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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

> Lurching west in stop-and-go traffic on I-80 that morning, bound for Berkeley and a day of delivering in the rain, I had a low moment, dwelling on how far I’d come down in the world. Then I snapped out of it. I haven’t come down in the world. What’s come down in the world is the business model that sustained Time Inc. for decades. I’m pretty much the same writer, the same guy. I haven’t gone anywhere. My feet are the same.

When I’m in a rhythm, and my system’s working, and I slide open the side door and the parcel I’m looking for practically jumps into my hand, and the delivery takes 35 seconds and I’m on to the next one, I enjoy this gig. I like that it’s challenging, mentally and physically. As with the athletic contests I covered for my old employer, there’s a resolution, every day. I get to the end of my route, or I don’t. I deliver all the packages, or I don’t.

Delivering packages is a fine job doing honest labor. Amazon pays well. He has a good attitude. He is doing something the modern world needs. No shame in that.

If I was down on my luck I would have no problem doing whatever job exists. I have washed dishes, and I enjoyed that job. I think a lot of people think some types of work are beneath them but I respect all people who are productive members of society - and the flip-side is that I despise people who say these jobs are so “terrible” they need to be outlawed or whatever.

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Yeah - I liked that part of his essay too, I also just generally liked his writing.

There’s something satisfying in this kind of work with clear explicit goals and getting through the list everyday.

I think a lot of society issues seem to stem from how he briefly felt, that this kind of thing was a sign of failure or that he was embarrassed to tell friends at the holiday party.

The irony to me is that this kind of work is probably more valuable to society than sports illustrated and day to day almost certainly so.

If there was more cultural respect for these kinds of jobs, people would feel better about themselves while doing them. I think there should be. I was glad he felt good about it at the end.

There would probably be more respect even if nothing else changed except they paid more.

I knew a UPS long-haul driver who was making over $100k in 2003.

That was 2003 and a different career with different qualifications, not to mention work schedule.

My point is the potential is there for driving and delivering to rise in status and pay again.

This can’t be overstated. Dignity means having the financial stability required to comfortably live in a decent neighborhood, get married, and raise a family.

What if I don't want to get married and/or raise a family?

Then don't? Having the stability that you could is good either way.

I doubt it.

Both because Amazon pay is decent, but more so because it’s more about class expectations than it is about pay.

Lots of jobs make a lot of money, but are still not considered high status.

Jobs like what?

The only ones I can think of are ones which suddenly started paying a lot due to some market quirk (e.g. miners in Australia in the 2010s).

Class expectations just take a while to catch up (or never do if the market quirk doesn't persist).

Plumbing and electrician are the first two that come to mind.

Construction would probably be another.

Basically “blue collar” jobs that require a lot of expertise.

I’d guess some variation and small business risk, but I think many do well.

The reason those don't command respect is because they don't pay well in the main.

An experienced industrial electrician gets more than your average software developer, here in NZ.

Software devs in NZ are really badly paid.

Oil industry workers don’t seem to carry much clout, kind of a dirty job with a lot of physical labor, but pays quite well and has for a while.

Truckers can still make an upper middle class salary, especially if they own their truck or focus on a niche (refrigerated, military deliveries, cross border, etc.)

I was actually thinking of underwater welders when I wrote that. Not all oil industry jobs pay well but that one really can, and it carries the cachet to boot. It's definitely manual labor royalty - dangerous, highly skilled and pays up to $300k.

Truckers are not doing so well these days, and where they do make a lot it's typically because of backbreaking labor and/or taking on financial risks. This still only gets you into lower/mid tier software dev wages.

"I was actually thinking of underwater welders when I wrote that. Not all oil industry jobs pay well but that one really can, and it carries the cachet to boot. It's definitely manual labor royalty - dangerous, highly skilled and pays up to $300k."

A lot of the "well paying", low-status jobs mentioned in this thread are dangrous... long-haul truckers, construction workers, underwater welders, even electricians are jobs where you have to risk your life to do them, and many of them are statistically dangerous as well.

So whether the people who have such jobs are "well compensated" for risking their lives like that is debatable.

Certainly an IT manager job that paid the same as a trucker would be far more preferable in terms of safety, and would therefore be far better compensated when the danger of being a trucker is taken in to account.

