Can you work that hard until you’re 72?

I’m grateful for the special friends who have contributed toward our Catalyst Kitchen culinary training program, so we can turn our kitchen into a classroom that will help a lot of people move into a variety of jobs, including catering, food preparation, food service and hospitality. It’s a great step forward.

But working in a kitchen is difficult physical labor. It takes a lot of stamina. And so many of the people who come to us come from equally demanding backgrounds. They’re the real working class, people who used their hands to make a living. They’re the carpenters, the gardeners, the housekeepers and the caregivers. They thought they could get ahead by hard work, but now they are getting more and more behind.

Some of these folks come to us with injuries, disabilities or they’ve just aged to the point that they need a desk job. We’ve got to find Information-Age careers they can do. Especially since the political trend we are seeing lately is making the retirement age as high as 72.

I don’t know about you, but how long do you think your body will hold up? My mother tried to work until she was 65, but after 40 years of standing on concrete floors, her knees forced her to retire at 62. That was pretty heroic. But here at the Mission, I see people who have been aged by decades from their hard life on the streets. There is just no way they are going to be able to do physical labor until the age of 72.

What are your thoughts on this brave new world of employment? What kinds of jobs can provide a living wage that someone here at the Mission could do until age 72?

Let me know what you think. Or if you might be interested in hiring someone here. You might just be the answer we are looking for!