Hacker News Reader

Comment by bogota | Hacker News Reader

I really don’t get this attitude. Are people just too full of themselves today to do menial work? I have a good job now but from before high school to after college I worked jobs in places were the customers were rude and treated you like shit along with your coworkers and managers. As far as I know you still need money to live do people think it’s now the responsibility of the government to take care of them if they have to work a job that sucks? I really can’t wrap my head around it it’s just not how i was raised. This just smells like entitlement at the same level people accuse “the rich” of having.

View on HN

It's entitlement to refuse to be treated like garbage? I feel like it's rather entitlement on the part of those who are treating workers like garbage. Employers expect employees to "go above and beyond" but I see that as a two way street. I will "go above and beyond" for a company that does likewise with me. I will do no more than the basic job functions if the job demands more than its rightful place in my life, or if they attempt to abuse me.

Being treated like garbage and a job inherently being shitty aren’t the same thing. People seem to confuse that.

All this is doing is driving automation at a faster pace and the people who once did the jobs will now have something new to complain about when they have no job available at all in 10 years

The majority of the jobs that can't hire people are customer facing jobs where the job is to be treated like garbage by customers

Fine, so find another job that suits your snowflake requirements

What do you think people are doing? Aren’t the business owners the snowflakes here, demanding their right to pay people peanuts for labor and earn them profits?

"Snowflake requirements" for saying that I put into a job the effort that they're willing to put into me, and no more? That's not a "snowflake requirement", that's the bare minimum of decency. What right does a job have to exploit the power differential to force you to be dependent on them in unhealthy ways?

People trying to better for themselves is not them being entitiled. There is nothing noble about working hard for bad pay and in bad conditions just for the sake of being a hard worker.

If people are choosing other options instead of going back to their shit jobs, and the system isn't providing good enough opportunities for enough people that's a failing of the system, not of those people for lacking a strong Protestant work ethic and not rolling over and letting themselves be exploited.

Anyway the video is about these people choosing to work for themselves or being otherwise entrepreneurial, not being entitled and lazy like you are implying.

So who does the hard jobs? Who slaughters the cows. Who picks the vegetables in 100 degrees.

It sure is damn noble. Someone has to do it, or we all have to. And I give those people amazing props for doing those things.

Many of us have either done those jobs and taken pride, or have family who have in order to better the lives of those children. Saying that work is not noble is demeaning to those who worked for your current standard of living.

>Saying that work is not noble is demeaning to those who worked for your current standard of living.

The video is about people choosing better opportunities for themselves. If there aren't people to do those hard jobs, then those jobs need to compete with the opportunities these people are choosing instead, for example through higher pay. Saying these people should choose worse work, for the benefit of others (eg. business owners), by appealing to some nebulous concept of nobility is exploitative.

Nobody until those employers start paying enough and stop making the job harder for the sake of policies that only serve the employers interests.

can't get workers to work hard 8 hours a day doing hard labor, maybe add more breaks than the minimum you are legally required to? Or maybe stop suspending the workers next two shifts because they were 5 minutes late from traffic 1 too many times? Maybe consider that threatening to fire workers if they don't work late or overtime isn't productive? Maybe stop paying minimum wage which hasn't risen with inflation or rent prices and increase your prices out to compensate or consider that if baseline worker wages have risen slower than inflation, but management's wages has risen faster than inflation, you've had to do so off the back of your workers ability to have spending money outside of barely living.

Great goals! Now start motivating people around you to ask for those things, vote on those issues, unionize their workplaces. Work half as hard as the generations that came before did to enshrine our current labor laws. Don’t just complain on YouTube videos. If the video had a coherent call to action and clear headed vision that’s one thing. But in reality a lot of it is clouded by misunderstandings of the job market and the world around them.

Right now there is a more effective strategy - just - do - nothing - wait out the exploitative employers until they come begging, and then dictate terms ... just as they used to.

Why do you think they will come begging you for anything. What power do you hold in the situation, given that their is not actually a labor shortage.

