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A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I mentioned to my wife that the US was over-retailed and she asked me what people did instead. I don't have any kind of an answer. Is there a bigger service industry? More manufacturing? People working fewer hours so there's more jobs to go around?
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Dec 4, 2017 04:39
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i dont think mike rowe is actively malicious so much as he is kind of dumb and cosplaying as a blue collar warehouse drone to fill some sort of emptiness in his lifeBeachcomber posted:I mentioned to my wife that the US was over-retailed and she asked me what people did instead. I don't have any kind of an answer. Is there a bigger service industry? More manufacturing? People working fewer hours so there's more jobs to go around? basically huge amounts of shadow poverty and institutional repression to both rationalize and suppress it, like mass incarceration and stigmatizing welfare
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Dec 4, 2017 04:40
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The US is so massively hosed up when it comes to work culture it's kind of hard to get your head around it. It's a systemic problem that permeates nearly all of US society from coast to coast.
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Dec 4, 2017 04:44
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OneEightHundred posted:So are there any rollups on how good/bad Black Friday was for B&M this year? My wife and I went out tonight to buy a new Christmas tree. Amazon has tons of choices, but we wanted to judge tree proportion, bulb color/density, etc in person. More than half of the trees at Walmart were out of stock. They had mostly sub-$99 crap. Then we went to Home Depot. Closed at 7 and we got there at 7:15. Went to Target. Only a half dozen models on display. Mostly sold out as well. C'mon. It's Peak Christmas. You win, Amazon.
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Dec 4, 2017 04:44
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FistEnergy posted:My wife and I went out tonight to buy a new Christmas tree. Amazon has tons of choices, but we wanted to judge tree proportion, bulb color/density, etc in person. the gently caress kind of bougie argument is this i got my christmas tree at kroger for twenty bucks you weirdo, what are you decorating a department store. do you live in the home alone house.
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Dec 4, 2017 04:46
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boner confessor posted:the gently caress kind of bougie argument is this this is a Bad Post
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Dec 4, 2017 04:48
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capturing the elusive "i need a christmas tree right now" and "i will only pay more than a hundred bucks + expensive shipping for a tree instead of just, you know, shopping for one tomorrow" demographic
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Dec 4, 2017 04:50
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There is a shortage of live Christmas trees this year, cause they take about ten years to grow and about ten years ago was the financial crisis. At least that's what the radio said. I'd imagine demand for artificial trees is up as a consequence.
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Dec 4, 2017 04:56
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boner confessor posted:capturing the elusive "i need a christmas tree right now" and "i will only pay more than a hundred bucks + expensive shipping for a tree instead of just, you know, shopping for one tomorrow" demographic A better argument might be that retail should recognize that people do in fact work for a living. I don't spend crap downtown, no matter how nice some of our downtown shops are, because they roll the sidewalks up at 6:30 and I like to eat dinner. In that case Amazon it is.
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Dec 4, 2017 05:06
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Badger of Basra posted:Is it impossible for you to believe someone might enjoy the job they have currently, and want to continue doing it even if they weren't forced to by necessity? It's pretty hard to believe, yea. Granted, I'm pretty biased in that most of the jobs I've done have been some varying degree of terrible (retail, food service, call centers, IT help desk, you get the drift) I think the number of people who actually enjoy their jobs is shockingly low. I think when people say "I like my job" they really mean "Out of all the potential jobs out there, this one is bearable enough for me to do day in and day out without killing myself." I think the majority of people enjoy the things that are peripheral to the actual job they do. As in, they enjoy their coworkers, or they enjoy the money they earn, but I think very few people actually enjoy their job. I think enjoying your job is a privilege that is available to very few people. cash crab posted:And so even beyond that, the idea that leisure time needs to be productive as well isn't too far behind. "Getting poo poo done," seems to be a common response when I ask people what their plans are for the weekend. Many people tend to feel guilty when they have some spare time and use it to achieve absolutely nothing; I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but I am also going to suggest that this is part of that fabric of North American culture where even leisure time has a productive end goal. Even something like exercise or general self-improvement is, technically, a productive act, at least much more so than sitting on your porch watching birds or taking a nap. Very well said, and this is what I'm driving at. WampaLord fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Dec 4, 2017 |
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Dec 4, 2017 05:07
