see on the highway, coming home at 3:30am.

4. In reference to the aforementioned, don’t stay at work too late, other wise you will get caught in morning rush hour.

5. Your work colleagues become your social network. This is both good and bad. Good, because you see these people everyday. Bad, because you see these people everyday.

6. One of the bright-sides to working at night is that you do get the option be out-and-about during the daylight. And oh-what daylight it is, here in sunny Los Angeles. However, please see

7. Another plus to being a night-sider is the ability to experience lower traffic and human flow, when doing basic chores such as shopping.

Regardless of any positives, I’d really prefer not to work night shift.

And so I begin day two of my unemployment journey in the California Republic. One of my first steps at finding somewhat a locus of control on myself and situation has been to contact the State of California Emplopyment Development Department, in hopes of filing for some sort of unemployment insurance payments, until I secure regular employment again. Monday I racked up 86 call attempts, shut down in the phone cue, hung up automatically on because of number of callers. The system is too overloaded to even place callers in a cue. The irony of this, of course, costs this heavily in debt state even more pain to the tune of billions of dollars for just the failed calls.

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In the span of a weekend, I went to regions of France, Korea, and Japan…all without traveling more than a 10 mile radius, no passport needed. Omelets, croissant, and cheesecake, sushi and sake, and beef tongue and octopus. Signage, language, and “authentic customers” included.  File this one under “Reasons I Like Living in Los Angeles.”

I’ve been interested a lot of late in how folk make sense of the inequalities in our system and how we all arrived where we are. Of particular interest for me has always been the role of race in mitigating situational/structural/environmental explanations of poverty/disadvantage among those who identify as white. The race element of  that whole discussion is something for another day…

I’ve long been fond of the NYT special edition on “How Class Works”- and there are some data there that speak to some of the above mentioned concern. Namely, when one follows the link below, then to the “A Nationwide Poll” tab, then to the “What it takes to get ahead..” link on the left, something interesting is revealed.

How Class Works

While the value of education and hard work seems to be fairly evenly distributed across income categories, those making over $150,000 a year are the least likely to agree that intergenerational wealth transmission or social connections have any impact on how one gets ahead in life. Also, They are the most likely to attribute success to “Natural Ability”. To be direct, for the rich, it is not who they know or who their parents were, but it is all about their own talent and hard work. The strength of this kind of attribution of the reasons for success seem to be particularly strong for the wealthy.

While we do not have (quickly accessible) corresponding data for suppositions about how or why one does poorly, we can imagine similar patterns of attribution. Those with power and privilege see primarily individual agency as the reason for life chances much more than others. While this is what one familiar with research of stratification and inequality might expect, these data make the case pretty clearly- and in plain- as they say- black and white. Taken alone these data might just be the odd curiosity of a Sociologist, but when we take into account what we also know about where wealth really comes from- namely that most wealth in the world is still inherited rather than earned, and that access to social networks of power and prestige are still at least as important as formal education in gaining opportunity and wealth, one is left with a very interesting picture of the wealthy in the US. Interesting, indeed.