Five Black Fridays at the mall food court | Hacker News Reader

Five Black Fridays at the mall food court

vox.com

75 pointsluu27 comments

"Gloria Jean’s was the best job I ever had, because it was the only time I felt like there was community to be found in an unnatural environment built solely for the purpose of buying things. I care more about the women who worked there than I do, no offense, about anyone I met in school or from Twitter"

Makes me think of the movie Clerks, and other depictions of this spirit of community in a unnatural commercial environment. Somehow the environment greatly strengthens these human connection. I do have nostalgia for these days. Corporations, instead of perfecting this kind of warmth and making the working environment tolerable, perfected exploitation. Always short sighted short term profit.

Shared struggle builds emotional bonds between people. Think military bootcamp.

Brings to mind one of my favorite Onion articles:

"Partygoers Mocked By Catering Staff"

https://www.theonion.com/partygoers-mocked-by-catering-staff...

Experts say mockery of the well-to-do by the serving class is a millennia-old tradition.

That reminds me of one of my favorite comedy series, Party Down. It was canceled largely because two of the actors (Adam Scott and Jane Lynch) were pulled into two major network shows (Parks & Recreation and Glee, respectively).

You can watch the first episode free here: https://www.starz.com/series/partydown/episodes/5131/details

Best article I've read in a long time.

meh

TLDR: his boss at a mall coffee shop was great and being a teen, he loved working for pocket cash on black fridays. i think the author has it all wrong and is mistaking his nostalgia and youth experience for the reality of modern day black friday. the fact he liked working is not a consequence of a particularly good boss.

not really worth the 5 minute read.

If you thought the author was a “he”, you obviously didn’t read it very closely.

yeah, this was very clear.. I mean there were even pictures.

Is it just me, or is HN becoming a dumping ground for worthless stories from internet "media" rags like Vox, The Atlantic, etc.? Are these outlets spamming their stories to HN, or are people simply karma-whoring?

The interests of HN participants is wide ranging. I suggest the liberal use of the "hide" link for stories you're not interested in.

>The interests of HN participants is wide ranging.

Sure, but I guess then I lament the lack of “approvable opinions”, or diversity of opinion.

See the guy above downvoted into oblivion for wanting more tech articles on hackernews. I don’t love it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between here and Reddit including the bubble and brigading.

Edit: well, way to prove my point about lack of “acceptable opinions” :D

I'm not against more tech articles on hacker news. The more articles, the better! But that is a separate issue from disliking certain articles that are submitted.

To your point about the bubble, that is why I want more articles that are not tech focused. I don't care about your javascript framework, I don't care about why this datastore is better over that datastore, and I most definitely don't care about why I should be using Python 3 over Python 2. I care about the intersection of technology and humanity, I care about biomedical developments (which you might consider outside of HN's wheelhouse), I care about how technology can be used to strengthen democracy, raise the poorest out of poverty, and to save lives. I care about people more than technology. Alongside these topics, I want intelligent discourse between subject matter experts and the intellectually curious. This is why I'm here.

EDIT: With regards to "approvable opinions", don't let the fake internet points discourage you. I still voice opinions that I think are based on sound thesis in this forum, regardless of how the hive responds. As the saying goes, "My opinions are my own".

We can both get what we want. Happy holidays to you!

Ha, yea I definitely don’t care. In this case I find it a curiosity of someone thinking ”I’m going to try and hide an opinion that people should have varying opinions!”. Without seeing any shortsightedness in themselves.

From the guidelines (bottom of the page):

Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

I was going to get rid of that feature until I learned that a certain founder of this site really likes it.

The perception is common but inaccurate. HN has always had plenty of general-interest articles.

HN's mandate is "anything that gratifies intellectual curiosity". As people's curiosities differ, so do their opinions about what's on topic. When you run into a streak of articles you don't like—and randomness guarantees such streaks—it starts to feel like HN has gone off the rails. The underlying system is more stable than that makes it seem.

Fortunately, if you don't like one article, there are others. For example, you can always look at what you missed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-11-21.

Oooh this link should totally go into the bar at the top of the screen.

I am often anxious about missing some important piece of news and it makes me keep reading, feeding my HN "addiction". If I knew I could just come back later and check yesterday's new I would feel a lot less compelled to finish reading the front page before it expires.

If we did that, what should the label be?

  'Yesterday' for only a link to the previous day or 'Archive' for a list of past dates.

I would also like to have this functionality readily available! :)

Maybe something as laconic as "front" would suffice?

That's a good suggestion. But it might be confusing to have a link 'front' on the actual front page. You're there already.

Maybe 'old' or 'older'...I kind of like that by contrast with 'new'.

Yeah, I think you are right.

"Older" would be my choice between those two.

"Recently popular" or "popular yesterday" or just "yesterday", or "the day before".

Those are all too long. Perhaps 'recent'? But then the history goes back all the way, so that's a bit misleading.

I'd prefer "recently" then. Recent works too.

Side topic....That link to show the front page on particular day is a pretty cool feature. Are they any others?

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