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It’s so crazy to me that people wonder about this. Maybe it’s people who’ve never had a normal job. But most jobs suck. Most jobs are demeaning and poorly compe

• bogota 5y ago
  I really don’t get this attitude. Are people just too full of themselves today to do menial work? I have a good job now but from before high school to after college I worked jobs in places were the customers were rude and treated you like shit along with your coworkers and managers. As far as I know you still need money to live do people think it’s now the responsibility of the government to take care of them if they have to work a job that sucks? I really can’t wrap my head around it it’s just not how i was raised. This just smells like entitlement at the same level people accuse “the rich” of having.
  • endymi0n 5y ago
    The Boomer generation needed just 306 hours of minimum wage work to pay for four years of public college. Millennials need 4,459. Calling that out doesn't sound like entitlement to me.
    • bogota 5y ago
      Sure call it out but not working is what im talking about. Life is always unfair. I started working in 2009 I am familiar with shit jobs that pay nothing.
      • aaron-santos 5y ago
        It sounds like your saying "life is unfair so we have no obligation to try." I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but it's difficult. Maybe you meant something else.
      • ggggtez 5y ago
        Honestly, if you are trying to so a "back in my day" to 10 years ago... I think you should take a moment and reexamine some of the fundamental facts that you are basing your worldview on. You're likely relying on flawed anecdotal evidence to decide how things used to be. It's possible your personal journey is effected by your experiences. 2009 was a financial crisis, when I'm sure many people were desperate for money. Others delayed entering the workforce by taking on college debt. It's not a sign of a healthy economy, but the strategic decisions of millions of people... And in 2009 there was no pandemic. You weren't risking actual life and limb to work a 9-5. In 2009 most people didn't have smartphones. There was no real option to make money online. And let's be clear: just because people aren't working for a corporation in a 9-5 doesn't imply they aren't working. Today you can make money online easier (Only Fans comes to mind). The people who become internet models can make more money quitting their jobs and devoting their effort to content creation. And honestly, a pornstar has more prestige and better hours than McDonald's, too...
  • LocalH 5y ago
    It's entitlement to refuse to be treated like garbage? I feel like it's rather entitlement on the part of those who are treating workers like garbage. Employers expect employees to "go above and beyond" but I see that as a two way street. I will "go above and beyond" for a company that does likewise with me. I will do no more than the basic job functions if the job demands more than its rightful place in my life, or if they attempt to abuse me.
    • bogota 5y ago
      Being treated like garbage and a job inherently being shitty aren’t the same thing. People seem to confuse that. All this is doing is driving automation at a faster pace and the people who once did the jobs will now have something new to complain about when they have no job available at all in 10 years
      • MrStonedOne 5y ago
        The majority of the jobs that can't hire people are customer facing jobs where the job is to be treated like garbage by customers
    • oliv__ 5y ago
      Fine, so find another job that suits your snowflake requirements
      • taurath 5y ago
        What do you think people are doing? Aren’t the business owners the snowflakes here, demanding their right to pay people peanuts for labor and earn them profits?
        • oliv__ 5y ago
          They're not "demanding" anything. They're offering jobs for wages which you deem too low.
      • LocalH 5y ago
  • touisteur 5y ago
    Maybe it's time we change attitudes towards menial jobs, then. No more accepting bad customer or managerial behaviour would be a start. Customer isn't always right, and even then they don't have to be encouraged being shitty to service workers by... Letting them pay the lowest price possible. Maybe now shop owners will have better incentives to discipline their customers or give humane working conditions. Or you know, barring that, better pay. About fucking time service workers had some bargaining power back.
    • indymike 5y ago
      > Maybe it's time we change attitudes towards menial jobs, then. A menial job is not menial. It is just a job. Labels like "menial" and "low skill" aren't fair to anyone and are there to sell people on taking less pay. > About fucking time service workers had some bargaining power back. This is really the truth. It is about time.