Of course, low-paid delivery jobs are even worse when you consider that those low-paid delivery drivers have to risk their lives on the road to deliver your packages.

> “ and would therefore be far better compensated when the danger of being a trucker is taken in to account.”

This strikes me as just making up reasons why examples that disprove the status/pay point aren’t really disproving it.

If you can just make up reasons why your position is right anyway even in cases where it’s not, then it’s basically unfalsifiable.

>Truckers are not doing so well these days

I thought there was a trucker shortage happening?

There's always a labor shortage of some kind if you're the one paying the wages.

In truckers' cases it must be a shortage of experienced truckers willing to partake in backbreaking labor and take financial and health risks for $60k / year.

In Canada at least, any contractor/constructing job.

Plumbers, electricians are educated specialists making very very good hourly wage but won't get same status as say IT manager.

Bonded cleaner with great references can easily be 50 bucks an hour.

Truck drivers, forklift operators have steadily been well compensated and need certified skillset but again don't get same perceived class status.

Note I'm not saying I don't / these jobs shouldn't have respect :). Question was which well paid jobs are seen as different conferring class status despite good pay and this is the general perception I've observed.

https://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Industry=Construction/S...

Average is 66k CAD / year, apparently.

That's not amazing. Construction is also notorious for ruining your body (health problems / early retirement a necessity) so it's not even as good as a 66k CAD office wage.

Software jobs are low status.

We live in a bubble and respect good hackers but normies don't like nerds.

Hollywood portrays us between weirdo and pervert, while glorifying lawyers and doctors.

That has a lot more to do with personality than career. If you’re an irritating know-it-all weirdo, people aren’t going to like you regardless of your job. I’ve known engineers like that that, but most people I know and work with are normal people and are respected.

That victim blaming just plain doesn't line up with reality. Outright assholes are downright lionized. Perfectly upright people are looked down upon for "weird" fields or ones which make them feel insecure or inadequate.

> irritating know-it-all

Sounds like lawyers and doctors (or plenty of people really).

> weirdo

That is a bit of a stereotype. I suspect a large percentage of software jobs are filled by standard people. The weirdos do stand out, but I don’t know anyone who actually fits the Hollywood stereotype.

And weirdo be replaced by equally socially unacceptable traits (arrogant or closed-minded etcetera) that apply to doctors and lawyers.

Not really.

If you work in software people think it’s cool.

It maybe was low status 20 years ago, but since 2010 or so it’s changed.

Even in NYC the finance people prefer to talk about their app ideas rather than admit they work at a bank.

Compare that to someone who drives for Amazon - the cultural status is not the same.

> There’s something satisfying in this kind of work with clear explicit goals and getting through the list everyday.

This sums up my mid career crisis. I miss the jobs of my youth where I was just scheduled, showed up, did tasks, and left when scheduled. Of course, a flaw of memories like this is I mainly remember the good parts. When I really try, I remember things like lack of flexibility (working from home, leaving early to meet the plumber/doctor, etc) and honestly how difficult living on a low wage actually was and that was before all the responsibilities I’ve accumulated (family, homes, etc).

Also, I always found these jobs truly fun. The carefreeness of other employees and they types of characters you came across was eclectic and interesting. Corporate America does not allow of much of that and is fairly homogeneous even when diversified.

I laughed at your phrase "even when diversified". They promote all forms of diversity except diversity of thought. You'll get a far more interesting range of views from a small team of people delivering pizzas than you will from people working at Google.

I felt bad for him in the moment when he talked about being judged for being a senior and doing a "menial" job. Being a delivery driver is certainly not a high status job but I think it's a reminder not to allow ourselves to look down on any particular role in society. We need all these types of work for the gears to keep turning.

It's not an issue of "looking down" though. We absolutely need these jobs (some of them anyway, we don't really need restaurants for example). That's all the more reason to ensure that they are sustainable. We need rules so that people are paid well, working in safe conditions, not being overworked, etc. As a society we need to ensure that people doing vital stuff like delivery are protected and taken care of, for our sake as well as theirs. Post-Covid, Amazon has essentially become a core part of US infrastructure, as much or moreso than the USPS.

And of course, all of this is even more important for the reason the article highlights: These are the jobs people end up in now. In a country with a vanishing middle class and terrible social safety nets for seniors, increasingly large numbers of people end up here. Not just criminals, those who aren't especially bright or those who are a bit unlucky, but good, capable ordinary people have nowhere else to go now. If we're all going to be living here now, we need to start cleaning the place up.

