16 ms·

>>Many hourly jobs love to schedule people at seemingly random times, so they'll never know from one week to the next what times they'll have free and can't mak

>>Many hourly jobs love to schedule people at seemingly random times, so they'll never know from one week to the next what times they'll have free and can't make commitments outside of work. Some employers do this on purpose because they don't want their employees getting second or even third jobs that might leave them exhausted by the time they arrive for their shifts at the first job.

nostrademons 5y ago
It does make me wonder if anyone's ever tried "stochastic employment". Instead of having one (or even 2 or 3) jobs, have like ten. Show up whenever they call you in for your shift. If there's a conflict, just don't show up and see how long it takes for them to fire you. If they fire you, no big deal, you've got 9 other jobs. Periodically add more jobs to your collection when you start getting low on work. Basically invest the same amount of emotional energy in each job as they invest in you as a worker.
- svaha1728 5y ago
  Might work, but the none of these jobs are offering health care. The perks would be working nonstop for years of your life, and maybe free fast food.. not a great haul for gaming the system
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  They mark you forever. They can do a background check and find out why you were fired. I requested a copy of a job background check from TransUnion and it was creepy the amount of info that had been collected on me. There are big brother lists to track you.
  - xbar 5y ago
    The Right to Be Forgotten leads to some interesting thought experiments.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  I love this idea; you could use software to automatically auction your various skills and time to create bidding wars. You wake up and have no idea what job you are doing in the morning versus the afternoon, and you could see stats on what skills are making the most money to find training or shadowing opportunities.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  > If there's a conflict, just don't show up and see how long it takes for them to fire you. I like your idea but for the vast majority of jobs, the number of times you can fail to show up is in the neighborhood of “1”. You will run out of jobs far more quickly than you can acquire new ones. Assuming there is a fixed number of employers in your area, you will go through them pretty quickly. I like the idea for full-time remote tech work though, although I’d never have the stones to try it. Sign on to 10 different companies, do the minimum to not be fired, carefully accept the right set of Zoom meetings...
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    > You will run out of jobs far more quickly than you can acquire new ones. In urban areas, if you're looking for the garden-variety McJob, that's not really true. There are thousands of different employers in retail, food-service, small-scale manufacturing, etc. in a major metro area. Figure that it takes you 2-3 weeks to get fired at each one, you only need 1000 different employers to get through your working life. Maybe a bit more since you have multiple employers going at once, but still < 10,000. Plus there's turnover in employers as well - the average business fails within 5 years, so they drop out of the pool and are replaced by new businesses that have never heard of you.

nostrademons 5y ago

It does make me wonder if anyone's ever tried "stochastic employment". Instead of having one (or even 2 or 3) jobs, have like ten. Show up whenever they call you in for your shift. If there's a conflict, just don't show up and see how long it takes for them to fire you. If they fire you, no big deal, you've got 9 other jobs. Periodically add more jobs to your collection when you start getting low on work. Basically invest the same amount of emotional energy in each job as they invest in you as a worker.

svaha1728 5y ago
Might work, but the none of these jobs are offering health care. The perks would be working nonstop for years of your life, and maybe free fast food.. not a great haul for gaming the system
nickthemagicman 5y ago
They mark you forever. They can do a background check and find out why you were fired. I requested a copy of a job background check from TransUnion and it was creepy the amount of info that had been collected on me. There are big brother lists to track you.
- xbar 5y ago
  The Right to Be Forgotten leads to some interesting thought experiments.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
I love this idea; you could use software to automatically auction your various skills and time to create bidding wars. You wake up and have no idea what job you are doing in the morning versus the afternoon, and you could see stats on what skills are making the most money to find training or shadowing opportunities.
ryandrake 5y ago
> If there's a conflict, just don't show up and see how long it takes for them to fire you. I like your idea but for the vast majority of jobs, the number of times you can fail to show up is in the neighborhood of “1”. You will run out of jobs far more quickly than you can acquire new ones. Assuming there is a fixed number of employers in your area, you will go through them pretty quickly. I like the idea for full-time remote tech work though, although I’d never have the stones to try it. Sign on to 10 different companies, do the minimum to not be fired, carefully accept the right set of Zoom meetings...
- nostrademons 5y ago
  > You will run out of jobs far more quickly than you can acquire new ones. In urban areas, if you're looking for the garden-variety McJob, that's not really true. There are thousands of different employers in retail, food-service, small-scale manufacturing, etc. in a major metro area. Figure that it takes you 2-3 weeks to get fired at each one, you only need 1000 different employers to get through your working life. Maybe a bit more since you have multiple employers going at once, but still < 10,000. Plus there's turnover in employers as well - the average business fails within 5 years, so they drop out of the pool and are replaced by new businesses that have never heard of you.