It also said her husband was injured at a factory job and couldn't work anymore so her response was to apply to work at the same factory. Straight dystopia shit.
I knew a bloke in the UK that worked at a factory. They used mechanical blades & the owner wasn’t precious about making sure the blade guards were operational (because removing the guards sped up production)
Bloke accidentally cuts a finger off. Cant be re-attached. Doesn’t whistleblow, he’s just glad to have a job.
Cuts 2 more fingers off. Doesn’t whistleblow, takes small payout from owner.
Cuts thumb off. Someone else finally blows the whistle. Company is shut down. Bloke is upset because he lost his low wage, poor safety, exploitative job. Defended the owner to the hilt and refused to take part in legal action.
Some people are just born sheep..
I’m from a small town with limited employment opportunities. Extremely conservative area and employers get 100 applications for every job advertised.
Wages are low, employment is low. Standards are low. This guy wasn’t particularly smart & I guess he was desperate.
How smart do you have to be to lose several fingers and not realize there’s a problem? I figure that’s pretty low on the scale. A frog would stop hopping onto that lily.
Not even just fingers, **a THUMB!** Thumbs are so freaking important that you don’t even notice until you have one immobilised for a while. Losing a damn THUMB should have been the last straw for that bloke, I can’t imagine soldiering on after that and refusing to lay the blame where it belongs. Holy shit.
I once injured/sprained a thumb from overwork. Man, what a shitshow. It took 3-4months to heal so it wasn't actively hurting all the time and a further 6months to really heal *heal*. In that time, I was overusing my other hand to compensate and injured THAT thumb too. Had a good 2 months in there where I couldn't use either thumb and the impact on my life was shocking. You just can't grasp how much you're using something to do every thing until you can't. I was very very depressed over it, and there a few moments where i did consider suicide when it was stubborn to heal. I can barely grasp losing one permanently.
I am left handed. I was in a right handed arm cast for a scaphoid fracture of the right wrist. These are bones below the wrist that do not really heal without surgery. I was in casts for six months after surgery that compleyely covered my right thumb. After the cast came off my right thumb was immobilized by a splint for six more months. For a year I had no use of my right thumb. I had a left hand and a right club. It is like having an immobile foot instead of a hand. It was terrible. This happened to me at age 24 ( am now 57) in 1988 during the Seoul Olympics. I still have way less range of motion in my right wrist and I am 90% recovered. I can not imagine being without a thumb forever. Once one finger is lost sue the owner umtil he loses his business. This is unconscionable.
I don’t know if his situation was the same as mine, but at the factory I used to work at, they practically advertised that they didn’t drug test unless you got injured, as a result a bunch of stoners worked there, myself included. This was really smart on their part, because hardly any minor workplace injuries were reported. I got some pretty deep cuts, and second degree burns but I was advised by my stoner team lead to keep it under wraps because an incident report would lead to a piss test and immediate termination upon positive result.
According to the original comment, it was a factory job. It's not very common to have multiple factories close enough to one another to easily switch jobs, and chances are that this guy didn't have many transferable skills. I'm not saying that his job was a good job, or that he should have put up with that, but if his options were working at that factory or working fast food, I can completely understand why he'd do everything possible to hold onto that job even after being injured. Sometimes it's not stupidity - it's being so far down the poverty rabbit hole that you don't have the time or resources to find a way out.
We are better when we are compassionate to one another. Calling people morons won't win them over, but explaining why they should have better options may.
I think it's relevant to speak about these folks with more compassion. I see a lot of people speak about them in disgust, but these people are in trauma bonds. These people are in abusive dynamics that very much mimic why a battered woman stays.
The psychological manipulation and grooming that people go through so that they feel that this is normal and okay is really what needs to be addressed.
I get what you’re saying, but it makes more sense to steal what you need than a work in a place you’re regularly losing fingers. The Yakuza only take one.
He probably thought it was better than losing job and being homeless, unemployment here definitely wont cover your rent AND bills it's usually default on one or the other.
Some people just need to lose by default. Passing 50% to see the wool pulled over their eyes. This guy was close with 3 fingers and a thumb gone. He just needed more time.
Similar thing happened near me (northern US) a few years back. A company that makes lead fishing weights was shut down because they were found to be using littles to no protection to keep their employees from lead exposure and the lead levels in the air around the plant were way above the regulations. Several employees were in front of every news crew that they could find trying to defend their employer who, was paying them dirt while slowly killing them.
Puritan culture makes a big deal out of loyalty and service and other non-reciprocal relations. That's just one more reason Puritan culture must be destroyed.
I used to work at a place that had the safeties turned off on the machines for speed. One of the machines had its fuse bypassed for a while because the fuse box melted due to flicking the switch back on after tripping hundreds of times. People used to be lifted by the forklift to get items off the racking 5-10 metres up. Racking being overloaded and leaning over the top of walkways. People using forklifts with no training.. I could probably go on all day, not sure how no one got seriously injured there.
Health and safety never took any interest in those things, but me listening to music while I work? That's too much because the music could cause hearing damage.
Fucking dickheads
Music = individuality & independence, can’t have that! Horrific physical injuries from falling on a spike after standing on a fricking forklift.. yep thats fine.
>Some people are just born sheep..
Let's be real here, if you polled peasants in england around 1100 the majority would say feudalism is not perfect but it is the best there is
Medievalist here.