When I worked at a grocery store I reflected on how the cleaner who came every night was one of the more important workers we had.

After all, who'd want to shop groceries at a dirty place when there's a nice, clean place just a bit down the road?

"We need all these types of work for the gears to keep turning."

Ok, we can all agree that until a high level of automation is achieved, such jobs are necessary.

But how many of the people defending the need for such jobs would actually want to do them?

Usually they're happy to let other people do them, but would balk at doing them themselves.

This is especially true for "dirty" or "unsavory" jobs such as garbageperson, exterminator, food processing / slaughterhouse worker, etc.

People are usually happy to hire such people or consume their products, and talk about how essential they are, but would never want to be one themselves.

On top of that, they'd usually look down on people with these jobs and never dream of associating with them or inviting them to their parties.

A professor friend of mine told me once that one of the secretaries was lamenting that "even garbagemen get paid more than I." Curmudgeon that he was, he suggested that she quit and become a garbageman. She replied in an offended tone "no way would I do a filthy, disgusting job like that."

QED

Every argument against Amazon-the-employer I have read recently seems to pretend that the people who work there have no choice but to work for Amazon, as if they didn't pick the job for themselves out of the array of possible options available to them.

I have a lot of issues with the way Amazon operates, but precisely nobody is forced to work there. This article does a good job of pointing that out.

People get forced to work in jobs they don't want to all of the time.

The array of possible jobs could be one or none.

If a basic income existed your point could be true. That's not reality today.

The array of possible unskilled jobs in almost every populated place is almost always >1.

It turns out that Amazon actually competes for labor in a vast market for same. So many people work there because they have to be a better option than most unskilled labor jobs because they have so many packages to deliver.

I’d you don’t have a lot of financial resources, and work a low paid job, you also tend not to have the time resources to explore the option. It comes at a high transaction cost.

My experience with wage workers that are struggling to make ends meet is different. They spend a lot of time looking for better jobs and side gigs. Like, it is their primary focus.

My unwanted opinion on that is their "lot of time" would be better invested in upgrading their skills so they can get a higher paying job.

I believe that in the USA you would have a much harder time finding an able-bodied person who cannot find an available job vs. someone with multiple options. My news this week is full of stories of employers who cannot find enough labor. We are very far away from a jobs crisis.

You can take a job that pays a penny an hour, but you can't live on a job that pays a penny an hour.

No you can’t. That would be illegal.

You can. I will glady pay you 0.01 an hour. I won't hire you as an employee but we'll sign a contract for a fix amount.

> My news this week is full of stories of employers who cannot find enough labor.

If someone said this about employment in software dev there'd be a thousand comments about how there isn't a shortage of labor, just of labor at the price point businesses want to pay.

There's a difference though. The news stories you're reading are about employees that are offering pay that's at a similar rate as unemployment benefits.

Workers are not OK working on slave wages that these employees want to pay them.

This is true for almost all labor "shortages" when there is anything less than full employment. If you struggle to find workers at a given wage, you're not paying enough. It's not like the world is out of people.

A true labor shortage could exist without full employment with ramp up time issues with skilled labor. That also means a shortage across the whole scope not just a single employer. As in "even if you paid a million a year salary you couldn't suddenly get 100 people capable of proficently reading and writing a long dead language when there are only seventeen professors world wide who can". The issues would correct themselves eventually longer term with sustained demand and training though.

> My news this week is full of stories of employers who cannot find enough labor.

Yeah, they can't find enough labor because they want to pay people $15 an hour in an area where the median home price is $572,000. I work in logistics. I occasionally overhear some of executive staff down the hall from my office complain about being unable to keep workers in a non-climate controlled warehouse, lifting enormously heavy things, for 8 hours a day, in one of the richest areas of Texas that isn't Houston or Dallas.

Gee, I can't imagine why people wouldn't want to work in a warehouse in 100 degree F weather, lifting 30-80 lbs. boxes for 8 hours.

So I pulled data on that warehouse and it's location. In-N-Out is hiring just 10 miles away for $16 an hour. Yeah, it's not a great job either, but it's air conditioned. And you won't be lifting anything heavier than a box of fries. Furthermore, the cheapest rent within a 10 mile radius of that warehouse is $1700. Good luck paying that on $15 an hour.

