Work

[Friday]

Do we have a thread dedicated to work specifically? Apologies if we do.

Anyway, this popped in my feed because it's by the guy who did all the Rome stuff I recently watched. He's got a very slow speaking pace, so I recommend watching at 1.5 speed, or at least 1.25.

Anyway, good video of what work used to be, why it changed, and how it changed.



Some good points that this video touches on:

1. GDP is a terrible, awful, insane way to measure a country. That's like rating the average wealth of Duckburg by counting Scrooge's hoard.

2. The Stock market is 92% controlled by the upper 10%. That's not in the video, I just thought I'd mention it so the next time someone tells you that the stock market is doing well, so the average worker should shut up about the economy, you can tell them this fact, and then kill them.

3. Work fucking sucks and it's not you. It's work. It's the systems that capitalists built in order to enrich themselves.

4. It's more about power than it is about money. This is a very very important thing to understand, because there's a very common line of thinking that goes "Bosses will do whatever makes them the most money and that is why they are immoral/amoral." This is wrong, categorically. The thing that they care about most is power over your life. Money is of course a major concern, but it is secondary to them having power over your life.

5. haha funny joke about Marx.

6. isn't it funny? I know I'm fucking laughing

7. yeah Capitalism is the best though, Marx and everyone else who even dares to impinge on Capitalism at all is a complete mouth drooling retard, after all something something lift out of poverty, which I will say with a genuinely straight face despite the fact that half the world's population lives in deep poverty

8. but like what possible better system could there even be? lol

9. seriously though shut up and go back to work, and also regulations are bad and unions are bad and greedy and corrupt unlike us, your kind bosses who only care about you, the worker

10. have a pizza party instead of a raise

[Mongrel]

Well, you know my opinions on Corporations.

As for the workday, a hell of a lot could be improved by pushing for a 4-day workweek (or 6-hour work days), but at the moment it seems the main fight is to prevent corporations from rolling back work-from-home gains. Something which is also very much about power and control and not money.

[Friday]

Yeah I feel like work-from-home is like a perfect example. It reduces traffic, helps a bit with climate change, actually increases productivity, and makes your workforce happier.

And they want us to come back in so they can monitor us better.

There's some shit about office space/building value or somesuch that I don't fully understand but even if they would take a short term loss from having this building nobody uses anymore, surely in the long term a more productive and happier workforce would generate them more money. But they don't give a shit. Get back into the office so we can time your bathroom breaks.

[Mongrel]

Fuck commercial real estate - one of the best things that can happen to rents and urban spaces is for a shitload of office space to be converted to residential.

It's actually a somewhat complicated conversion, not just throw up some walls and remodel, since utility setups are often wildly different and some offices have really weird internal arrangements that make them hard to easily repurpose (but those tend to be big fancy HQ-type buildings, as opposed to large buildings divided between smaller business tenants who maybe use half of one floor or whatever. Those are more flexible to internal rearrangement). But like, that's still a very solvable problem.

[nosimpleway]

I mean, "We want you to come in so we can monitor you better" was the stated reason why they had me come back to work when I wanted to stay home to minimize COVID exposure to my daughter.

[Caithness]

a 4-day workweek (or 6-hour work days)

I currently have both of these!

[Mongrel]

a 4-day workweek (or 6-hour work days)

I currently have both of these!

So... you're on part-time? :D

Or are you actually saying you legit have that as a full workweek? Civil Service?

[Caithness]

part-time

[beatbandito]

I decided to quiet retire instead of quiet quit. That's when you work yourself to exhaustion in your 30s in a high-paying field in a high-cost area, then move to the midwest and get a part-time job to keep up with bills. Also don't have kids or any serious disabilities or hobbies.

[Destynova]

I decided to quiet retire instead of quiet quit. That's when you work yourself to exhaustion in your 30s in a high-paying field in a high-cost area, then move to the midwest and get a part-time job to keep up with bills. Also don't have kids or any serious disabilities or hobbies.

That sounds pretty good. I do have some people I really like here though, so moving next to you just isn't something I am keen on right now.

[Silversong]

This thread inspired a conversation last night, in which I realized I don't relate to most of this because I have spent the last ten years working in an institution that (my partner argues itself predates capitalism as we know it (1817), but at the least) follows a tradition that predates capitalism: the university.

It kind of gives me hope, thinking about it like that. Capitalism is young, and it's never worked particularly well. It's not impossible we could live to see the end of it.

I also happen to work for a university with incredibly strong branding, that has not had to join the race to the bottom to keep the lights on that some others have. It's a privileged position.

I am in a lower social order within it, being staff and not having a graduate degree. But I'm still quite well treated, especially since I switched units.

[Friday]

You had to put in enough time at Gamestop Hellscape that I feel you can 100% claim prole position

[Silversong]

I did put in my time at GameStop, but my store manager for most of that time was a gruff Puerto Rican guy with a heart of gold who gave my his butterfly knife and taught me to flip it _during my shift_. So it wasn't exactly the evil corporate experience.

The worst jobs I've had are the first one out of college (third party health insurance coverage) and the last one before academia (admin for tax accountants). In that order. Yes, even counting Hot Topic.

[Friday]

When I was in my late 20s there was a Hot Topic in the local mall (I think it's actually still there despite like 70% of the mall dying in the pandemic) and predictably there was this super hot Alt-Girl with tats, dyed hair, and piercings who did not give the slightest shit about her customers and would treat everyone with the exact same level of disdain for her shift before going home to, I don't know, play Animal Crossing.

Anyway I was in my early stages of admitting to myself that I liked girls and she was one of the very first girls I ever hit on intentionally. She of course reacted to my awkward attempts to compliment her fashion and style the exact same way she reacted to anyone talking to her about anything: with a barely contained sneer and a withering look followed by a monosyllabic response.

This did not discourage me as in my mind there was a sparkling kind soul buried under all that chrome and paint and disgust. So I kept hitting on her. For months. Eventually I did learn that sometimes people who present themselves as uninteresting assholes are, in fact, uninteresting assholes. Not that there's anything wrong with the Alt-look and in fact I am still diamond hard nipples just imagining a girl who styles like that. But if you treat everyone around you like they're pond scum then yeah, you're an asshole.

Anyway uh I moved on to hitting on Subway girl instead and we all know how well that worked out for me

[sei]

did you in fact eat fresh