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I worked many different blue collar jobs in New Jersey as a teenager¹ in the early 2000s and I learned that every blue collar workplace has one or more of these
by acuozzo 3y ago
I worked many different blue collar jobs in New Jersey as a teenager¹ in the early 2000s and I learned that every blue collar workplace has one or more of these "go-to" persons.
They're always there early AND late. They never, ever turn down requests for MORE X even if they're salaried and even if it makes their lives unnecessarily difficult.
They're often the ones most visibly damaged by the job, but they also irrationally defend their abusers. Perhaps they think that they'll be promoted one day, but why would a manager promote their best underling, especially if they've shown that they'll never be a flight risk?
[1] Seriously, I started at fourteen and job-hopped ~2x/year: a "schoolyear job" and a "summer job".
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoI've been this person at every job until recently Capitalism doesn't reward virtue
- p1esk 3y agoBut you did alright looking at your profile.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoCapitalism does not reward virtue. Also, loyalty is not a virtue. Loyalty is for henchmen playing at zero-sum games. The idea that it is a virtue is a psyop by the people out there who would have us as their henchmen. If your work is solving a problem that needs to be solved, you don't need loyalty, you can be on the team you're on because it's the best way to attack that problem. And when the power goes to your leader's head and they try to make you into a henchman, you can go find a different team with which to attack the same problem. Otherwise the problems don't get solved and we all end up working for marketing in some way or another.
- anigbrowl 3y agoI think you're equating political intrigue with loyalty, whereas for many people it just means relatively selfless identification with the goals of your employer, ie diligence.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoDiligence is fine, but only if the goals you are diligently working towards are in bounds for scrutiny. They don't have to be your goals, but if you don't occasionally consider that they might be worth opposing then you're creating a safe space for evil, which is something to be ashamed of even if evil never grows there. We don't need loyalty, we need vigilance.
- dwaltrip 3y agoExploiting yourself unnecessarily isn’t virtuous. I’ve been there personally. Setting good boundaries and living a balanced life, whatever that means to you, is virtuous.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoTotally concur and that’s the way to live
- Lio 3y agoTrue but neither does any other form economic system. In any system those in charge might promise to reward you for being virtuous. Saying and doing are two different things though. I'd take a regulated capitalist economy with a developed social welfare system over most alternatives.
- omgmajk 3y agoI was this person at my old job. It was never about a promotion for me but some misplaced sense of a work ethic that was somewhat drilled into my brain. I've turned around since then and still do a lot but not too much.
- 3seashells 3y agoProtestant work ethics ruins life's.
- convolvatron 3y agoshould we really aspire to being a useless lump? I firmly believe that there is great personal value to be found in the work of creation and digging an ever deeper groove. if someone is taking your passion and making money so that they can be a useless lump - that's really fine. its sad if they ruin your work because they don't care or know better. and of course its ultimately critical to cultivate relationship and build families - so its not _everything_. life without work is pretty empty
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nine_zeros 3y ago> life without work is pretty empty But grinding away for a manager ain't it either.
- bdw5204 3y agoThe solution that Jefferson and Lincoln (among other American Founders) envisioned was that everybody would eventually be self-employed even if they started their career as an employee to gain experience and save up capital. Working for somebody else means they get the better end of the deal (i.e. you probably won't have a job for long if they aren't making a profit off of you) so of course universal self-employment is the only way to have an economy where people get compensated fairly for the value of their work. Unfortunately, the generation of politicians after Lincoln allowed the capitalists who took advantage of Lincoln's "free labor" system to pull the ladder up behind them then the next generation (the "Progressives") decided big business was "inevitable" and just needed to be regulated so it didn't become a monopoly that cheated consumers. The generation after that allowed the workers to form unions which could bargain for something resembling what they were worth which worked fairly well for a generation until it was dismantled as the "solution" to an inflation crisis caused by US foreign policy and US environmental policy (I'm referring to the 1970s inflation crisis, not the current one that has the same causes). Tech is one of the few places in the American economy where the true American Dream of financial independence and self employment is still accessible even if you weren't born a millionaire and you don't win a Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot. But there is a fair question of how much longer it will be until FAANG and/or government regulation to "rein in Big Tech" pulls that ladder up like all of the previous ladders have been pulled up by big business and/or its allies in big government who pretend to be its enemies.
- walleeee 3y agoI don't think some lingering hope of promotion is the likeliest motivator for people who pour themselves into relatively poorly compensated work. Many people take pride in something for its own sake, and/or for the value it provides to others. I would argue these people are a massively underappreciated force in the world, and a big reason anything works at all. For every ladder climber slashing and burning their way through the social fabric, there are dozens of people quietly going about their days cleaning up debris, providing largely unseen services, perhaps even with little awareness of the significance of their contributions. This is of course a caricatured oversimplification, and I am in no way defending abusive arrangements, but I worry that the relative proportions of each type seem to be changing, and not in a promising direction. I also worry about the normalization of scorched earth, such that a young person might never learn, or learn only later, that the latter is not the only or the most rewarding approach to life. Finally I worry there is a similar lesson still to be learned at the species level: reciprocal partnerships with ecosystems and other living beings tend to produce better long term outcomes than opportunistic extraction
- bongoman37 3y ago[dead]
- gadders 3y agoI've recently been looking into socio-economic diversity (i.e. coming from a poor/blue collar background) and how it affects progression at professional companies. People from lower soc-ec backgrounds tend to focus on technical excellence, and wait to be noticed and promoted, rather than engaging in more overt self promotion. There is a great video on the topic by a guy called Luke Hart here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwKcjg5lPk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwKcjg5lPk8