So yeah, I can understand why employers can't find workers...

The market is always a negotiation between buyers and sellers, naturally.

I have for years always gotten emails from recruiters trying to hire me as an FTE for SWE jobs in nothing towns in flyover states at 6x less than what I charge, too. Those positions are similarly unfilled.

People pick their best options available, usually.

If they can't find/keep labor for $15/hour, that means the price for labor in their market is greater than $15/hour. That's a good thing, as that's not true most places on this planet.

Surely it makes no sense to compare the median home price to the lowest paying jobs? We don’t really expect people who earn the least to be buying the median house. (And it’s silly to think that 100% home ownership is some kind of ideal, it has a lot of negative consequences so we’re better off with many people renting).

This claim would be stronger if you compared to the bottom 10% of housing, say.

Not sure what the housing market is where you live, but you can't get a house here, unless you make an offer 35% over asking and have cash on hand. Could you get a house for < million? Perhaps but it'll be "a fixer upper" to put it humorously. You're more likely looking at a trailer, and those have 5 year waiting period.

You understand that this is very unusual right? I mean, mere seconds of googling can show you that the average house price in the U.S. is about 270K, not 570K, and the average purchase price is not 35% over-asking unless there is a sudden epidemic of people under-asking and misvaluing their own homes.

> where the median home price is $572,000

Where did all the money come from in last 1 year to inflate the prices to this insanity.

So asset inflation is eventually going to make impact on labor prices and cause inflation. Then is why FED so cocksure that inflation is no big deal.

>So yeah, I can understand why employers can't find workers...

I don't understand why employers cant simply pay more and pass on the costs to their consumers. What's stoping them.

> Where did all the money come from in last 1 year to inflate the prices to this insanity.

We've been printing trillions over the past 15 years or so. And we've disproportionately accumulated it at the top (including the audience here, although the top 1% and 0.1% are doing even better than that). That money has to go somewhere. Traditional conservative investments have low rates of return right now - think low interest rates - and housing has historically been seen as "safe". And it's providing fantastic returns.

Take COVID - nobody wants to move, so housing supply is low. Tight supply is just exacerbating an existing issue, especially sharply over the past year.

Totally anecdotal: I just moved from SF to Seattle, somewhat related to my job. We were outbid half a dozen times, often by cash offers. I remember one of them in particular, because we got beat way over asking by a cash buyer, and it was rented on Zillow the week after closing. Housing is an asset class, not a place we live.

> I don't understand why employers cant simply pay more and pass on the costs to their consumers. What's stoping them.

Passing costs onto consumers is a bit of a lie used to scare consumers into opposing wage increases. You can only pass on so much cost, and it depends in part on the elasticity of demand for your product.

Anyhow, employers generally can pay more, but they are optimizing for their shareholders and return on equity. That's going pretty well if you look at the market. But that's why the market isn't reflective of the economy as a whole.

100% this. Quantitative easing basically caused epic asset inflation- great for the capital owning class, but royally fucking over the poors and young workers.

In Seattle back in the day a teacher could own a house in the city and pay it off without a sweat. Nowadays, unless you are a doctor or software engineer or patent lawyer it's kind of ludicrous idea.

"Take COVID - nobody wants to move, so housing supply is low."

I was under the impression that lots of people wanted to move out of the cities both because the high population of cities made living in them much riskier than living in more rural/suburban areas in terms of infection risk for COVID, and because with the economy hurting from COVID-related lockdowns living in cities (especially expensive ones like SF) was much less affordable.

Maybe, but I suspect those are mostly renters moving out. SF single family housing supply was also fairly tight - didn’t seem like that was who was leaving. We were renters so it wasn’t too hard to bail.

> > where the median home price is $572,000

> Where did all the money come from in last 1 year to inflate the prices to this insanity.

This area of Texas is not well-known to most people. It's a bit of a well-kept secret. While Austin is new money and trendy, and Dallas is cosmopolitan, this area of Texas is old... old money.

> I don't understand why employers cant simply pay more and pass on the costs to their consumers. What's stoping them.

Our company not only has two nationwide competitors, we have significant regional competitors across America, and on top of that, we're having to fight Amazon as well.

