4 ms·
Not trying to be too snarky here, but blue-collaredness and excelling at one's job are quite orthogonal in my head.
by pbh101 10y ago
Not trying to be too snarky here, but blue-collaredness and excelling at one's job are quite orthogonal in my head.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Sacho 10y agoThat is true - blue collar is a type of job, while excellence is a measure of job performance. Perhaps parent just meant to say that the characters mostly work white collar jobs, and accidentally conflated the two. An interesting counter-example would be Friends, where one of the characters worked a blue-collar job, and none were explicitly "excellent".
- icebraining 10y agoI don't see that implication in OP's post..?
- Sacho 10y agoYou are right, the implication is actually that "blue-collardness" cannot be extraordinary, but that flies in the face of common sense, considering all the stories about courageous and heroic policemen, firefighters, and so on.
- alistairSH 10y agoCertainly true. However, note that the blue collar jobs you mention are "career" blue collar jobs. They occupy a different place in society than "just a job" blue collar roles. You don't often hear stories about heroic stock boys or shoe salesmen.
- Touche 10y agoYeah, that's what happened. You can be an excellent welder but I don't think I've ever seen such a character on television. Being successful = white collared work and upward mobility.
- ap22213 10y agoCould you give some examples? I've seen blue collar workers who excel, and I've seen white collar workers who don't. I haven't noticed any correlation either way.
- michaelt 10y ago"orthogonal" means "at right angles" - or "statistically independent" Perhaps what pbh101 means is whether you're good at your job or not is unrelated to whether you're blue-collared or not. With that interpretation, you and he are in agreement.
- pbh101 10y ago>Perhaps what pbh101 means is whether you're good at your job or not is unrelated to whether you're blue-collared or not. Yep :)
- wycx 10y agoHow would you classify a tool-and-die maker?
- pbh101 10y agoI am not familiar first-hand with the occupation, though after a quick scan of Wikipedia it sounds blue-collar to me. Not sure how this relates to my original comment. For clarity, do see my clarification under sibling comment at [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11623522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11623522
- wycx 10y agoWith that clarification, it clear I misunderstood your point. My (now unnecessary) point was that whilst tool-and-die makers are blue collar, I consider that profession to be full of practitioners of excellence (at least the ones I have encountered).