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I'm not so sure, there is more than a grain of truth in it. Years ago after dropping-out of uni I ended up doing building work in the UK. Finding somewhere to
by jimnotgym 8y ago
I'm not so sure, there is more than a grain of truth in it. Years ago after dropping-out of uni I ended up doing building work in the UK. Finding somewhere to have a pee was all consuming a lot of the time. I think it would have been terrible for a woman! If you were working on the exterior of a house you would almost never be offered the use of a toilet. In fact often you would be locked out.
Lots of middle-class customers seemed to relish having some 'help' for a day. Seemingly normal people turned into the 'Lord of the Manor' and talked to you like dirt. I found early on as a young and naive team member that clients would come and chat to me hoping to find some information to use against the boss. I could work at someone's house for 6 months and watch them avoid me in town a couple of months later.
I once finished work at a house and saw the owner was sat at a table on his lawn with guests. I walked over to say I was leaving, and the old guy dropped his drink and ran over to me all agitated. He didn't want to talk to me with guests there!
After hours I have had 'friends' I would chat too for a few weeks in the student pubs about literature or something. I'm no Will Hunting, but... I remember one week discussing mediaeval literature with a girl (who was interested that I knew some stories from the Mabinogian, an ancient Welsh text), who then found out I was a builder and said some unkind things and never spoke to me again.
One kind gent always had a cup of tea for us at his house, and kind words about our work, but actively avoided me in the street.
It really confused some of them years later to see me in my regulation pinstripe suit, they didn't know what to say! The fact that I had been a builder was a drag on my career for a while, even with a few years of office experience people still got strange about that on my CV. One former employer told me he nearly blocked my appointment for it without meeting me, and was pleased to admit he was wrong. I don't put it on my CV any more.
So yes people can be real a-holes about manual workers. Believe it.
Tipping is not really a big thing in the UK at all, so I can't help there.
- jstewartmobile 8y agoI think we all accept that most people who have to deal directly with the public put up with a lot of garbage. That is the kernel of truth. 10 mentions of Fox News, having "Obama to hate," and the commentary on the bookshelves and exaggerated tippings of Joe Six-Pack seem a little embellished if you ask me. edit: Maybe not even "embellished" as much as editorial bias--blowing some odd occurrence out-of-proportion while glossing over the mode.
- fzeroracer 8y agoIt sure sounds like you have an axe to grind solely because the author explained their circumstances and experiences. I don't doubt what she went through in the least, in particular because I've known and experienced the exact same hatred. And some people are going to face even more garbage than others solely based on their skin color or sexual orientation.
- AckSyn 8y agoIt reads more like a fictitious trope than anything else.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoThe author and publisher clearly have many axes to grind. It's a highly politicized piece from HuffPo, designed for effect. No doubt there's some credibility in the piece because it's based on a degree of real life experience, but it's also the most biased kind of writing possible as well, which gives it considerably less validity. Sadly, if it were written in a more dispassionate tone, it mightn't have been published at all, and we'd have never seen it, which is maybe an important side lesson.
- fzeroracer 8y agoYou're clearly not willing to address the article itself, instead you're intent on dismissing it for political reasons. And of course it's going to be biased because individual experiences are biased. That doesn't make their experience any less interesting or valuable to understand because as it turns out, seeing things from all kinds of different perspectives is important for critical thinking and getting a larger picture.
- postingtoofast 8y agoWould you be so indignant about the article being dismissed if the negative stereotypes it anecdotally verified were focused on man hating social justice cat ladies or equality spouting yuppies who hypocritically abuse undocumented immigrants as cheap nannies and yard workers?
- man-and-laptop 8y ago> I could work at someone's house for 6 months and watch them avoid me in town a couple of months later. Maybe those people were just introverted, or felt unsure about what you thought of them.
- jimnotgym 8y agoMaybe I knew those people well enough to adjust for that?