6 ms·

my wife gave me a choice of getting a wal-mart type job or get out. Is it really this way in the US? As a foreigner I'm curious.

rms 18y ago
Maybe in some situations, but it would be a shitty situation as a walmart-type job does not provide enough income to live on. Some epithet towards the wife is probably appropriate.
- randallsquared 18y ago
  A lot of people don't get this. When I was failing at running a small business in semi-rural Alabama, nearly everyone around me told me I should just get a job at walmart or a convenience store, even though that wouldn't have been enough to live on. For many people, a job seems to be something of a talisman, rather than a source of a certain amount of money.
  - motoko 18y ago
    This is true for me in semi-rural Ohio, too.
    - rw 18y ago
      I'm in SW Ohio, you? I do not think there are many Ohioans on HN, and we ought to find each other!
      - brentr 18y ago
        Bowling Green
        motoko 18y ago
        Waterville, visiting family. We should meet up.
- mjt 18y ago
  "a walmart-type job does not provide enough income to live on" Sure it does. My ex-wife did it while supporting my step-daughter. Even had medical benefits for ~$20/month. She had to watch her spending and get a roommate, but she did it with zero .gov assistance (food stamps and the like). While the unskilled jobs may not pay much, they pay more than nothing and will keep you fed and dry till you find something better.
- jmatt 18y ago
  a walmart-type job does not provide enough income to live on. I lived off a job where I was paid minimum wage in a small town and did just fine. I worked at a army surplus / outdoor store. I was able to go to college, travel the world (backpacking and hostels) and do a lot of rock climbing and hiking locally all with this job. This was in the late 90s. I lived with 3 or 4 other roommates and I had no TV, a computer that barely functioned (internet access was through the university and already paid for since I was a student) and a car that got good gas mileage back when no one cared about gas mileage. More often than not I took the bus or walked. Not necessarily because it was more affordable but because it was more convenient. Here is the breakdown from what I remember. I made about 600 a month. Food and shelter was about 60% of my income. My car was about 10%. I cut almost all unnecessary expenses. I lived in an appropriate location. I gave up perceived necessities like a telephone and cable TV. Yes, I lived in a community where it was pleasant to make minimum wage. We had a university, a bus system and very low cost of living. I know a number of people that still make minimum wage, or close to it. They have lived in a number of locations and have made it work, including higher cost of living locations. I can imagine many scenarios where it would be difficult. 1) Kids or other dependents 2) A location with high cost of living 3) Taking on expenses that you can't afford 4) Requirements to drive without appropriate compensation (likely a small town rural situation from stories that I've heard). I was always told that the purpose of minimum wage was to provide an appropriate starting wage for people with little or no experience. From my perspective it was appropriate. It was never meant to be a wage to support a family or pay for a cell phone or car insurance. I agree it would be very difficult, or possibly impossible, to make minimum wage and support a family on a single minimum wage income. But then again that is not what minimum wage was intended for.
immad 18y ago
Where are you from? I think it is like that for a lot of people in most of the world
- cousin_it 18y ago
  "To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part." I'm from Russia. Don't know about y'all, I wouldn't want to marry someone with a different attitude.
  - immad 18y ago
    I agree, neither would I. But you have to consider the other perspective; they have 2 kids to support and his business hasn't received any custom for weeks. I think the statement "get a job or leave" is more of a generic "something has to change" statement not something completely literal.
    - thenduks 18y ago
      Perhaps she can get a walmart job.
    - potatolicious 18y ago
      Those words should never leave her mouth - only the worst of relationships involve threats of one side leaving. You either hang in there or you split, threats to get things done don't do any good, and are indicative of a very, very wrong relationship. I would've had said "get a job or get some business, your choice". The concept of divorce should never be hung over anyone's head to spur them to action.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago
        That's ridiculous: you're saying that either she puts up with a bad situation, or she leaves. What she did was basically say that she wanted a change. Doesn't matter whether or not those were her exact words: people say things they don't really mean when angry or frustrated and in this situation I'm sure she was both. It's a pretty fair bet that the statement "get a job or get out" wasn't the first thing she said about the situation! And in any case we only have his version of what happened.
haasted 18y ago
I'm curious about what exactly "get out" means. Can anyone elaborate?
- dgallagher 18y ago
  It sounds like his family was probably having money problems (they owed more than they had in the bank, or they weren't able to support their lifestyle). In that context, perhaps his wife was threatening him to "get a stable job that provides us income, or else I'm doing to divorce and leave you." A good movie to watch on the subject: "The Pursuit of Happyness" (2006)
rokhayakebe 18y ago
It's not just in US. In the majority of the world, women are extremely materialistic. Sad reality.
- smoody 18y ago
  A bad assumption here. It could have simply been that his wife didn't want to see her children go to bed hungry or for them to lose the roof over their heads.
  - mattmcknight 18y ago
    And if she kicks him out, she can go on welfare.
    - charcoal 18y ago
      ... and the kids don't get to see Dad much anymore. Kids need to come first, and they need both parents. Mom and Dad: work it out -- for their sake.
  - rokhayakebe 18y ago
    Smoody, I so wish I were wrong. But I am so right that if you search for the top reasons why relationship fail you would find that money is always first or second. Women have cried for centuries to have equality (vote, salaries....), which I totally agree with. Now on the flip side, they still expect man to be the provider, the protector etc...If you do not provide anymore, like Mr Pumbler, you can be sure that you will soon be out of the picture.
