Emotional Laboring

In March of 2024, I was still out of work and looking for quick gigs between applications to try and stay afloat. Through a flyer on my ex’s car, I found one. I thought that getting around twenty-five dollars per hour was a great rate for a gig, but I quickly realized that to be enticed into that job again, I would need at least fifty. It was the most emotionally taxing job I have ever done. Before beginning, I didn’t think I’d ever work as a petitioner, and after ending the day, I don’t think I ever will again. I finished that long day drenched in sweat, covered in exhaust fumes, and trying not to cry until I was safely home.

The Most Emotionally Taxing Gig I’ve Ever Had and the Reasons Why

Before getting into why the job drained me so, I am going to explain the job without explicitly stating what I was petitioning for, to set the stage. For one day, I was petitioning to get Female Bodily Autonomy on the state’s ballot so it could be voted into state law. I was lucky I believed in the cause myself (because petitioners for hire don’t know what they’re going to petition for until they get to the interview), but that didn’t make it any less easy. I never would have assumed that one day of a job could be so difficult. I honestly thought I was stronger than that. But after thinking about why I was so drained, I decided that you’d have to be abnormally detached or already armed with training to endure this kind of work.

Engaging with Strangers on Divisive Topics

I had to engage with strangers, one after the other, on the heated and divisive topic of Female Bodily Autonomy to get enough valid signatures to fill my campaign-mandated quota for the day. I had to pursue people in a grocery store parking lot (without permission from the grocery store to be there, mind you, so I could go no closer to the store than the parking lot) and ask them to sign for Female Bodily Autonomy to be on the state ballot; but I was actually asking them was “Are you with us or against us?” I did not have the chance to stop and talk with them, exchange stories, collect new insight, or bridge gaps empathetically because once I gotten their signature I was supposed to move on to the next person. After all, I had a quota to fill. The nature of the job mandated I move fast and constantly. For every person I engaged, I was either the embodiment of their ideals or their devil incarnate, and I just had to live with that because there was no time for me to show them I valued their humanity and that I was human too.

Employing Tactics of Manipulation

As I mentioned earlier, I was petitioning to get Female Bodily Autonomy on the state ballot (with the ultimate goal of local citizens voting it into law). I faced many dissenters in my pursuit of signatures, so, I was given a clever tactic to get them to sign the petition too. It went like this: 

Me: Sign here to get Female Bodily Autonomy on the ballot!

Stranger: No, I’m against Female Bodily Autonomy.

Me: By signing to get this on the ballot, you will have the opportunity to vote against it.

Reactions went one of two ways…

Stranger: Oh, yeah. I’ll sign so I can vote “no.”

Or

Stranger: No, I don’t even want it on the ballot.

There were more colorful responses that I wish I felt safe enough to share here, but that was the gist of what I encountered. It did feel not great.

Being Let In on Frightening Thought Patterns

While I did not feel particularly good about employing a manipulation tactic, I felt fear and apprehension toward individuals I would consider neighbors and fellow community members after becoming privy to their thought patterns and steadfast biases. If the manipulation tactic worked, I learned that while they do not want Female Bodily Autonomy written into law, they respect the democratic process enough to risk it. If the tactic did not work, I learned that they were so against Female Bodily Autonomy that they were willing to bypass the entire democratic process for the sake of their ideals. I must admit that realization scared me. From my perspective, I was seeing their inner demon rear its ugly head. It’s frightening to see the monster in your fellow man and realize my fellow man sees me as a monster, too.

Contending with Religion

I do need to add that not all dissenters who wanted to bypass the democratic process to keep this issue out of the ballot did so with nasty commentary and hostility towards myself. Some of them were almost saintly in their refusal.

The most common reason I have found for people to be against Female Bodily Autonomy is religion. I am familiar with weaponizing religion as a tool for oppression, but it’s difficult to contend with it over and over again when the people using it to oppress have convinced themselves what they are doing is right and just. Moreover, when religion was the reason for dissent, those individuals often wanted to engage with me, find out my religion, preach to me, and change my heart. Since I was out there to engage quickly and “efficiently”, I was not ready to be the subject of evangelization—and yet I was. I was emotionally moved by a few individuals, but it did not change my stance. I still believed what I believed. Nonetheless, it was a lot to endure even if it was out of what the other individual felt to be love.

No Place to Rest

Being emotionally drained can physically drain me. During particularly rough bouts of depression, I want to sleep more, sit more, and engage in general bed rot. Outside, in that grocery store parking lot with a clipboard and pen in hand, and no chair in sight, I was drained. I would perch on curbs for brief moments, but there was nowhere for me to sit out of the sun and away from people so I could take my petitioner mask off. My feet hurt, I was sunburned, I was sweaty, and I was coated in a thin layer of grime from walking between cars all day. It was taxing spending eight hours in a place designed for cars, not people. I couldn’t even take myself home right away. I had to wait to get picked up along with my fellow petitioners since we had all dispersed from one car.

I was relieved to get to my car and have a respite from the sun, soot, and other’s emotions. I was tired of being heroized, demonized, or preached to. I was tired of feeling out of place, exposed, and unable to rest. I was tired of feeling separate from humanity by representing an issue. 

Applying My Reflections on That Day to Other Jobs

When I got home that evening, I cried. I cried and called my team lead and said I couldn’t go back. She was disappointed since I had gotten so many signatures but understood why I couldn’t do it again. I was done. I took a long shower that night and let it all out.

A couple of days later, I began to reflect on the specific reasons petitioning had been so hard on me. I realized it wasn’t the first emotionally taxing job I’d had, but it was the first one that took so much out of me in the shortest amount of time.

I pondered other emotionally taxing jobs: teacher, therapist, emergency responder, caretaker, healthcare worker. Then I added to that list: political activist, spiritual leader, petitioner… All these jobs involve working with people when they’re vulnerable or risking having to engage with their intense emotions and personal demons.

Now when I look at jobs, I ask myself questions about them. Could the nature of the job leave me isolated? Could I handle that, or do I need the company of others to get the work done? I look at the company culture. Have they created an environment humans could thrive, or do they sacrifice the worker for exponential profits? I look to see if expectations are clear or if there’s too much vagueness that could result in spinning gears, misunderstood expectations, and a lack of progress ending with the feeling of defeat. Could I handle that vagueness and give it structure or could I end up feeling disempowered and defeated? Does the job come with support from others, or will it be a lot for one person? All the questions I ask myself are to help me determine if I am up to the emotional labor of that job. The only way to find out for sure is to do it, but now I try to mentally prepare.

I never thought I would work as a petitioner, but I am glad I did it because it awakened me to the importance of acknowledging the emotional labor of laboring. It made me realize we need to factor that into our searches, and how we work with people, and normalize discussing it so we can see each other as entire beings rather than job titles. We need to talk about what makes a job hard so we can help each other cope, safeguard our sanity, and maintain our humanity in the systems we exist within. Despite the longstanding culture of keeping emotions outside the office, jobs are emotional because the people who do them are emotional creatures and that’s okay.