my mom is helping me job hunt and when i told her my dream job is to sit in one place and sort stuff by color all day she made a really disgusted face and said “you want to work on a fucking assembly line?” like yeah
not to philosophize on your personal post or whatever but this really illustrates the problem with capitalism because there’s literally nothing wrong with working in an assembly line—other than, of course, the way the workers are treated.
you (and me, let’s be honest, because i would love to have a job like that) not only deserve to sort things by color all day but to also be treated with dignity and get paid a thriving wage for that work, and i am so very confused by why that’s a controversial statement.
the best job i ever had was making cushions for packages out of tissue paper. just over and over and over again. i had the best time doing that. it just would have been nice if it wasn’t ten hour shifts without air conditioning or seating.
Not everyone wants to be the king. Some people simply want to work the stables because they get to be around horses all day.
it’s not just wanting to be the king or whatever (though I hATE how wealth accumulation and ownership is pushed as the only metric of ‘success’)
it’s work that’s about solving puzzles, or that’s repetitive, or built entirely off social interaction, or entirely avoids social interaction, or is full of variety day-to-day; work that’s stationary, that requires lots of movement, that’s in one place or all over the place. it’s the endless variety of tasks needed (and desired) by society and the ways in which they’re broken up.
it’s the joy in doing something you love. and the pride in doing it well.
grumpy white collars who hate their job but took it because it’s not manual labour, assembly work, or customer service can fuck right off