    - silencio 18y ago
      PEOPLE care about money because it is important for survival, even more so when you are in a family of, like the guy mentions in his comment, 4. Also, I'm still curious as to how you inferred from said story that his wife wasn't also working to provide for the family since her husband couldn't hold a steady job. It was a stressful time for everyone involved, and when there are kids to provide for in the picture, even more so.
Allocator2008 18y ago
Dude, this is not a US thing. It is more an evolutionary thing. Men hunted, women raised the kids. If the man isn't hunting enough, the woman is going to find a better hunter. This is simply evolutionary anthropology. The pressure is on the male to "hunt", or to make money. This is not a good or a bad thing, it is just Darwinian reality. At the end of the day, I think there is really no such thing as "romance" or whatever, it is more just cooperation to help the genes survive, since we are after all gene carrying robots, nothing more or less, and I am serious, this is not sarcasm. We are here to serve the selfish gene. "Love" and "to death do us part" are quaint, deluded notions from the childhood of our race, much like the God delusion.
- whacked_new 18y ago
  Being convinced one way or another about the situation is itself an exhibition of delusion, just as much as any other "God delusion." We are endowed with cognitive facilities that give us ideologies. It could very well be a US thing (I am not asserting one case or another). It could also be a self fulfilling prophecy. Unlike most other gene carrying robots, prophecies apply to us.
- kirubakaran 18y ago
  In the world where a non-hunting home-maker (ie. woman, as you posit) found a better hunter when the hunter she was with didn't do well, the hunters probably didn't feed the women when they stopped being useful. Hunters most certainly fucked everyone they possibly could, to maximize their gene transmission. Marriage prevents this. Hence the expectation that your SO sticks with you when the times are tough... Especially when the times are tough. Even murders can be 'justified' by evolutionary biology but the court tends to put an end to further propagation of that gene :)
dgabriel 18y ago
Despite what others here may have to say, we women are not a bunch of money grubbing whores. Thanks, HN, for downvoting the outrageous comments. Here's a different view of what may have been going on: man has a family both he & his wife work full time to support. He cannot, for whatever reason, hang on to a job for more than a year at a time. This becomes frustrating to the other spouse, because they can't ever seem to get ahead of the bills, etc. He starts his own business, but can't get it off the ground. Meanwhile, she's working as hard as ever, is probably looking at getting a second job to support the family (a "walmart-type" job), and sees him puttering in the basement all day, every day. They have a fight, she's close to breaking & if anyone is going to get the crappy second job, it should be the guy hanging around the house with nothing to do all day. That kind of stress will destroy a marriage. We're not talking about alimony or welfare queens, but ordinary middle class families that struggle to stay middle class. Happy ending: he finally gets his business going.
- qaexl 18y ago
  Being freaked out was the final motivator to get him to really think up of something and act on it. She still stuck by him even though his solution seemed crazy to her. He would have had to pay for the 1000 heavy-stock paper from somewhere. Even if it costed $10.00, she must have been thinking that's another ten bucks that could have fed the kids. It may have appeared that she gave up on him, but she obviously believed in him enough to give him another chance. I think the story is awesome. I think the idea is great.
- charcoal 18y ago
  d, you're supposing an awful lot about how the situation might have been. Fact is, there are a lot of women out there who want what they think is the status quo: husband away during the day, providing plenty of money, newish car(s), family going out to eat once or twice a week, cable tv, buying whatever you want at the grocery store without regard for price, big X-mases, no stress about being able to pay bills, etc., and if hubby doesn't provide it, he's thought of as inadequate. Yes, there are many women who are shortsighted and only realize after the divorce that life doesn't work the way they thought. cousin_it, in the US, women have all the advantages when it comes to marriage. If they want a divorce, almost by default the legal system provides them with the kids, house, alimony, and child support.
bullseye 18y ago
You guys are so literal... Out of all the interesting material in the guy's comment, why is everyone focused on the "get out" comment? Chances are, it was an off-hand comment. It is similar to saying, "my wife would kill me if I forgot her birthday." Rest assured, if I forget, I do not need to worry about being stabbed to death in my sleep. I hope...
blurry 18y ago
@cousin_it I also grew up in Russia (25 years between Siberia and Moscow) and have lived in the US for the last 12 years. From my experience, the typical Russian attitude of moral superiority (Americans = materialistic, Russians = spiritual) could not be farther from the truth. Perhaps I am reading into your comment a bit, but it seems to me that you were essentially trying to assert the above, even if you phrased your assertion as a question. Unless you are very, very young or very, very naive, I doubt that you were truly simply curious to find out whether every single woman in the entire country is a cold-hearted bitch who would kick her husband out when he can't find work, especially based on just one man's story. If I am mistaken and your question was really a question, then the answer is no, it is not really "this way" in the US. Believe it or not, even in big bad America there are people who understand love and other human feelings, just like "foreigners".
- cousin_it 18y ago
  I'm sorry. Of course similar things happen in Russia all the time. My comment was just a knee-jerk reaction to a phrase. At least it sparked an interesting discussion.
mg1313 18y ago
There are enough cases when the man goes bankrupt and the wife is leaving him instead of supporting him until he recovers. But also there are cases when the wife is supporting the man until he gets on his feet...I've seen both.