      • touisteur 5y ago
        I agree and should at least have put quotes in there. I've made a personal mission of trying to rehumanize every damn job, saying hello, how are you, stopping sometimes to talk about kids or the shitty people leaving shit in the kids playground, or just asking how's the family going. Not only did I make friends with the bus drivers, the street cleaner, the store cashier, the security people everywhere, but now I feel better the pulses of my communities, and have a far less difficult time talking to new people and giving or asking for help. I know those people and they know me. During the pandemic, I just sometimes asked news about family or kids and the amazon drivers here were crushed, their families sick and dying all around. One of them stopped and just cried there. Yes as one other commentor said, it's a job, man up, do it. But also, when there's a crying father there telling me he's been yelled at the whole week, he's been late for deliveries for days, and getting his pay docked, fuck ALLL that. Come on, have a water, a coffee if you can stomach it, late for late... And talk. Learned some of my neighbors needed a talking to. No one deserves to be treated like that. I... didn't see people were so shitty to each other, especially what one lady called 'the help'. Even the people I'm never gonna see again, it costs me almost nothing to say hi, hope your day's OK, thanks, and it brings sometimes the simple joy of talking for 2 minutes and feeling all fucking human. Some make it hard (uber eats kids...) but still, hi, everything OK? How's your family? I can't do much, but tipping and talking, yes. And don't let me started on making your salary almost only from tips. You're really wondering why you can't find 'help'?
  • ggggtez 5y ago
    I think it requires superhuman levels of mental gymnastics to defend accusations against billionaires being parasites, while putting down the working class for not putting up with having people yell in their faces... Honestly it's such a leap of logic that likely no one understands what exactly the thrust of your comment is trying to get at. I'd like to look at the more charitable part of the argument: "back in my day, we worked shitty jobs and we liked it, because we needed money". Ok, sure. But the economy was different in the past. Many people need to work 2 jobs to maintain the same standard of living. At the same time, the prestige and respect of such jobs have declined. There are less paths to retirement. This is a logical response to a system that is overworking people, without long-term prospects.
  • ubercow13 5y ago
    People trying to better for themselves is not them being entitiled. There is nothing noble about working hard for bad pay and in bad conditions just for the sake of being a hard worker. If people are choosing other options instead of going back to their shit jobs, and the system isn't providing good enough opportunities for enough people that's a failing of the system, not of those people for lacking a strong Protestant work ethic and not rolling over and letting themselves be exploited. Anyway the video is about these people choosing to work for themselves or being otherwise entrepreneurial, not being entitled and lazy like you are implying.
    • crazydoggers 5y ago
      So who does the hard jobs? Who slaughters the cows. Who picks the vegetables in 100 degrees. It sure is damn noble. Someone has to do it, or we all have to. And I give those people amazing props for doing those things. Many of us have either done those jobs and taken pride, or have family who have in order to better the lives of those children. Saying that work is not noble is demeaning to those who worked for your current standard of living.
      • ubercow13 5y ago
        >Saying that work is not noble is demeaning to those who worked for your current standard of living. The video is about people choosing better opportunities for themselves. If there aren't people to do those hard jobs, then those jobs need to compete with the opportunities these people are choosing instead, for example through higher pay. Saying these people should choose worse work, for the benefit of others (eg. business owners), by appealing to some nebulous concept of nobility is exploitative.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • MrStonedOne 5y ago
        Nobody until those employers start paying enough and stop making the job harder for the sake of policies that only serve the employers interests. can't get workers to work hard 8 hours a day doing hard labor, maybe add more breaks than the minimum you are legally required to? Or maybe stop suspending the workers next two shifts because they were 5 minutes late from traffic 1 too many times? Maybe consider that threatening to fire workers if they don't work late or overtime isn't productive? Maybe stop paying minimum wage which hasn't risen with inflation or rent prices and increase your prices out to compensate or consider that if baseline worker wages have risen slower than inflation, but management's wages has risen faster than inflation, you've had to do so off the back of your workers ability to have spending money outside of barely living.
• nikanj 5y ago
  I’m yet to hear an UBI proponent explain to me how those jobs would get done. The naive go-to answer is ”automation”, but on HN people generally understand how hard automating unskilled labor is
  • api 5y ago
    The most likely outcome is that they would be outsourced to people who don’t know anything other than menial labor. There are better ways such as variable work weeks and gig/day labor for easily acquired menial labor (on top of UBI), but that may be a bigger shift in culture than UBI.
  • ScaleneTriangle 5y ago
    Better pay, better working conditions.
  • DocTomoe 5y ago
    They would get done by paying them better. And at some point, automation would be cheaper than labour. That being said: Unloading trucks is a solved problem that can be automated with sufficient containerization.
    • ianhawes 5y ago
      > That being said: Unloading trucks is a solved problem that can be automated with sufficient containerization. Go read https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedexers https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedexers and let me know how solved that problem is.
  • mupuff1234 5y ago
    I think a lot of people wouldn't mind doing such types of jobs if they only need to do 2-3 shifts a week, in fact, I think a lot of people would enjoy it. I think it's mostly the mix of overworked + low benefits + knowing that you have to do it otherwise you'll have nothing is the deal breaker - not so much the job itself.
