- cross-posted to:
- antiwork@slrpnk.net
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Honestly I love the idea of just living life hanging out and being helpful at my own pace. Fixing things, growing things. Helping people without the stress of quotas or productivity over my head.
Washing dishes at a restaurant was my jam. Cranking music, making the other staff happy since I could clear that place like nobody else. all the dishes were the same and fit in the machine that was made for them, so I could focus on making the most efficient system to get everything done fast. I was wet and standing on slippery concrete all day, but it’s rewarding being the best at something.
But it payed 7.00, and the managers treated me like shit. Only job I ever walked out of when the owner started scolding me for washing a bin that was brought to me that still had too many frozen peas in it in her opinion. Final straw after constantly being short staffed, changing shifts last minute, firing good managers to give their shitty kids the positions, and forcing everyone to fill in other jobs without training.
Fuck you, pie company. I could have been happy.
“we stan a dish king” was said about me at my last job
Everyone loves the dish washer, or else
GT Pie Company? If so, weirdly small world.
Yep. I opened one of their locations and lost 2 years of my life to their shitty owners. Loved my coworkers though.
Lol I was a nepo hire at one of the facilities that made their pies. Folks there were pretty nice too.
Drenched. Moisturised. Happy. In their lane. Thriving.
I was the king of the dish pit as a teen and I loved it! I remember showing up and the other guys making sighs of relief, cause they knew they could go on forever smoko and I’d be hyperfocusing on this advanced game of Tetris. But yeah management ruined it. Almost all my jobs were ruined by management.
Being useful vs being productive, the struggle of capitalism.
It hurts to think of all the absolutely necessary half a century ago national projects that need doing and we’re really just making more rentier jobs and worthless email jobs (that you definitely need to be in the office for)
I don’t love love plumbing but I’ll do it 30 hrs a week if it needs doing and I dont have to worry about my basic needs not getting met (especially when I get too old or injured to keep plumbing)
most shitty jobs aren’t that shitty if you take away the profit motive and treat people with a little dignity.
i like cooking people food but jesus fucking christ is it a lot of fucking work
I think if you weren’t in a cramped kitchen built to make the most out of space while avoiding safety regulations, the work would be easier. And then throw in the lack of shitty managers, bad pay, and bad schedules, and it seems more doable.
But yes, it’s still a lot of work.
It would be a lot easier if
- I always knew exactly how much food to make. Which is a solvable problem, it’s 2024, it’s a fucking school, have these fucking kids sign into an app and hit a button telling us if they’re eating in the dining hall and if so, what they think they want. If even a fraction of the students used it (and I mean, ideally force them to use it lol) it would still be better than just basically fucking guessing based on “well there were like 200 people for lunch, and they really like flank steak, so I guess let’s make… 70Ib of it??” but then woops 250 show up because fuck you, you needed 100Ib of it
and
- if I didn’t have to fucking clean up. After 6-7 hours of chopping shit and cooking I am really fucking tired, my legs hurt, my back hurts, and I cannot stress enough how much I don’t want to have to wipe down the tables, clean whatever equipment (flattop grill, fryer, steam kettles, tilt-stirrer, etc) I had to use, and sweep AND mop the fucking floors. I’m fucking tired, fuck. Especially fuck this shit when the other cooks basically don’t clean up or clean up shittily
I think I’d be a lot more okay with cleaning if I wasn’t so fucking tired. Shorter shifts and more breaks would make cleaning tollerable
“Who fucks my wife under communism?”
Same, my favorite job was working as a (non-certified) machinist and welder that designed and made in-house jigs and equipment for a factory. I loved designing the parts and then turning a pile of stock into a useful piece of equipment. I ended up becoming a PhD scientist and still miss that job. The worse part is that I totally could have made a decent career out of welding. My cousin is making more than me as a welder without any degree.
Can second this, my friend is making a decent living as a machinist. He had to ditch his first job because they were bullshitting him about promotions, and one of his bosses thought he was “too valuable to promote.”
and one of his bosses thought he was “too valuable to promote.”
bosses like that should be shot. no trial, no appeal.
Turns out I like helping people. If I could do that and not have to worry about affording food or a place to live then I wouldn’t really give a shit about pay.
You could just do what you do now, but after removing all the bullshit PR, Banking, Marketing and PMC jobs, there’s double the workforce so the plumbers work 50% and are happy because they have more time to work out and hang out with friends and family.