rms 18y ago

Maybe in some situations, but it would be a shitty situation as a walmart-type job does not provide enough income to live on. Some epithet towards the wife is probably appropriate.

randallsquared 18y ago
A lot of people don't get this. When I was failing at running a small business in semi-rural Alabama, nearly everyone around me told me I should just get a job at walmart or a convenience store, even though that wouldn't have been enough to live on. For many people, a job seems to be something of a talisman, rather than a source of a certain amount of money.
- motoko 18y ago
  This is true for me in semi-rural Ohio, too.
  - rw 18y ago
    I'm in SW Ohio, you? I do not think there are many Ohioans on HN, and we ought to find each other!
    - brentr 18y ago
      Bowling Green
      - motoko 18y ago
        Waterville, visiting family. We should meet up.
mjt 18y ago
"a walmart-type job does not provide enough income to live on" Sure it does. My ex-wife did it while supporting my step-daughter. Even had medical benefits for ~$20/month. She had to watch her spending and get a roommate, but she did it with zero .gov assistance (food stamps and the like). While the unskilled jobs may not pay much, they pay more than nothing and will keep you fed and dry till you find something better.
jmatt 18y ago
a walmart-type job does not provide enough income to live on. I lived off a job where I was paid minimum wage in a small town and did just fine. I worked at a army surplus / outdoor store. I was able to go to college, travel the world (backpacking and hostels) and do a lot of rock climbing and hiking locally all with this job. This was in the late 90s. I lived with 3 or 4 other roommates and I had no TV, a computer that barely functioned (internet access was through the university and already paid for since I was a student) and a car that got good gas mileage back when no one cared about gas mileage. More often than not I took the bus or walked. Not necessarily because it was more affordable but because it was more convenient. Here is the breakdown from what I remember. I made about 600 a month. Food and shelter was about 60% of my income. My car was about 10%. I cut almost all unnecessary expenses. I lived in an appropriate location. I gave up perceived necessities like a telephone and cable TV. Yes, I lived in a community where it was pleasant to make minimum wage. We had a university, a bus system and very low cost of living. I know a number of people that still make minimum wage, or close to it. They have lived in a number of locations and have made it work, including higher cost of living locations. I can imagine many scenarios where it would be difficult. 1) Kids or other dependents 2) A location with high cost of living 3) Taking on expenses that you can't afford 4) Requirements to drive without appropriate compensation (likely a small town rural situation from stories that I've heard). I was always told that the purpose of minimum wage was to provide an appropriate starting wage for people with little or no experience. From my perspective it was appropriate. It was never meant to be a wage to support a family or pay for a cell phone or car insurance. I agree it would be very difficult, or possibly impossible, to make minimum wage and support a family on a single minimum wage income. But then again that is not what minimum wage was intended for.