    • 5y ago
• crazydoggers 5y ago
  > Most jobs can and will fire you for no good reason and most jobs provide little to no protection. Most jobs will fire you for being late a couple of times. Well at least in the US we have unemployment benefits when you’re fired without cause. But yes, being late a few times is cause to be fired, and rightly so. I think perhaps the real issue is that people’s perceptions have changed, and I don’t think for the better. If you’re an unskilled laborer, then for the moment, your value to society is doing unskilled jobs. Now a whole host of reasons cause people to be unskilled. From their current socioeconomic status, to mental health reasons etc, to just honest poor life choices, like not valuing education. But there’s no free lunch in society, and ultimately that’s the current disconnect. Those that can only get unskilled jobs have now gotten benefits extended and are enjoying not doing “demeaning jobs”. And yet how do they enjoy that? Without society safety nets people would then need to do the demeaning jobs of supplying their own food and water. Hunting or foraging for food in 100 degree weather for 0 dollars, dealing with injuries on their own. So these same people complaining are also willing to take for granted the strawberries and meat at the grocery that another person worked hard for to provide. They take for granted the shelter that was built and maintained over there head, but they don’t see that they should provide equal work back to society for that enjoyment. Now there’s obviously a lot of real issues with labor fairness, minimum wage needs to be increased across the board, companies need to be held accountable for pushing a gig economy that strips employees of benefits etc. But the progress in labor fairness in the US, 8 hour work days, minimum wage, workplace safety, has been fought for in literal blood. Now we have a generation of people who take all that for granted, and that’s a problem. Edit: I also add this. These same people who say others haven’t worked such jobs, have not themselves lived in a society that is truly difficult. Many people have lived through or had family live through conditions that would make these people cry. Ask a migrant. Ask people who have had to flee countries and could barely subsist. Those people are the ones thankful to have a “demeaning job” because in reality, difficult does not mean demeaning. It’s entitlement, very pure and simple. And it won’t serve this generation well. Prove me wrong with reasoned responses and discussion rather than downvotes.
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• varelse 5y ago
  This presents a fantastic opportunity for these gigs to explore market efficiency, much to the chagrin of the people who wish to keep paying them subpoverty wages. If our overlords can't protect us from a deadly pandemic then what good are they?
• anovikov 5y ago
  But people will return to work once free stuff is over. And it is over now. In a month or so there will be a glut of workers again once people realise that their rent is due and free money is no longer hitting their accounts.
  • taurath 5y ago
    Time will tell. Certainly those paying starvation wages are hoping that is so.
    • anovikov 5y ago
      But what will be the alternative? Will these people run to the woods or what?
• bitcuration 5y ago
  Everybody's interest is different, some care about job security, others are greedy want much more. It depends on personal needs, conditions, life stage and capability. You cannot attribute to a single reason universally when explaining this. However in a tough time like this, it's disadvantageous to a society where everybody just look after themselves. I bet you in Japan this type of problem and question are less wondered, as people are treated by and treat the employer as home/family, took a personal interest instead of merely a means to make living, although at least in the past not sure it's still the case nowadays. True, what's feasible in Japan may not be suitable to a multi-culture society like US, or many other countries. But human motivation and value system are more or less the same across the globe. For example, some companies make employee their partners, gives stock options no matter how small percentage it is, a real bounding exercise must be financial based. Relying on enchanting employee to work relentlessly while in truth they're just pawn ready to be dispensed at any moment, how many cycles does any employer seriously think such trick will last before any employee with even below average IO would figure it out? It's not sustainable.
  • hirako2000 5y ago
    They aren't more or less the same around the globe. It is a very western, and relatively recent social structures we believe to be true everywhere. What is the same global, for the most part is the capitalist model adopted because of it's success and power over other models. You get a pay for your labour that is negotiated with your employer who keeps a company afloat and pays dividends. The social aspect is vastly different in many countries where the shareholder and employer, or at least the manager treat its employees nearly like family. Yes you get a pay cheque and profit is the ultimate goal, but the bond between workers is so strong it influences business decisions. Some will hire a less competent candidate simply because he is close to the worker community, it provides trusts and reinforces the "family" structure. Japan is mentioned, but it applies similarly to most countries in Asia, and to some degree other continents as well. It is often not spoken of or display, or accounted for explicitly. Humans develop and break those bonds as things go along.
    • donkeybeer 5y ago
• oliv__ 5y ago
  Oh, so you mean to say that life is hard?