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boner confessor posted:the juxtaposition of number 9 and 10 is especially awful - "i am responsible for my own education" while people recieve all of their mandatory education before the age of majority, and right after that "i am a product of my choices, not my circumstances" oh well i guess i should have chosen to be born to a family which values education who lives in a well funded school district, whoops Some of it's just wishful thinking, like yeah it'd be really nice if you could library card your way out of poo poo jobs, but self-study to most HR departments means absolutely nothing. (There are also a slew of positions where, in different ways, college education functions more as a "no poors" filter than an actual qualification.) OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Dec 4, 2017 |
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Dec 4, 2017 05:13
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Ganson posted:A better argument might be that retail should recognize that people do in fact work for a living. I don't spend crap downtown, no matter how nice some of our downtown shops are, because they roll the sidewalks up at 6:30 and I like to eat dinner. In that case Amazon it is. businesses that close early (on a sunday night no less) generally do so because they find the customer volume is low enough to not bother
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Dec 4, 2017 05:30
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boner confessor posted:businesses that close early (on a sunday night no less) generally do so because they find the customer volume is low enough to not bother I'm not sure this is the full explanation for that sort of thing. Anecdotally, I worked for a very bougie gift shop a few years back that opened late, and closed early. The owner aimed to have a carefully curated selection of gifts and trinkets, and catered to a crowd of people who had enormous amounts of expendable income and seemingly unlimited free time. When we started to get busy around 6:30PM, she would close the store, chiefly because she wanted to go home. Beyond the fact that the store was only in operation for about a year and a half, she missed a considerably important niche market: middle-class people who aspire to feel rich by their proximity to nice things. Those people finish work at five, and prioritize getting groceries and poo poo like regular human beings. Since our store was right across from the grocery store and right in front of a bunch of houses, she could have capitalized on the timing by opening at noon (cornering the rich aimless white lady crowd) and closing at eight (securing that thirty-something group who feels like $15 hand lotion is a real thrill). My point is some businesses close early because they are run by people who want to experience regular work hours. I have also worked for independent businesses that stayed open for the working crowd, and surprise! They made a poo poo-ton more money.
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Dec 4, 2017 05:55
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Shady Amish Terror posted:Mike Rowe is a vastly entertaining person to watch ploying his schtick, but it turns out he's also kind of a nitwit sometimes and virtually everything he has to say about employment and work ethic is...questionable at best. He's anti-union and seems to be anti-regulation to some extent, while he's also talking out the other side of his mouth about how tough and dangerous jobs are and how that needs to be improved. He talks about people not being paid enough for doing everyday labor that needs to be done and about how constraining job mobility and availability is, but then says that you should never ever complain about a job and if the job is bad you should just pack up and leave it as though everyone living paycheck to paycheck has that option. He probably means well, I guess, but he kind of gets exploited as a useful idiot by right-wing types that are more than happy to suppress the people Mike Rowe keeps talking up. Never forget that Mike Rowe never worked a day of a blue collar job in his life that wasn't for the show. He's a career pitch man and TV host with a degree from Towson in communications who faked his way into the Baltimore Opera at one point.
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Dec 4, 2017 06:18
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Liquid Communism posted:Never forget that Mike Rowe never worked a day of a blue collar job in his life that wasn't for the show. He's a career pitch man and TV host with a degree from Towson in communications who faked his way into the Baltimore Opera at one point. Sounds like he has life figured out.
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Dec 4, 2017 07:53
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Speaking of retail. This weekend we did our yearly Christmas shopping, which entailed going into the city and a lot of the more "upscale" shopping malls downtown, and drat it's such a depressing place to visit. This is bougie paradise apparently, glitzy shops and restaurants and all that kind of stuff people are supposed to like and want from life. Except me apparently. To me everything felt wrong, or crass, like I was in some kind of 80s movie about future capitalist dystopian societies. A pervading, dread sense of "keeping up with the joneses" perhaps how I'd describe it. Horrible feel to the place.
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Dec 4, 2017 07:57
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SpaceCadetBob posted:It would be nice if we could stop calling people that enjoy partaking in business work ventures as dull. Quite a few people here have posted that they would enjoy running some sort of small business venture if they could. They would because they genuinely enjoy working in that field/trade. People are poisoned by the protestant work ethic, because protestant work ethic doesn't just mean productive or industrious. It's literally the idea that working is a virtue that you must exhibit to be a good person, and that uncouples labor from the product of it, lowering its value. Protestant work ethic isn't finding good ways to fill your time; it's a pile of busy work from your boss, or secretly browsing SA because you aren't allowed to leave the office till an arbitrary time, or asking people to do work for exposure/experience/their portfolios instead of actual payment. It's semantic, but I think it's one worth adhering to if we're going to discuss why work culture is so hosed in the US.
