by Thursday evening, and I’ve just filed my haunted house workers piece. “Unpaid Screams” and “Toxic Ectoplasm Exposure” as labor violations. I’m either brilliant or having a breakdown. Possibly both.
The research was disturbingly real. Haunted house workersactual humans who jump out at strangers for entertainmentmake roughly $10-12 per hour, work in physically demanding conditions, and often sign liability waivers that would make OSHA weep. But sure, let’s focus on the fake ectoplasm instead of the real exploitation.
That’s the trick with good satire. You take a real problemgig economy labor exploitation, unsafe working conditions, wage theftand you wrap it in absurdity. “Skeletons demand better working conditions” is funny. Seasonal workers lacking basic protections isn’t. But if I wrote the serious version, nobody would read it. Satire is vegetables hidden in dessert. You eat the joke, you digest the truth.
I interviewed a haunted house worker off the record. Real person, real job, real grievances. They told me about working 6-hour shifts in heavy makeup, getting groped by drunk customers, and having zero recourse because they’re classified as “seasonal entertainment contractors.” My satirical union demands aren’t exaggerationthey’re barely fictionalized reality.
This is what being an immigrant satirist means: seeing the obvious. Americans have normalized labor exploitation to the point where haunted house workers getting minimum wage with no benefits seems fine. It’s entertainment! It’s seasonal! It’s not a “real job!” And I’m sitting here thinking: you’ve created an entire industry around temporary Halloween labor and nobody questions why these workers have fewer rights than the plastic decorations they work beside.
My editor wanted me to add more jokes. I wanted to add more rage. We compromised: jokes layered over barely-concealed rage. It’s my signature style at this point. “Funny-but-make-it-furious.” Harvard prepared me for literary analysis; television writing taught me structure; but being an African immigrant in America taught me how to package anger as entertainment.
The piece goes live tomorrow. I expect the usual responses: “Too political,” “Just let people enjoy Halloween,” and my personal favorite, “Why do you hate fun?” I don’t hate fun. I hate exploitation. But Americans confuse the two because acknowledging exploitation would require examining systems they benefit from. Easier to accuse me of joy-killing.
Tonight, wine. Tomorrow, whatever fresh American absurdity demands satirical attention. There’s never a shortage. This country produces content faster than I can mock it. It’s job security, but at what cost to my sanity?
# 771
MY HOME PAGE: Bohiney Magazine (Aisha Muharrar)