I get CC'ed and BCC'ed on most shifts in company policies because it can directly affect logistics and I need to be able to actively work around or with these policies, and things are getting so crazy that Directors of Operations at each warehouse are being tasked with asking low-level warehouse employees to clock out 15 minutes early each day just to avoid any possibility of overtime.

Obviously this creates logistics problems because when a warehouse fills up, you can't send any more stock from suppliers there. So I've had to fold COVID-19 absentee reports into our data analysis, because the loss of productivity from workers can directly affect storage space. For instance, one warehouse currently has three people out with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, but we contact traced another seven people between those three, so that's 10 workers out, 3 of which for at least a few weeks, possibly months. The other 7 until they're cleared by medical doctors. That could mean roughly a 30% reduction in ability to process merchandise at that location for up to a week or two, and around an 8% decline for several weeks or months.

So we can't pass the cost on to consumers because why would you buy a headlamp assembly for your Audi A6 from us for $479 when you can get it from Amazon for $382?

I think the question "why employers cant simply pay more and pass on the costs to their consumers" was rhetorical. Of course most employers cannot do this because their competitors will undercut them. They can only do it for costs that are imposed on all players, like government mandated minimum wage.

And I would bet you a week's pay the "job creators" who are complaining they can't find people willing to work for peanuts doing backbreaking miserable labor are the first to claim "we're full, no more immigrants!" to the US when there are plenty of folks in neighboring countries willing to work these jobs and pay taxes...

> are the first to claim "we're full, no more immigrants!"

You are wrong. businesses are primary drivers of illegal immigration into the country they want more immigrants not less.

They want more immigrants, and yet they support Republicans which massively slashed legal immigration the last time they controlled the government?

The type of jobs GP is referring to are dependent on illegal immigrants which was not reduced under last admin.

I'm not sure how that refutes my point that there are millions of people south of the border willing to work these backbreaking jobs for low pay if only our government could come up with some sensible immigration bill.

That these same people also exploit undocumented people is a separate issue. Give them papers and you'll have no problem finding jobs!

> I'm not sure how that refutes my point

I am refuting your point that people complaining about labor shortages shouldn't be voting republican. Which doesn't make sense because these ppl want

1. low regulation, taxes and lax labor laws.

2. availability of immigrants.

GOP provides both of these. Why would they care if ppl working for them are illegal or on h2 visa.

> Give them papers and you'll have no problem finding jobs!

Trump admin increased h2 visas despite what you are claiming. We had the highest number of h2 visas allocated under Trump and Bush and lowest under Obama admin. Obama slashed these visas by half from bush era. Most of the resistance to seasonal visas comes from democrat voting unions who lobby against these visas. They lobbied obama govt to slash those visas under the guise of protecting their local union memebers.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/biden-agenc...

Check these numbers for yourself here

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/FY08-A...

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Annual...

Trump increased h2 and then banned them after Covid so he could demagogue about brown people spreading disease.

Seems an important fact that's left out here!

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/president-trump-extends-ba...

But yes your larger point that Republicans are fine with migrants they can exploit for a few years as long as they can make sure they "go back to their country" is well taken!

Relatively few people object to sensible immigration policies. What they object to is undocumented hoards of people flooding across the borders.

You are confused by the fact that both parties SAY one thing about immigration and DO another.

This "both sides" nonsense is complete fiction.

There was a BIPARTISAN senate immigration reform bill that passed the senate in 2013. THIRTEEN Republicans voted for it and every Democrat and independent did.

It went to the house and died there because the Republican majority leader Boehner knew it would pass and refused to let it be voted on. He was beholden to the most xenophobic, bigoted Republicans in his caucus and thought they would vote him out of leadership if he let it pass. He ended up losing his job anyways shortly thereafter for other reasons.

Now the entire Republican party is beholden to the xenophobic bigots and I guarantee you the exact same bill wouldn't find more than 2 votes from a Republican in the senate.

So no, there is no "both sides" here. Democrats have been remarkably consistent about what an immigration compromise looks like, and even were able to pass it in the senate 7-8 years ago, only to be blown up by the Tea Party ur-Trumpists. The GOP has only moved further to the right and will never support anything close to that.

> Yeah, they can't find enough labor because they want to pay people $15 an hour in an area where the median home price is $572,000.