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Dec 4, 2017 08:37
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fishmech posted:If you're alleging media companies were better customer service and distribution in the past compared to now, I want to know what made you think that. Video stores with big late fees and limited selection? Dealing with Tower Records and needing to wait 5 weeks to get the record you want from corporate because it wasn't issued to the local store? Movies in general? I'm not, but I'm saying the existence of cheaper, more convenient, superior competition somehow causes many companies to actively make their shopping experience and customer service worse while offering token concessions to modernity that gradually become their only real profitable sector.
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Dec 4, 2017 09:03
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It's possible to be someone who enjoys their current work and also to be creative enough to be able to find other things to do should their current job be replaced with a UBI. It's not a sign of a lack of creativity to enjoy one's job, but I think it is kind of a sign if that's the only thing you'd be able to fill your time with. It's a good point about how some areas don't have much to do outside of work though. I blame zoning.
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Dec 4, 2017 10:21
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His Divine Shadow posted:Speaking of retail. This weekend we did our yearly Christmas shopping, which entailed going into the city and a lot of the more "upscale" shopping malls downtown, and drat it's such a depressing place to visit. This is bougie paradise apparently, glitzy shops and restaurants and all that kind of stuff people are supposed to like and want from life. Except me apparently. To me everything felt wrong, or crass, like I was in some kind of 80s movie about future capitalist dystopian societies. A pervading, dread sense of "keeping up with the joneses" perhaps how I'd describe it. Horrible feel to the place. I get this feeling around Christmas time. I don't mind buying things. I don't mind giving presents. Its just the worthless crappy-crap. I went to Target yesterday to grab a few things. Seeing all the extra worthless Christmas merchandise frustrates me. I don't mean decorations. Its fun to decorate for Christmas. Its the stupid stuff nobody wants or needs like all of those weird toiletry sets of brands you've never heard of, any hilarious office toy or desk bauble, or those books about topics like beer, beards, mixed drinks, etc. When I was a kid I use to love when my dad would play this song on his guitar which I think illustrates how I feel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX14qeHlVj4
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Dec 4, 2017 12:18
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His Divine Shadow posted:Speaking of retail. This weekend we did our yearly Christmas shopping, which entailed going into the city and a lot of the more "upscale" shopping malls downtown, and drat it's such a depressing place to visit. This is bougie paradise apparently, glitzy shops and restaurants and all that kind of stuff people are supposed to like and want from life. Except me apparently. To me everything felt wrong, or crass, like I was in some kind of 80s movie about future capitalist dystopian societies. A pervading, dread sense of "keeping up with the joneses" perhaps how I'd describe it. Horrible feel to the place. I hear you on that one, about 20-25 years ago, when I was in my mid-twenties, the same thing happened to me and I've never been able to look(or shop) at those huge 'upscale' shopping centers the same way again. Christmas shopping in general is sort of depressing for me, it just seems like so many people frantically trying to purchase poo poo for other people just because they have to. I mean, for everybody looking really hard for a nice thoughtful gift for someone special to them, there's ten people frantically shoveling poo poo into carts to meet obligations. I know it sounds like Holden Caulfield, but there it is.
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Dec 4, 2017 13:59
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I don't know who Mike Rowe is, but this list is a perfect example of How_Rich_People_Want_Poor_People_To_Think.txt, and I'm stunned that there's even any significant discussion of it. It's transparently Grandpa telling you to get a job by just walking up and asking, mixed with the factory boss telling you that mandatory unpaid overtime is chicken soup for your soul. Liquid Communism posted:Never forget that Mike Rowe never worked a day of a blue collar job in his life that wasn't for the show. Jack2142 posted:Sounds like he has life figured out.
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Dec 4, 2017 15:04
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His Divine Shadow posted:Speaking of retail. This weekend we did our yearly Christmas shopping, which entailed going into the city and a lot of the more "upscale" shopping malls downtown, and drat it's such a depressing place to visit. This is bougie paradise apparently, glitzy shops and restaurants and all that kind of stuff people are supposed to like and want from life. Except me apparently. To me everything felt wrong, or crass, like I was in some kind of 80s movie about future capitalist dystopian societies. A pervading, dread sense of "keeping up with the joneses" perhaps how I'd describe it. Horrible feel to the place. they renovated the street where a bunch of shops are near me and it looks really nice and i love it, so maybe its just where you live?
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Dec 4, 2017 15:22
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I don't get how Mike Rowe is the paragon of hard work when he used to be a graveyard-shift TV salesman for QVC and got fired (rightfully so, by his own admission) for loving around on air and making fun of the products he was selling because he was bored.