Maybe it's time we change attitudes towards menial jobs, then. No more accepting bad customer or managerial behaviour would be a start. Customer isn't always right, and even then they don't have to be encouraged being shitty to service workers by... Letting them pay the lowest price possible.

Maybe now shop owners will have better incentives to discipline their customers or give humane working conditions. Or you know, barring that, better pay.

About fucking time service workers had some bargaining power back.

> Maybe it's time we change attitudes towards menial jobs, then.

A menial job is not menial. It is just a job. Labels like "menial" and "low skill" aren't fair to anyone and are there to sell people on taking less pay.

> About fucking time service workers had some bargaining power back.

This is really the truth. It is about time.

I agree and should at least have put quotes in there.

I've made a personal mission of trying to rehumanize every damn job, saying hello, how are you, stopping sometimes to talk about kids or the shitty people leaving shit in the kids playground, or just asking how's the family going. Not only did I make friends with the bus drivers, the street cleaner, the store cashier, the security people everywhere, but now I feel better the pulses of my communities, and have a far less difficult time talking to new people and giving or asking for help. I know those people and they know me. During the pandemic, I just sometimes asked news about family or kids and the amazon drivers here were crushed, their families sick and dying all around. One of them stopped and just cried there. Yes as one other commentor said, it's a job, man up, do it. But also, when there's a crying father there telling me he's been yelled at the whole week, he's been late for deliveries for days, and getting his pay docked, fuck ALLL that. Come on, have a water, a coffee if you can stomach it, late for late... And talk. Learned some of my neighbors needed a talking to. No one deserves to be treated like that. I... didn't see people were so shitty to each other, especially what one lady called 'the help'.

Even the people I'm never gonna see again, it costs me almost nothing to say hi, hope your day's OK, thanks, and it brings sometimes the simple joy of talking for 2 minutes and feeling all fucking human. Some make it hard (uber eats kids...) but still, hi, everything OK? How's your family? I can't do much, but tipping and talking, yes.

And don't let me started on making your salary almost only from tips. You're really wondering why you can't find 'help'?

I think it requires superhuman levels of mental gymnastics to defend accusations against billionaires being parasites, while putting down the working class for not putting up with having people yell in their faces...

Honestly it's such a leap of logic that likely no one understands what exactly the thrust of your comment is trying to get at.

I'd like to look at the more charitable part of the argument: "back in my day, we worked shitty jobs and we liked it, because we needed money". Ok, sure. But the economy was different in the past.

Many people need to work 2 jobs to maintain the same standard of living. At the same time, the prestige and respect of such jobs have declined. There are less paths to retirement. This is a logical response to a system that is overworking people, without long-term prospects.

The Boomer generation needed just 306 hours of minimum wage work to pay for four years of public college. Millennials need 4,459. Calling that out doesn't sound like entitlement to me.

Sure call it out but not working is what im talking about. Life is always unfair. I started working in 2009 I am familiar with shit jobs that pay nothing.

It sounds like your saying "life is unfair so we have no obligation to try." I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but it's difficult. Maybe you meant something else.

Honestly, if you are trying to so a "back in my day" to 10 years ago... I think you should take a moment and reexamine some of the fundamental facts that you are basing your worldview on. You're likely relying on flawed anecdotal evidence to decide how things used to be.

It's possible your personal journey is effected by your experiences. 2009 was a financial crisis, when I'm sure many people were desperate for money. Others delayed entering the workforce by taking on college debt. It's not a sign of a healthy economy, but the strategic decisions of millions of people...

And in 2009 there was no pandemic. You weren't risking actual life and limb to work a 9-5. In 2009 most people didn't have smartphones. There was no real option to make money online.

And let's be clear: just because people aren't working for a corporation in a 9-5 doesn't imply they aren't working. Today you can make money online easier (Only Fans comes to mind). The people who become internet models can make more money quitting their jobs and devoting their effort to content creation. And honestly, a pornstar has more prestige and better hours than McDonald's, too...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com