No, as in, can't find skilled labor for a good salary. The notion that only unskilled labor is sought after is incorrect. Good people are always hard to find. Smart people are always hard to find. But most workers are average, and it is hard to find a job that can support a half million mortgage for the worker who is average.

What is also true is that there is skilled labor in shrinking industries and that labor is not easy to transfer to other skilled industries. You can take a smart person in logistics and convert them into a highly sought after programmer with enough time and the right attitude, but if you already have a family then you can't handle the dip. Skill mismatch is a real problem, particularly given our penchant for outsourcing. But I don't see why meeting the mortgage needs of half million dollar homes should be the yardstick by which you judge a labor market.

Do they mention that pay will be rising to attract more able-bodied people?

Let us know if it's still an issue after the pay increases and work condition perks increased?

What they are not raising wages? Was the article looking at justifying some political point of view?

And for all the shrieking about Amazon destroying "mom and pop" shops these people never admit that Amazon pays their employees much more, often 2x what the mom and pop's did.

Or did you really think mom and pop were paying the teens running their bookstore $17/hr? You think they had great health insurance and other benefits?

I personally think it's ridiculous that people find it amazing that 15 an hour is considered amazing pay for anyone that isn't a teenager working their first job, but Amazon gets high praise for doing it. Most people on here would laugh at a job that pays 600 a week, 2400 a month or 28800 a year before taxes.

15 is there minimum though. Meaning any teenager with a driver's license is getting 15. This guy (a grownup with no delivery experience) was getting 17 plus overtime.

How much is 28800 a year after taxes?

Depends on state. ~$24K-$25K

No one is here saying it's "amazing"

I am here saying that, yes that paltry $15 an hour you scold Amazon for paying? Well mom and pop they drove out of business was paying about HALF of that.

forced, no - but in some areas it is the only viable place to work for many (speaking of warehouse)

> Amazon pays well.

If company has huge billion dollar profits, then they don't pay well. This is pure greed and exploitation. They get great value out of their employees but they don't share it amongst them. They share just enough so they don't look too bad to an untrained eye.

They share it with anyone willing to take a risk and buy a share.

Working at a job doesn't automatically give one ownership rights, any more than the mechanic who fixes your car gets a share in the proceeds when you sell it.

Many companies, however, do provide ownership rights to employees in the form of stock purchase plans and stock option plans. I don't know if Amazon provides such to warehouse workers, but I'd suspect it would be good business to do so.

Payment in salary and real shares (without dilution) is one of the ways that could work. For example if company made 1 billion profit, they could use 30% to buy stock or use their own and redistribute it to employees into their real broker accounts.

This section resonated with me too. I can learn a lot about how to have an honest yet positive appraisal of my circumstances from Austin.

I did customer service for an energy company. At the time they paid well! It wasn’t IT, but it taught me a few things. When I was able to do a stint in the hardship division for a few months, it showed me a side of society I hadn’t seen before.

I feel some Snow Crash vibe in there.

Amazon treats their workers like shit. Nearly all low-wage (and yes, Amazon is still "low-wage" given the work involved) employers do. In Amazon's case they then hire armies of corporate apologists to swarm social media and astroturf any time anyone tries to talk about the shitty way workers are treated. All of this is well established fact at this point.

I'm glad the author is doing well. But these are not good jobs. They are not stable, sustainable, safe or high paid enough. A person could have, presumably, led a pretty good life as a writer for a national magazine like SI. It would not destroy them physically. It would probably not destroy them mentally. They would not be forced to carefully regiment their bathroom breaks, or pee in bottles. They would not be forced to work in stifling hot warehouses. They would not be forced to compete with robots and automated processes and suffer when they inevitably failed to be as fast. Writing for SI is (was) a job. Working for Amazon is exploitation. If you can't see the difference, you either haven't taken the time to read about what Amazon jobs are like, or you're arguing in bad faith, possibly because Amazon is paying you to do so.

I worked at a UPS hub before Amazon was much of a thing, and I can say that what you're describing is nothing new or specific to Amazon. Logistics companies, especially in the warehouse/sorting areas, are abjectly horrid to work for.

edit: and that was a union gig.

There's a good book on such jobs called "Nickel and Dimed"[1] by Barbara Ehrenreich, who went "undercover" and worked a bunch of such low-paid jobs.

A quote from the book:

"When someone works for less pay than she can live on ... she has made a great sacrifice for you ... The "working poor" ... are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed

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