immad 18y ago

Where are you from? I think it is like that for a lot of people in most of the world

cousin_it 18y ago
"To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part." I'm from Russia. Don't know about y'all, I wouldn't want to marry someone with a different attitude.
- immad 18y ago
  I agree, neither would I. But you have to consider the other perspective; they have 2 kids to support and his business hasn't received any custom for weeks. I think the statement "get a job or leave" is more of a generic "something has to change" statement not something completely literal.
  - thenduks 18y ago
    Perhaps she can get a walmart job.
  - potatolicious 18y ago
    Those words should never leave her mouth - only the worst of relationships involve threats of one side leaving. You either hang in there or you split, threats to get things done don't do any good, and are indicative of a very, very wrong relationship. I would've had said "get a job or get some business, your choice". The concept of divorce should never be hung over anyone's head to spur them to action.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago
      That's ridiculous: you're saying that either she puts up with a bad situation, or she leaves. What she did was basically say that she wanted a change. Doesn't matter whether or not those were her exact words: people say things they don't really mean when angry or frustrated and in this situation I'm sure she was both. It's a pretty fair bet that the statement "get a job or get out" wasn't the first thing she said about the situation! And in any case we only have his version of what happened.

haasted 18y ago

I'm curious about what exactly "get out" means. Can anyone elaborate?

dgallagher 18y ago
It sounds like his family was probably having money problems (they owed more than they had in the bank, or they weren't able to support their lifestyle). In that context, perhaps his wife was threatening him to "get a stable job that provides us income, or else I'm doing to divorce and leave you." A good movie to watch on the subject: "The Pursuit of Happyness" (2006)

rokhayakebe 18y ago

It's not just in US. In the majority of the world, women are extremely materialistic. Sad reality.

smoody 18y ago
A bad assumption here. It could have simply been that his wife didn't want to see her children go to bed hungry or for them to lose the roof over their heads.
- mattmcknight 18y ago
  And if she kicks him out, she can go on welfare.
  - charcoal 18y ago
    ... and the kids don't get to see Dad much anymore. Kids need to come first, and they need both parents. Mom and Dad: work it out -- for their sake.
- rokhayakebe 18y ago
  Smoody, I so wish I were wrong. But I am so right that if you search for the top reasons why relationship fail you would find that money is always first or second. Women have cried for centuries to have equality (vote, salaries....), which I totally agree with. Now on the flip side, they still expect man to be the provider, the protector etc...If you do not provide anymore, like Mr Pumbler, you can be sure that you will soon be out of the picture.
  - silencio 18y ago
    PEOPLE care about money because it is important for survival, even more so when you are in a family of, like the guy mentions in his comment, 4. Also, I'm still curious as to how you inferred from said story that his wife wasn't also working to provide for the family since her husband couldn't hold a steady job. It was a stressful time for everyone involved, and when there are kids to provide for in the picture, even more so.

