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As long as we accept the need for people to be janitors, we must accept that becoming a janitor is not a "mistake", it's a useful thing that we all want to see

• jaggederest 9y ago
  Doing janitorial work is not a mistake, but being a janitor for 40 years certainly is. It's not the core job, it's the fact that there's zero growth or mobility even possible that is the issue.
  • wavefunction 9y ago
    >It's not the core job, it's the fact that there's zero growth or mobility even possible that is the issue. Not everyone is a 'striver.' Some folks just want to pay their bills and enjoy what time they can with their family and friends.
    • jaggederest 9y ago
      Even those 'non-striver' people would prefer to have growth over time, in their position, wage, and skills. Humans are not static - we like to learn and we get very frustrated when we can't improve over time.
      • barrkel 9y ago
        Do you think everybody finds growth and meaning in their job? Many people find it in their family, in sport, in clubs, and work is just a wage.
        • philjohn 9y ago
          And yet, the Janitor in this piece can't afford to take a holiday, so is it a stretch to assume she doesn't have much free time either?!?
          • bb88 9y ago
            Yes, if she's hourly, because they probably won't pay overtime.
          • jiggunjer 9y ago
            Maybe the fact that she's a single mom with 4 kids is a factor too. I think a janitor with a single dependent would have a more acceptable standard of living.
            • jaggederest 9y ago
              Are you making a modest proposal that people should go from four kids to one, post facto? I think everyone deserves to be able to have vacation time, especially single parents.
              • jiggunjer 9y ago
                I'm not proposing anything. Just suggesting that there are more factors than income that affect 'inequality'. An article that focusses on inequality due to low income should perhaps pick an example with a more typical family situation.
                • URSpider94 9y ago
                  Rewind 50 years, and it would be highly typical for a janitor to support a wife and 3 kids on HIS salary - families were larger, and mothers didn't work. The fact that a working single mom can't support her four kids today is indicative in and of itself.
                  • Chris2048 9y ago
        • jaggederest 9y ago
          I don't think everybody finds all of their growth and meaning in their job, but I do think that everyone would like to have at least some growth and meaning in their job. Even if all you're doing is getting better at the job itself, people value mastery and expertise.
      • manicdee 9y ago
        Why does the growth and change have to come from the job?
    • oarla 9y ago
      As a society, if we figure out an economic system which doesn't lead to inflation, then all would benefit by not having to grow their net worth, and in turn, have a job that doesn't have any growth prospects.
      • solomatov 9y ago
        How are growth prospect and inflation related? You can keep your net worth by investing into assets which have growth above the inflation level which isn't that hard.
        • oarla 9y ago
          By growth, I meant increase in wages to at least keep up with inflation. Janitorial jobs haven't kept up with inflation. Nowadays, rent increases by about 10% YoY. But wages don't increase by that much.
  • fiblye 9y ago
    Life isn't all about getting promoted. Loads of people get far more satisfaction from knowing they're carrying out an important duty than they do from knowing they got promoted from Javascript Ninja to Javascript Assassin.
    • jaggederest 9y ago
      I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm not saying getting promoted. I'm saying getting better at being a janitor, or rotating between different properties, or learning to do a little light maintenance, or operate a lift or clean windows, or anything to break up the 100% identical routine. If you're a contracted employee, there's zero investment in you as an employee. You come in, do the task, and leave.
      • rrauenza 9y ago
        You're touching upon a little of something called 'The Growth Mindset' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset#Fixed_and_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset#Fixed_and_growth In the Bay Area schools my kids attend, they are working hard to emphasize this growth mindset. I think it's huge component in job mobility, whether it be upward or sideways.
  • mikeash 9y ago
    So, let's make growth and mobility possible for janitors. The whole point of the article is that it used to be, so we should be able to do it again.
    • jaggederest 9y ago
      That's exactly what I'm saying, and I'm not sure why people in this thread are misunderstanding it.
      • mikeash 9y ago
        I thought you were saying that growth or mobility was inherently impossible for a janitor. Maybe because you describe being a janitor for 40 years as a mistake rather than as a failure of the system. Anyway, if you meant it the other way around then consider my reply some extra support for the idea.
        • jaggederest 9y ago
          I was just using the parent comment verbiage. Perhaps I should have quoted it. I meant a mistake by society, i.e. it's a mistake to put people in a dead-end job, functionally ever.