Alternatively: we repurpose “self-driving” Tesla busses, put in a bunch of sleep pods and turn them into mobile automated gulags on wheels. They just drive up and unload a crew of former PMCs/CEOs led in at gunpoint by AI robodog, restrained by shock-collar, that amazon gadget registering if you’re moving or not and geo-fencing as they are forced to scrub that bowl, fix that leak, paint that wall and so on. They get re-educated in VR (that detects if your eye-lids are closed or not) as they are transported between worksites and sustain themselves on a steady diet of soylent meal-replacement. The busses are parked on a repurposed luxury liner just circling the globe picking them up and unloading them to disaster sites as needed. Trapped in a high-tech torment nexus of their own creation until they repent, after which they get a small apartment and a bicycle in some really small town where they can never hurt anyone again. Fully automated so no camp guards are needed or hurt.
Plumbers and other tradesmen are so hard to get in the current economy that I often see them be treated with the same reverence as doctors or priests when shit hits the fan. Maybe it’s different in the US or UK but parents pushing their children into white collar and PMC jobs has created a massive void in our economy.
These parents must sell up everything and live in poverty to lend their white collar children just enough to qualify for mortgages to buy hyperspeculated ovepriced assets once referred to as “homes”. Still no other system is possible then this aparantly.
Only the ancients had technology to build these so called “homes”. A sort of hollowed out cube made from wood or concrete, with bent metal tubes, and twisted copper strings that could make light where the sun didn’t shine, transport fresh water in and poop out. It’s lost to us now. Only a handful of secretive “handy men” posses the knowledge and they keep it a well guarded secret.
scrub that bowl, fix that leak, paint that wall
We make a highly habit-forming mobile game out of this, where they earn cryptocurrency so it feels like they’re going to become billionaires, then we crash the crypto
Nobody. We all just poop on our balls at that point.
There’s days I miss catering, as brutal as it got. But the pay was really bad, especially considering how fast you burn through dress pants and how the money barely covers the laundry and parking that you inevitably find yourself paying for at some locations. But goddamn, I even get a smile thinking about the time I put in 30 hours in 2 days. Absolute hell; I lusted for it.
There’s just something about jobs where you know ya made somebody happy.
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that sounds fucking rad tbh
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based. I spent a lot of time at a local zen center for a few years, I got derailed when I was sick for a long time but I’d like to get back to it someday. o7, maybe you’ll be a cool old monk someday once your kids are doing their own things
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probably me, i suppose.
I would love to cook food for other people if it was under proper conditions and valued fairly.
I worked a summer where I maintained shrubbery at retirement homes and it was incredibly rewarding, would love to do it, but not for minimum wage and not without breaks in the hot summer sun for 9 hours a day.
I would love to work on a ship transporting essential goods, but I’m neurodivergent, so I’m not allowed
I’d love to work with children, I used to and it was rewarding as fuck. However I don’t wanna be the sole person responsible for 25 minors (including a few with special needs) especially when I have no formal education in the field. Even less when my wage gets cut. Even less when the field got less and less financial support.
I’d love to teach the elderly how to speak another language or develop other skills. I volunteered for this once and enjoyed it. Just didn’t have time to volunteer, and there’s no paid gigs.
I’ve loved working in the service industry as a waiter, a tour guide, a chef and a lot more and it was all so rewarding. Work conditions sucked the life out of me however.
I worked in demolition and loved it, I would love to do that kind of hard labour if I knew safety precautions were taken and I could be sure management didn’t screw me out of wages. However I can’t, because both things happened often.I would not like to show up and rubber-stamp public infrastructure plans I know suck shit, but it’s the job that pays the best, so I guess this is what society needs. Society is just desperate for me to clock in, take an hour long shit, drink a litre of coffee, steal from the canteen (out of principle) and fuck about on social media for a few hours. I don’t see the utility and it is making me depressed, but I guess this is what society needs. Capitalism is the most efficient distributor of resources after all.
The material conditions that precede full communism would mean that no job would need doing unless you want to do it. Automation, robots, etc would take care of all the menial labor. Human labor would be absolutely voluntary and recreational.
But I get we’re talking lower stage communism ie socialism. People are willing to do the jobs required by the world around them when treated with respect and dignity, without exploitation and corporate dictatorship. And if sincerely nobody wanted to do it full time, alternative models exist, like dividing basic janitorial work amongst office staff with a chore chart
