Anecdotal so maybe not the experience for most or even many, but I’ve seen kinda the opposite from Gen X. My wife (left office work for bartending) has gotten a lot of nudging from her Gen X parents that bartending is just a small phase and she’ll get back to “real work” when she gets this outta her system. She hustles hard, gets to meet people, gets to be creative with some mixology ideas, she’s absolutely not a morning person, and most of all she feels in control and has fun. I’ll support her choice either way, but in terms of advancement and security, I think her parents are right in a lot of ways. We’re lucky that I’m employed gainfully enough that she has the freedom to choose work that she enjoys, but our healthcare and income is nearly entirely on my shoulders in a blue collar job that I really can’t do all the way to retirement (if that’s even possible) unless I hustle enough to get a desk job within the next 5-10 years. I turned 35 last month and it’s become quite apparent that some of my body’s capabilities have a very real expiration date. The work can be very hard on my body, but I can’t make this kind of money at a white collar new job without probably 10+ years of combined education and experience.

What I’m saying is enjoy your health and the fact that you can make your living without destroying your knees, back, and hands. But be aware that mental health is health. Take time off for it when you need it, and take care of your mental health by giving treats to your brain like fun puzzles, meditation time, and some kind of creative outlet you enjoy like drawing or writing or playing music. Something active, not just passively watching TV. And you probably could benefit from taking some vitamin D, especially this time of year (assuming you’re in the Northern hemisphere), especially if you’re living pretty far from the equator like me (near DC).

Good luck!

But that makes things better for us average poors. Our plutocratic overlords would never allow such nonsense.

It’s funny… When I hear the Ford CEO criticize UAW for striking to make more than the people we universally recognize as being grossly underpaid, it only reveals that UAW is already making even less than the people we universally recognize as being grossly underpaid. Thus loudly justifying their strike.

The context of who said it and what their situation is matters immensely though. Do you not question the motive of a billionaire telling 99% of the planet that the world is gonna get tougher and that we need to expect less in order to be happy? It’s like somebody driving a water truck through a desert telling the thirsty masses that they will be happier if they expect no rain. What qualifies him to tell us what to expect when he has no such challenge? Why is he even talking about this?

It’s possible to both recognize how fortunate we are to be in the position we’re in and criticize an asshole billionaire who seemingly understands that the world is getting shittier over time but refuses to do anything about it despite having the power and resource necessary to do anything about it. I refuse to forgive his dragon sickness just because I have internet access in 2023, and it’s fucking ridiculous for you to suggest anything of the sort.

All the more reason for him to stop hoarding the fruits of exploited labor that he won’t live to enjoy anyway. He has the power to change the world such that we don’t need to expect less and have a tougher world. Rather than actually doing anything about what he’s predicting, he’s just telling the future of humanity to deal with it. He’s a selfish prick and I hope his death is painful with proportion to the pain his existence upon us is, has been, and will be for generations to come.

Now now comrade, guillotines are not too expensive for our scraps to acquire. It’s their peasant murderers personal security police force that’s too expensive for our scraps to acquire.

You’re not wrong, but the context here makes this statement entirely different. The billionaire expects to continue to be a billionaire, but it is we who need to expect less and be happy for it. We wouldn’t need to accept less in the first place if he weren’t so greedily hoarding the fruits of exploited labor. But that’s not negotiable for him. The idea itself is absurd to him on the same level as unicorns propelling their way across the sky by way of rocket-farting fairy dust.

What are the odds?! My wife and I just landed in Madrid at 6am for a vacation. Never been to Europe. Well, I lived in Germany as a kid, but I don’t remember much of that.

We’re literally just wandering and killing time until our hotel room is ready for check-in.

When I was a chef, I would run 3 miles after work every day. My wife thought I was nuts when I told her that, but as active as that job was, it was much more standing and thinking than running. The run was like opening a flood gate to just get it all out. Your way of exercising before work probably works much better, but I was deeply of the mindset of not waking up any earlier than absolutely necessary. Now when I’m on day shift, I have to get up at 3am, so I don’t think I’d exercise before work now either lol. On night shift, there’s plenty of time before work, but I gotta be ready to work until like 4:30am, so it’s still tough. 12 hour shifts are rough. But I usually get pretty good exercise at work, so I think that’s covered okay.

