The spirit of I will the machine was fundamentally in conflict with my years riding horses. I was directing the autonomy of something else.
Then, the bike raised my own to the second power.
_____
Two years after moving into a van, a decision I made to stay committed to the expensive sport of cycling despite socioeconomic immobility and no financial safety net, I took a job at a private horse facility in Missouri. This decision let me keep my foot in both worlds, each running on what I was already trained in- raw endurance and elemental exposure.
I remained at this property for two and a half years. I have outlined the mounting dysfunction within that environment as the second case in Projection, Your Honor, under ‘The Masked Horseman’. I recommend reading that passage first for the full arc of this story, but it is not required.
In the time since, I have worked as a barn hand at three other locations. At one of them, a veteran had asked me,
“Genna, you’re almost 30. When are you going to get your shit together?”
I don’t remember my reply, but I do remember that it didn’t matter. Because my choice of work was based on present function, not future strategy. I could shovel shit, deadlift 50 lbs over and over and over again, tolerate rope burns, bites, and bruises, in all weather, without complaint. I was preprogrammed for the physical and emotional stability needed for the job, and the informality meant I didn’t have to pretend to have the publicly agreeable personality that I have always found more exhausting. My pursuits in life have also never been rooted in what I was paid to do, and that is still a concept that hasn’t been widely accepted in this culture yet.
But the inability to separate purpose from person has a shadow.
_____
I had been hired by another, more public lesson barn not far from the former one. I was documented and paid as an independent contractor, yet scheduled and directed as a standard employee. I had noticed the barn owner was incredibly lax in their directions, though, and learned months later that labeling barn staff as self-employed is a common and unlawful cost-cutting measure that spans many industries, and depends on vulnerable employees not knowing their rights. It places all tax burden onto already low-wage workers, allows the employer to sidestep payroll expenses, and is often prefaced with an illegitimate signed document signifying that a worker has “chosen” that designation.
One of the many qualifications for someone to qualify as “independent” by official standards is that the client does not dictate when, where, and how the work is performed.
Up to this point, I was praised for being so capable, fit, independent, flexible, and having a solid work ethic when “good help is hard to find.” I said “yes” when there was no limiting factor requiring a “no,” and was invited to holiday parties as family despite my hesitance to be social in a work environment. I was thanked constantly and shown almost… too much warmth from my boss.
I was relied on heavily as one of two full-time employees, and began to feel the gap between energy expenditure and wage widening. I learned that I had been misclassified by sheer chance one evening and began searching for new employment. I made the mistake of being honest about the latter part and was fired on the spot.
_____
Later that year, a friend sent me a job listing for an even larger barn in Illinois looking for help. I messaged the owner/trainer, who lived on the property, and was very clear that I lived in my van (this is appealing to barns that would benefit from staff also living on site, but don’t have the facilities). Upon being hired, the owner described themselves as “harsh, but fair.”
I was soon cleaning every stall in the barn solo, in a constant state of vigilance and urgency, and referred to as the “skinny little thoroughbred.”
One evening, I was putting blankets on the owner’s personal horse to take him outside. The owner had stressed that I needed to be careful that every clasp was secure because this guy spooked easily at loose blankets, so I double-checked everything. Not long after turning him out and moving on to other horses, I heard commotion at the opposite end of the farm. This horse had busted through the fence with his blanket fanning behind him and charged around the perimeter of the property in a panic. The owner hauled around to me in the side-by-side, yelled at me to get in, and chased after him. Driving aggressively, they continued to yell that this was my fault, that “their $100k horse was going to break his legs,” and that all of the pits in the grass were going to be my job to fix. They caught the guy, walked him back to the barn, and I returned the farm vehicle. As I was walking back through the barn in quiet shock, a boarder asked,
“Are you okay?”
This person had not been privy to the entire incident, so I immediately wondered,
What do you know that I don’t?
I walked out to my van to make a phone call, and sat there until after dark, frozen. The barn owner came out to me eventually and asked something like “what my deal was.”
“How long do you need to find my replacement?” I asked.
They immediately tore into me the same way that is historic when I imply that I am choosing my own safety and dignity over commitment to a job- by lamenting how ridiculous I was being.
Without even denying that I was at fault, even though I believed I wasn’t because horses do wild shit even when everything is done perfectly, I reminded the barn owner how I had already told them I had been struggling with a days-old breakup among everything that is… less-than-ideal when living in an old vehicle.
“You think you have it hard, have you ever been raped?”
And they stood there until I answered the question.
I stopped feeding the conversation, and they eventually left me alone.
I did not finish my shift, and at around 1:00 a.m., I drove out.
I did not turn my headlights on until I reached the road.
_____
I was fired again yesterday.
I start college in January.
“Good help is hard to find,” in horse barns, and I have a mile-and-a-quarter résumé. I took a part-time position just to get me by until I made the transition to full-time student, and this one seemed significantly less uptight, yet still efficient.
I was still trying to recover from a season-long burnout from leaving an abusive relationship, another van breakdown, and riding my bike to a job I loved, 40 miles away, for three weeks until they cut my hours for performance issues and I had to quit.
I had done the barn grind for longer before, and no longer lived in the van, so this wasn’t the same risk.
Yet, somewhere around the three-month mark, in jobs and relationships both, the performance stops.
Including mine.
I had told my bosses that I needed to drop down to four days a week as I wasn’t keeping up with the workload well. They obliged. Every night before I left, I was thanked effusively again.
Told how stout my work ethic was.
How self-sufficient and fit I was.
Invited to holiday parties, on the clock (that I politely declined).
I would agree to cover an extra day every other week or so, and then noticed that I was being asked for my schedule to flex weekly with the trainer expressing guilt for it, while also overexplaining the need.
I was bitten hard in the upper arm, that I have lingering pain in over two weeks later, and was told the barn would cover half of the bill if I chose to see a doctor (I didn’t).
The day before Thanksgiving, which I had already agreed to cover so the owner/trainer could make a rare visit to family in another state, I was asked if it was okay to be paid late because they forgot to submit payroll early for the holiday.
To that, I finally said “no.”
My body was starting to tell me “no,” too.
I started to space out in the stalls, struggle to lift muck tubs that should have been easy, become suddenly drowsy and experience occasional waves of chills despite being perfectly dressed for the fall.
On the worst possible day for them as the person they relied on heavily outside of the barn manager, I had to text them that I couldn’t come in. I had experienced another crash and bout of fatigue the night before, and unbeknownst to me until last night, had a mild, unrelated infection that was likely a contributor.
All of this on top of a dangerous individual being arrested in my driveway,
worrying over finances,
planning to be a first-time college student,
my body already not standing up to any of my competitive pursuits since the early spring, for the first time ever,
and everything else I described,
and this machine is putting the screws to me.
They responded immediately.
“You have to come in today. We need you. We don’t have days off. Now we have to cover for you too. This other person worked on their birthday. We’re all fatigued. We’ve been nothing but kind to you.”
And exactly seven minutes later,
they also said I was no longer needed.
_____
Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle until the ride comes to a complete stop.
The ride does not stop.
This isn’t about the horses.
I will the machine. 