4 ms·

I'd take driving a truck and having to piss in a bottle over working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of 100.

Clubber 5y ago
Pssh, I'd take working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of a 100 compared to being a slave. Race to the bottom mentality.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  That's an unnecessary (inflammatory) diversion from the comparison, which is the core of the thread. I understand you want to elevate the conversation to what YOU feel strongly about, but posting it on impulse is not constructive.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. I applied the argument to his example to show how silly it was to dismiss current working conditions like that. What he was doing is the same arguments used for the last 40 years to make our work lives worse and worse. Like I said, it's a race to the bottom mentality. I mean what point do you think he was trying to make? That he respects the hard work steel workers endured? Sure, I guess, but I suspect the overriding narrative he was trying to convey was that Amazon workers ain't got it so tough. They should suck it up. That's how I read it. Remember how Chinese workers were killing themselves in factories and the first counter argument was along the lines of, "their lives were much worse before, they should be thankful for those jobs." Guess who's propaganda that was. Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud.
    - Supermancho 5y ago
      > The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. You're personalizing a fairly dry back and forth discussion about subjective experience and then deciding that it's constructive to minimize their attempt at coming to a common ground in service of some moral recognition of a higher level wrong. > Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud. I tried to explain why you're not being constructive. Good luck with whatever.
      - Clubber 5y ago
        Stop being so sanctimonious, it's not constructive.
- bserge 5y ago
  A slave in either case, though.
paganel 5y ago
Not sure about how the situation is in the States but the people driving those quick delivery vans over here in Eastern Europe (and over much of Western Europe, too, my country is in the EU so their companies can send them anywhere from Varna to close to Gibraltar at a moment's notice) have a very, very tough life, with many of them doing 14-16-hour driving stints. Apart of the huge stress that entails and the accompanying health conditions many of them also get into fatal road accidents because of said overwork and tiredness. Fortunately the work of drivers driving big lorries is more tightly regulated with the worker's wellbeing also taken into consideration so that there's a fixed time interval per day you are allowed to drive, after which you have to literally stop at the first parking spot at the side of the road, no matter what the boss screams in your phone from half-way across the continent.
- rytis 5y ago
  > with many of them doing 14-16-hour driving stints Are they not required to comply with driving time trackers? From https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/driving_time_en https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/...: "Daily driving period shall not exceed 9 hours, with an exemption of twice a week when it can be extended to 10 hours."
  - paganel 5y ago
    > Are they not required to comply with driving time trackers? Unfortunately not for the smaller vans. In your link they mention: > road haulage and passenger transport vehicles, which "road haulage" I'm pretty sure means the regular big lorries we all think about. But when driving a Mercedes Sprinter [1] the same rules don't apply. You can actually drive that Sprinter with a regular driver's license, while for a regular lorry you need to take additional exams so that you can get into the "you can drive a lorry/big truck" category. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/2019_Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter_314_CDi_2.1.jpg/1200px-2019_Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter_314_CDi_2.1.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/20...
  - michaelt 5y ago
    If you're driving an 18-wheeler truck, sure. But a lot of door-to-door delivery these days uses "independent contractors" who use their personal vehicles and fuel, and get paid e.g. £120 for 180 deliveries. Nobody's enforcing digital tacho cards for people's personal vehicles.

Clubber 5y ago

Pssh, I'd take working in a steel mill or a coal mine 100 times out of a 100 compared to being a slave. Race to the bottom mentality.

Supermancho 5y ago
That's an unnecessary (inflammatory) diversion from the comparison, which is the core of the thread. I understand you want to elevate the conversation to what YOU feel strongly about, but posting it on impulse is not constructive.
- Clubber 5y ago
  The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. I applied the argument to his example to show how silly it was to dismiss current working conditions like that. What he was doing is the same arguments used for the last 40 years to make our work lives worse and worse. Like I said, it's a race to the bottom mentality. I mean what point do you think he was trying to make? That he respects the hard work steel workers endured? Sure, I guess, but I suspect the overriding narrative he was trying to convey was that Amazon workers ain't got it so tough. They should suck it up. That's how I read it. Remember how Chinese workers were killing themselves in factories and the first counter argument was along the lines of, "their lives were much worse before, they should be thankful for those jobs." Guess who's propaganda that was. Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud.
  - Supermancho 5y ago
    > The person I was replying to was trying to minimize the crap job that Amazon workers were subject to by comparing it to job conditions 100 years earlier. You're personalizing a fairly dry back and forth discussion about subjective experience and then deciding that it's constructive to minimize their attempt at coming to a common ground in service of some moral recognition of a higher level wrong. > Not sure how it was inflammatory but your scolding / virtue signaling wasn't very constructive either, bud. I tried to explain why you're not being constructive. Good luck with whatever.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      Stop being so sanctimonious, it's not constructive.
bserge 5y ago
A slave in either case, though.

paganel 5y ago

Not sure about how the situation is in the States but the people driving those quick delivery vans over here in Eastern Europe (and over much of Western Europe, too, my country is in the EU so their companies can send them anywhere from Varna to close to Gibraltar at a moment's notice) have a very, very tough life, with many of them doing 14-16-hour driving stints. Apart of the huge stress that entails and the accompanying health conditions many of them also get into fatal road accidents because of said overwork and tiredness. Fortunately the work of drivers driving big lorries is more tightly regulated with the worker's wellbeing also taken into consideration so that there's a fixed time interval per day you are allowed to drive, after which you have to literally stop at the first parking spot at the side of the road, no matter what the boss screams in your phone from half-way across the continent.

rytis 5y ago
> with many of them doing 14-16-hour driving stints Are they not required to comply with driving time trackers? From https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/driving_time_en https://ec.europa.eu/transport/modes/road/social_provisions/...: "Daily driving period shall not exceed 9 hours, with an exemption of twice a week when it can be extended to 10 hours."
- paganel 5y ago
  > Are they not required to comply with driving time trackers? Unfortunately not for the smaller vans. In your link they mention: > road haulage and passenger transport vehicles, which "road haulage" I'm pretty sure means the regular big lorries we all think about. But when driving a Mercedes Sprinter [1] the same rules don't apply. You can actually drive that Sprinter with a regular driver's license, while for a regular lorry you need to take additional exams so that you can get into the "you can drive a lorry/big truck" category. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/2019_Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter_314_CDi_2.1.jpg/1200px-2019_Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter_314_CDi_2.1.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/20...
- michaelt 5y ago
  If you're driving an 18-wheeler truck, sure. But a lot of door-to-door delivery these days uses "independent contractors" who use their personal vehicles and fuel, and get paid e.g. £120 for 180 deliveries. Nobody's enforcing digital tacho cards for people's personal vehicles.