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Dec 4, 2017 15:28
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ChadSexington posted:I don't get how Mike Rowe is the paragon of hard work when he used to be a graveyard-shift TV salesman for QVC and got fired (rightfully so, by his own admission) for loving around on air and making fun of the products he was selling because he was bored. this story makes me like him a little bit more, but not enough to make up for the terrible politics
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Dec 4, 2017 16:10
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Halloween Jack posted:I don't know who Mike Rowe is He hosted Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel where he spent like 8 seasons shoveling poo poo and other refuse.
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Dec 4, 2017 16:15
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mandatory lesbian posted:they renovated the street where a bunch of shops are near me and it looks really nice and i love it, so maybe its just where you live? Thankfully, I don't live there. Everything there is new and shiny and full of well todo people.
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Dec 4, 2017 16:21
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i'm also 25, maybe you're just an old curmudgeon
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Dec 4, 2017 16:22
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His Divine Shadow posted:Thankfully, I don't live there. Everything there is new and shiny and full of well todo people. Out of curiosity, what city are you talking about?
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Dec 4, 2017 16:28
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mandatory lesbian posted:i'm also 25, maybe you're just an old curmudgeon Am I out of touch? No, it’s the shoppers who are wrong.
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Dec 4, 2017 16:37
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Badger of Basra posted:Am I out of touch? Oh I know I am out of touch, but I am happy with that. Age 36.
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Dec 4, 2017 16:55
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FistEnergy posted:My wife and I went out tonight to buy a new Christmas tree. Amazon has tons of choices, but we wanted to judge tree proportion, bulb color/density, etc in person. I drove to a tree farm and cut it down with a saw. It was $85.
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Dec 4, 2017 16:57
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HEY NONG MAN posted:I drove to a tree farm and cut it down with a saw. It was $85. What is your point? A good, real tree will probably be cheaper than a good fake tree, but not everyone can have a real tree.
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Dec 4, 2017 17:30
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mandatory lesbian posted:this story makes me like him a little bit more, but not enough to make up for the terrible politics definitely work hard and do a good job, and dont complain if your job is lovely, just find a new one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rChjMRfi40c
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Dec 4, 2017 17:45
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JnnyThndrs posted:I hear you on that one, about 20-25 years ago, when I was in my mid-twenties, the same thing happened to me and I've never been able to look(or shop) at those huge 'upscale' shopping centers the same way again. You know what pisses me off. Having to buy seperate presents for couples, such as your parents, and them buying you one joint present. I was single for years before I met the second Mr. LC and every year I would buy friends and family a thoughtful tailored present, and in return I would get half the number of gifts back and all clearly chosen by the woman in the relationship. It’s not really about the number of gifts, it’s that half of my friends and family couldn’t give a toss. First year you can excuse people for thinking I was buying joint gifts, 10th year of happily opening a lovely present and thinking “I wonder what we got her” is a gently caress you too uncle Nick.
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Dec 4, 2017 17:47
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Give to loving charity instead of buying gifts for your friends and relatives who already have enough stuff. If they complain, 
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Dec 4, 2017 17:52
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I give the amount of money I would have spent on Christmas cards to the donkey sanctuary, it’s a thing we do in the uk and it’s where the donkey sanctuary gets 99% of it’s donations from. Poor sods get worked near enough to death giving rides to children on our beaches so it’s a collective guilt thing.
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Dec 4, 2017 17:55
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learnincurve posted:You know what pisses me off. Having to buy seperate presents for couples, such as your parents, and them buying you one joint present. I was single for years before I met the second Mr. LC and every year I would buy friends and family a thoughtful tailored present, and in return I would get half the number of gifts back and all clearly chosen by the woman in the relationship. sounds like you missed the hint and should have stopped buying two gifts about 10 years ago dude
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Dec 4, 2017 17:56
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my weird trick for gift buying is moving 1400 miles away from my family and friends and refusing to pack space on my flights back home for gifts, so i can't give or get anything that isnt money
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Dec 4, 2017 18:01
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learnincurve posted:I give the amount of money I would have spent on Christmas cards to the donkey sanctuary, it’s a thing we do in the uk and it’s where the donkey sanctuary gets 99% of it’s donations from. Poor sods get worked near enough to death giving rides to children on our beaches so it’s a collective guilt thing. Aren't donkey sanctuaries notorious for overfundraising due to the sheer cuteness of the donkeys?
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Dec 4, 2017 18:01
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