Paying Dues Isn’t Overated

There have been a lot of people talking about how ‘paying your dues’ is overrated, its turned into a hot topic of sorts for our generation.  I would like to offer a different view of this whole theory of paying your dues.  Maybe paying your dues to an organization is like rush week and pledging to a greek organization.

I do not like the term hazing, it has a stigma associated with it the moment you hear it.  Hazing is loosely defined as anything new members have to do which older members do not.  You don’t even need to be on campus to learn about alleged hazing activities greek organization use, turn on the TV, pop in Old School, or read the news.  I pledge to an organization my sophomore year of college and never did anything which I felt was harmful to myself physically or mentally, or did not want to do.  I have been in charge of rush week and I, along with my sisters, believe that if you want someone to join your organization there is no need to put them through hell and be mean to them.

The idea for many groups behind these ‘initiation’ activities is that it gives the new members an experience that they can only share with older members, it is bonding.  At alumni functions though I would talk to members who pledged in the 1980’s and hear what they went though, it was almost always followed up with something to the affect of, “You guys have it easy, you don’t know what it truly is like to earn your membership.”  They seem to have less respect for us because we did not have to display our desire to join in the manner which they did.

When I worked at an auto shop I use to do junk tires every Tuesday morning.  It involved two hours of throwing used tires down a shoot to have them loaded onto the junk tire truck.  I ended up doing this every Tuesday because every other entry level service technician refused to do it because it was two hours of base pay and they could make an extra thirty dollar on commission when I was up there.  The upper level technicians, many of whom had worked there over ten years, had more respect for me then the other level one technicians because I was willing to suck it up and pay my dues.

So when you start a new job and quickly by pass the ‘paying your dues’ phase maybe you are doing yourself a disservice because you are missing that equality with your coworkers leaving them feeling that you didn’t earn your position you were just entitled to it.  Just like the alumni don’t feel like we earned our membership because we didn’t go through the same circumstances they did.