▸ Column · Star Wars original-trilogy era — a freelance deckhand working contract labor on a spaceport docking bay
HAN SOLO replies.
Replied to by Han Solo, with a rebuttal from Leia Organa.
The letter
I pull contract work on a docking bay — eighteen credits an hour, no guild, no cushion. The bay chief, Priya, passes a collection tin around the whole twenty-two-being crew every time somebody has a hatchling, a name-day, a retirement, or a death in the family. With this many people that's a tin in my face about every ten days. I've already dropped forty credits this cycle. When I stalled on one — a card for a cargo clerk I've maybe spoken to twice — Priya parked herself at my station until I dug out my wallet. I like most of the crew and I don't want to be branded the cheap one, but this has stopped feeling like generosity and started feeling like a toll I never signed for. I tried "got no credits on me." She just pulled out the chit-transfer pad. Is there any way out of this without becoming the bay villain, or am I just bankrolling cake for strangers forever?
Han Solo replies
Kid, first thing: somebody who stands over your shoulder till you cough up credits isn't collecting for cake. She's running a route. I'd know — I've paid plenty of those "voluntary" tolls, and every last one came with a friendly face and a hand in my pocket. Jabba dressed his up nicer, but it's the same tin.
So let's not pretend this is loyalty. A card for a clerk you met twice? That's not showing up for somebody who'd show up for you. That's a tax with frosting on it.
Here's the part you already know. The "safe" move — keep paying so nobody calls you cheap — that's not manners, that's fear in a nice coat. On eighteen an hour you're not a miser, you're broke, and that's just a fact, not a confession.
Drop the "no credits on me" bit — that's a lie you'll have to feed forever, and she'll out-bluff you anyway. Give when you mean it, for the people you'd fly back for. The rest? Shut the wallet, shrug, "not this one, I'm on contract pay." Never tell me the odds on Priya liking it. Doesn't matter. It's your wallet.
— Han Solo
Leia Organa weighs in
Of course he tells you to shrug and mumble your way out. Half measures and a wisecrack — that man's whole filing system.
Here's the trouble with the shrug: it leaves Priya running the room. You're still hunting an exit she gets to approve. Don't. Decide your policy and say it once, in daylight, no apology: "On contract wages I give for people I know. Not the whole bay." Then hold it.
You're not the villain. The villain is whoever turns a kindness into a toll by parking at your desk. Name that, plainly, and you'll never spend another credit pretending you forgot your wallet. Spare me the act. Tell the truth and stand on it.
— Leia Organa
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