The stress of being a chef is real. Inventory, ordering, scheduling, difficult customers, unreliable staff, equipment breaking down, etc. I’m still passionate about food, but I’m not ashamed to admit that the stress was too much for me and the pay too little. I’m glad you found a way to keep going. You’re a stronger person than me for that. It took years, but I think I’m getting the hang of cooking for two instead of like forty haha.

My job is 12 hour shifts, and I flip between day shift and night shift frequently. There’s also weekend and holiday work. The nice side of that is 7 days off in a row every 4 weeks, plus I’m paid quite well. I’m actually at the airport, about to go to Spain with my wife for a little more than a week. But I know that there are many like me working these long hours without the pay or time off I am able to enjoy. So I like to come here to make sure people know about things like the prevalence of wage theft. I didn’t know any better for a long time, and now I do. I also like to say that if my schedule doesn’t sound unbearable, I’m working in-house at a commercial power plant, and although it requires a background test and drug test, it doesn’t require more than a HS diploma, and it pays 6 figures. So definitely brush up on high school level physics and see what you can find if it’s interesting to you.

After a shift, I’m also feeling like a zombie. I find that doing a little housework frequently makes for much less of it encroaching on my “weekend” time. The stuff I do on time off is more passive if I can help it. Laundry and running the dishwasher take passive time. In the meantime, I’ll play video games or watch a movie or whatever.

Yup. 3 close friends were teachers and gave up. Low pay, long hours, asshole parents, and garbage administration chased them out the door. I’m pretty sure all 3 have grad school under their belt too. 2 of them who taught English and similar courses went to Johns Hopkins as PMs for the CTY program; the third taught physics and now does something I’m not super familiar with leading a team of engineers.

You know there’s a problem when the fucking schools are experiencing brain drain.

I was a chef for years. Not just a prep cook or line cook, but the guy running the shit. It can get extremely stressful, no doubt, but it isn’t “the industry” or customer interactions that make people cry or quit enough to cause a flyer like this. People rarely quit jobs; they quit bosses. If you are on the verge of quitting or crying in that type of job, it’s almost certainly because your boss is shitty. Your boss should establish a respectful environment and stand up for you if anybody shits on you. Your boss should give you the tools and training necessary to do your job effectively. Your boss should work with you to ensure that you’ve got a reasonable schedule, posted with a reasonable amount of notice, providing a reasonable work/life balance rather than insisting that you just be “bout that life”. Your employees do not exist solely to support your dream of running a successful business; they have their own dreams to pursue.

It’s not that fucking difficult to be a decent boss, and I refuse to stand by and say nothing while you make excuses to enable shitty fucking behavior from shitty fucking bosses just because “that’s how the industry is” or whatever. Maybe that was true once, but workers now have the power to tell the industry to go fuck itself, and I applaud them for doing so. We have more than enough shitty restaurants. We could close 80% of them for good, and raise prices, quality, and pay for the remaining restaurants, and I’d be thrilled. And if these shitty fucking bosses have enough trouble hiring people, I’ll get my wish, because these lazy fucks can’t run their stupid fucking restaurants without dirt cheap labor to exploit. Any decent boss worth their salt in any industry knows that it’s the boss who works for the employees. Any business’s failure or success depends on good workers running it and good bosses giving the workers everything they need to run it. Once you take care of that, good customers/clients follow, revenue spikes, and costs sink. Happy workers do the best work, and customers/clients choose happy workers to interface with. It’s not that complicated.

One benefit of late stage capitalism seems to be that managers are getting even more stupid than we ever thought possible, so this really isn’t out of the question.

Absolutely! If you ever do any amount extra, let it be small reciprocal stuff for your coworkers, not free labor for your boss or the shareholders.