          • mikeash 9y ago
            Gotcha. Maybe it could have been worded better but I understand what you mean now, so it's all good.
  • solidsnack9000 9y ago
    It is actually entirely fine, from the perspective of getting the job done, if someone is a janitor for forty years. There is no reason that being useful should net out to a bad life.
    • jaggederest 9y ago
      Right. I'm saying there's no opportunity, not that there should be a requirement. I'm saying that we're trapping poor people in a world where they are totally powerless and that is fundamentally evil.
      • kakarot 9y ago
        As long as there are old, ugly men who want to have sex with young, beautiful women no matter the cost to either party, economic exploitation will remain at the heart of civilization, stunting our growth to the point of deformity.
        • jaggederest 9y ago
          Interestingly enough I don't think that's actually the warping factor any more. It used to be, certainly, but I think these days we've gone beyond "I would like to own people as chattel property", and all the way to "I want to be the biggest metaphorical genitalia in my particular subregion of the country"
          • kakarot 9y ago
            I see your point, though it does seem like these are both extensions of the same underlying instinctual desires present in males, mainly the need for dominance (expressed in only a small percentage of the population for evolutionary reasons) and the need for sexual gratification / production of offspring. Being the biggest metaphorical genitalia around will lead to fulfillment of both of those things.
• trapperkeeper74 9y ago
  Robots aren't capable of doing everything people can do yet, but as they become more capable, what and how are displaced unskilled workers supposed to do if they can't get any job at all? Starve to death under a bridge? Not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor. I think this is why UBI is essential: prevent riots and meet people's basic needs so they're not pennyless and sleeping rough.
  • lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
    Your statement "not everyone can handle social or intellectual labor" is a larger sociological problem. If we insist that the only people allowed to participate in the labor market are college educated white guys, maybe; I don't see that statusquo continuing. The hoops some members of this forum will jump through to convince themselves that building CRUD apps is some zenith of intellectual might just continues to astound me.
    • glhaynes 9y ago
      Seems a strange complaint when janitorial positions (which aren’t often held by college educated white guys) are under discussion. Presuming we want people to have good lives who aren’t able or inclined to do jobs requiring much higher intellectual demands than janitorial ones (and I certainly do want us to presume that!), we need to figure out how to in the short term allow people doing those jobs to have good lives and in the long term allow them to have good lives while robots do those jobs. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your comment.
      • posguy 9y ago
        There are massive economic upheavals occurring right now, and we as a society have decided that most people get to live a hardscrabble existence where an unexpected $500 expense will ruin a person or family financially. This economic system isn't working for the vast majority of Americans, hence the support for Bernie and Trump.
      • lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
• Chris2048 9y ago
  Becoming a janitor is not a mistake. Having so few options that janitor is all you can be, along with many other people (competition), is the mistake. If everyone had better options, fewer would be willing to be janitors, and the need for janitors would cause janitorial wages to increase. Basically, society is partly competitive.
  • solidsnack9000 9y ago
    In a vacuum, yes -- but societies can enter modalities where returns to labor are very low, relative to capital or real property. This was a phenomenon known to Smith in the 1770s. There are simply not enough alternatives to go around -- and you end up with societies where there is a massive (and unstable) gap between rich and poor. If a position does not pay well enough for someone to have a family and raise and educate two or three children, it can be said not to pay for itself: which is to say, not to pay for its renewal from generation to generation. This is the real standard by which we must consider the wages paid to those positions, like waiters and teachers and janitors, which are perennial.
    • Chris2048 9y ago
      > This is the real standard.. Why is it? A job is better than welfare, therefore it has value. The requirement that jobs are 'renewable' is only required of the average job, not every job.
      • solidsnack9000 9y ago
        It's worth asking what it means for it to be required by the average job. Being renewable doesn't seem to admit of a lot of variation -- things are or aren't (but we could discuss something more formal for this and that would affect the remaining analysis). Accepting the idea that renewability is either slightly more than 1.0 or slightly less, if the "average job" is renewable it suggests most of the common jobs have to be renewable in practice. We could argue this in another way, which is to say that the average "career life course" or let's just say "life course" has to be renewable. This is where we encounter the idea that people should be setting themselves up for promotions -- but most people don't get promotions. It's not how life works. Promotions don't address the concern for the average life course.