Allocator2008 18y ago

Dude, this is not a US thing. It is more an evolutionary thing. Men hunted, women raised the kids. If the man isn't hunting enough, the woman is going to find a better hunter. This is simply evolutionary anthropology. The pressure is on the male to "hunt", or to make money. This is not a good or a bad thing, it is just Darwinian reality. At the end of the day, I think there is really no such thing as "romance" or whatever, it is more just cooperation to help the genes survive, since we are after all gene carrying robots, nothing more or less, and I am serious, this is not sarcasm. We are here to serve the selfish gene. "Love" and "to death do us part" are quaint, deluded notions from the childhood of our race, much like the God delusion.

whacked_new 18y ago
Being convinced one way or another about the situation is itself an exhibition of delusion, just as much as any other "God delusion." We are endowed with cognitive facilities that give us ideologies. It could very well be a US thing (I am not asserting one case or another). It could also be a self fulfilling prophecy. Unlike most other gene carrying robots, prophecies apply to us.
kirubakaran 18y ago
In the world where a non-hunting home-maker (ie. woman, as you posit) found a better hunter when the hunter she was with didn't do well, the hunters probably didn't feed the women when they stopped being useful. Hunters most certainly fucked everyone they possibly could, to maximize their gene transmission. Marriage prevents this. Hence the expectation that your SO sticks with you when the times are tough... Especially when the times are tough. Even murders can be 'justified' by evolutionary biology but the court tends to put an end to further propagation of that gene :)

dgabriel 18y ago

Despite what others here may have to say, we women are not a bunch of money grubbing whores. Thanks, HN, for downvoting the outrageous comments. Here's a different view of what may have been going on: man has a family both he & his wife work full time to support. He cannot, for whatever reason, hang on to a job for more than a year at a time. This becomes frustrating to the other spouse, because they can't ever seem to get ahead of the bills, etc. He starts his own business, but can't get it off the ground. Meanwhile, she's working as hard as ever, is probably looking at getting a second job to support the family (a "walmart-type" job), and sees him puttering in the basement all day, every day. They have a fight, she's close to breaking & if anyone is going to get the crappy second job, it should be the guy hanging around the house with nothing to do all day. That kind of stress will destroy a marriage. We're not talking about alimony or welfare queens, but ordinary middle class families that struggle to stay middle class. Happy ending: he finally gets his business going.

qaexl 18y ago
Being freaked out was the final motivator to get him to really think up of something and act on it. She still stuck by him even though his solution seemed crazy to her. He would have had to pay for the 1000 heavy-stock paper from somewhere. Even if it costed $10.00, she must have been thinking that's another ten bucks that could have fed the kids. It may have appeared that she gave up on him, but she obviously believed in him enough to give him another chance. I think the story is awesome. I think the idea is great.
charcoal 18y ago
d, you're supposing an awful lot about how the situation might have been. Fact is, there are a lot of women out there who want what they think is the status quo: husband away during the day, providing plenty of money, newish car(s), family going out to eat once or twice a week, cable tv, buying whatever you want at the grocery store without regard for price, big X-mases, no stress about being able to pay bills, etc., and if hubby doesn't provide it, he's thought of as inadequate. Yes, there are many women who are shortsighted and only realize after the divorce that life doesn't work the way they thought. cousin_it, in the US, women have all the advantages when it comes to marriage. If they want a divorce, almost by default the legal system provides them with the kids, house, alimony, and child support.

bullseye 18y ago

You guys are so literal... Out of all the interesting material in the guy's comment, why is everyone focused on the "get out" comment? Chances are, it was an off-hand comment. It is similar to saying, "my wife would kill me if I forgot her birthday." Rest assured, if I forget, I do not need to worry about being stabbed to death in my sleep. I hope...

blurry 18y ago

@cousin_it I also grew up in Russia (25 years between Siberia and Moscow) and have lived in the US for the last 12 years. From my experience, the typical Russian attitude of moral superiority (Americans = materialistic, Russians = spiritual) could not be farther from the truth. Perhaps I am reading into your comment a bit, but it seems to me that you were essentially trying to assert the above, even if you phrased your assertion as a question. Unless you are very, very young or very, very naive, I doubt that you were truly simply curious to find out whether every single woman in the entire country is a cold-hearted bitch who would kick her husband out when he can't find work, especially based on just one man's story. If I am mistaken and your question was really a question, then the answer is no, it is not really "this way" in the US. Believe it or not, even in big bad America there are people who understand love and other human feelings, just like "foreigners".

cousin_it 18y ago
I'm sorry. Of course similar things happen in Russia all the time. My comment was just a knee-jerk reaction to a phrase. At least it sparked an interesting discussion.

mg1313 18y ago

There are enough cases when the man goes bankrupt and the wife is leaving him instead of supporting him until he recovers. But also there are cases when the wife is supporting the man until he gets on his feet...I've seen both.