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
These policies can help to improve the mental health of students
If the point is for the children to learn, then why wouldn’t you give them as many chances as it takes? What is the benefit of telling a child “you failed and that’s the end of it”?
I’m 25, and in my trade school, our tests aren’t judgement, they’re testing to see what we’ve retained, and identify what we’re missing.
If I weld a joint, and the CWI comes up behind me with a radiographic test for it and finds that I just laid hot metal on cold metal or it looks like a sponge inside, you know what’s gonna happen? You think they’re gonna give me a low score and tell me to move on? Fuck no. They’re gonna hand me a grinder and tell me to take it out and put it in right.
When there’s actual work to be done, we don’t leave it at the first attempt if that attempt was shit. We don’t leave a trail of “what’s done is done.” If it takes you four attempts, that’s what it takes, and next time it’ll take fewer because you learned how to do it right after the third time.
School, as it’s set up, with unforgiving deadlines and single attempt high stakes tests are building a shitty work ethic. It says “I tried once, and that’s all you’re getting.” It sets you up to leave a trail of cut losses and barely or unfinished projects as you scramble to get something, anything, turned in before the deadline.
We want to be useful, and we want to make people happy
Pay attention to this.
The other thing I would think about is [R.L. Stine’s] attitude towards work in general. So he obviously, on the one hand, is someone who works really hard. And on the other hand, he’s someone who’s very nontraditional in how he approached work. So he wanted to have a humor magazine and he didn’t care about doing well in school. He just liked writing jokes and then liked writing these books for kids. Like we’ve talked about before, he has this kind of antiauthoritarian attitude. Maybe for him, all work that isn’t work you want to do is bad. Both issues to do with bad workplaces, and then issues to do with classism come up a ton in his work. And I think they’re personal issues for him, too.
I think it’s easy to forget as a middle-aged that the beginning of something as nebulous as a career is daunting. I look ahead to taking classes and what I want to do next and just feel like “well, I’ll get there soon enough” with no real sense of pressure or hunger because I’m confident I’ll achieve it, but two decades ago I was absolutely DONE with classes and studying and ready to get on with work and paychecks and having some sense of adult accomplishment because no advice or kind words from older folks would make me believe that everything would be alright.
How do I get the ball rolling on a living wage paid to homecare workers i.e. every single stay-at-home parent and person who cares for our elders. Their service is vital to society and we treat their time like it’s a honorable sacrifice. It’s work, physically, emotionally, mentally exhausting work, and to tell people they must go work a paying job to sustain their job at home feels like such a con.
Getting closer. Moved into a bedroom for far less than I was paying in apartment rent, and I’ve reduced extra belongings to a 5 x 5 storage unit. Need to save up for proper window tinting, then install window blockers and curtains.
If all goes well, I’m living out of the XJ by December.
Current status of the cargo area. The platform is:
a big piece of particle board
scrap wood beams for support
hardtop gaskets from my old TJ to prevent sliding and scratching up the sheet metal
gray rustoleum
I made sure to leave that gap underneath the platform for ventilation. All essential tools, fluids, etc. sit underneath the area behind the seats. Wish I’d built an access door on the platform to make it easier, but it gets the job done. Holds up well.
