Faced with crushing academic debt and unable to find gig economy jobs in Las Vegas, Krista Diamond started to sell her plasma. After some react with horror when she reveals how she makes ends meet, she considers the far more demeaning work experiences she’s had in the past—in contrast with the kindness she’s experienced at the plasma bank.
“You shouldn’t have to do that,” people often say to me when I tell them where a portion of my income comes from. “It’s gross.”
But then I think of other things I’ve done for money, other people I’ve worked for. A restaurant where a manager would say “I like seeing you on your knees” each time he made me scrub the floor by hand. An artist who offered me $14 an hour to be her assistant, then forgot to pay me when I invoiced. A startup funded partially by a donor to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. All of these places where I did a lot more for a lot less, where I found myself physically ill over who my boss was, what my labor meant.
Of course you should be paid more to donate your plasma. Of course you’re getting the bad end of the deal. But isn’t that true of a lot of jobs?
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