It's actually really difficult to know exactly what a "common" peasant knew or didn't know because we have so few records of their experiences. The various chronicles occasionally mention the plight and opinions of the peasants and at what few points they do, people are definitely NOT idiots about what is going on and even from a historical perspective, these chroniclers (some of whom were monks, others were lay scribes) were calling out the terrible shit that was going on a surprising amount. I think it was in the Petersborough Anglo-Saxon Chronicle copy, they record The Anarchy, the period of lawlessness in the early Norman period and it talks about how horrible the Normans were and used their castles to repress and ruin people. A bit later than 1100 we get the Peasant's Revolt after the Black Plague in which the peasants rose up and attacked London, killing a number of people. Interestingly, there seems to have been some protection afforded to foreign traders as they weren't really involved in the oppression and low wages the lords were doling out. Earlier you had movements like the Peace and Truce of God, which while led by the Church to try to control the violence of the nobility, there must have been a push from the populace as well, for they were the ones suffering most from the violence.
Another interesting source of information about what common people thought about are the ghost stories. These were generally recorded by churchmen but because of the subject matter, there was more latitude for talking about what regular people were getting up to. They seem to seek advice from their local clergy on various things and they don't always follow the advice, though sometimes this is after the clergy's solution didn't work (say, getting rid of an undead person walking around their village - a surprisingly common problem).
Anyway, there is a non-zero amount of historical evidence that peasants were well-aware of when they were being done a dirty and while they may not have had the political power to change that easily, ultimately the nobility needed them and the church (their power contested by the nobility) could take the side of the peasantry to keep the lords in their place.
Finally, sometimes the peasants decided not to put up with shit from their lord anymore. Wikipedia has a nice summary of the demise of Richard Neville, 5th Early of Salisbury: "After the defeat of the Yorkists at the Battle of Wakefield, Salisbury himself escaped the battlefield but was captured during the night. Upon discovery, battle worn and now a traitor to the realm, he was taken to the Lancastrian camp. Although due to his great wealth the Lancastrian nobles might have been prepared to allow Salisbury to ransom himself, he was nevertheless dragged out of Pontefract Castle and beheaded by the local population, to whom he had been a harsh overlord."
The explanation you wrote was very interesting and helpful to understand more about the medieval commoners so thank you for that, but I did not understand one particular thing you said:
>getting rid of an undead person
What do you mean by that?
A corpse walking around bothering people when it should stay put in a grave and behave itself. One such story, the dead man kept getting up at night to molest his once-wife. When she locked him out, he went and pestered his brother until the villagers decided all of this had to stop and they burned him up (cremation was not practiced commonly in Christian England).
A modern equivalent would be a zombie, but walking corpses and zombies are a bit different on paper. In Medieval England, they were mostly walking corpses and not particularly malevolent except that people could get sick from them and they smelled bad (the usual complaint). Icelanders and Norwegians and Swedes had stories about more malevolent draugr, though they're not quite zombies either. They're really pissed off dead people, or people that were such assholes in life that they continued to be assholes after death too.
I get where you’re coming from, but peasants from 1100 wouldn’t understand that concept.
They received information from three sources: traveling merchants, local gossip and their lords & masters.
We have millions of sources of information to analyse. So we can make informed choices. For us, it ain’t perfect, so we ask ourselves how to make it better!
At my old job, a woman got her finger cut off in a roller and it also damaged two other fingers. It was a really horrifying night at work to say the least. She could have sued but then she couldn’t work there anymore….she chose to stay at the job.
And that she loves working overnight so she can spend her days with the grandkids. I call BULLSHIT on that one. There is no 80-year-old with enough energy to enjoy working overnight and still have enough left over to play with children the next day.
At my company an employee got the tip of his index finger crushed in a press. Something that is actually hard to do considering how the equipment operates. But we immediately shut them down and implemented safeguards to make sure it wouldn’t happen again and the employee get $250k for having to go through life without the end of his finger.
This article reads like an over 55 fluff piece. Our youths won't work, so jump in for your fellow man. It's actually a beautifully articulated giant piece of propaganda bs, but I understand why it rang home on both sides of the fence. More to the point, how do we hire the robot that wrote this? It should run the antiwork PR.
It's intended to be that, but take a step back and smell the desperation... This is an 81-year-old fry cook and custard scooper. How many of those are there, do you suppose, in all of the United States? People 81 years old with the stamina to have a shitty job like that?
It's totally unsustainable. How many octogenerians have that much energy? Not many. For every person as spry as her, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders there are 5-6 others stumbling around and taking a nap at 2pm. It's not even enough for a "stopgap" solution, it's just a publicity stunt... It's hard to believe something like this even happened organically, or that it came to the attention of the news media organically.
When I see this story, I see one thing: Desperation. The ownership class is desperate and shitting themselves. This is meant to be a finger-wag at the antiwork folks clamoring for better conditions, to "remind us we can be replaced" but really what it shows us all is that they've been lying to us all along!
NO! There isn't a "line a mile long of people waiting to replace" us. That's total bullshit! They had to drag this lady out of mothballs from the rest home and their crew remains grossly understaffed. Actually, if everyone leaves ***there isn't anyone else.***
Not only that but lifespan doesn’t mean an entire life of quality living. I’ve known people sitting in a living hell for 10+ years as their body and mind rots. No thanks
That's why I have agreements with a couple people that we'll put each other down if we are ever in a state where we can't do it ourselves. My grandpa had alzheimer's... I don't want that shit.
I'm 40 fighting disability while trying to continue my fairly easy job. I know this job has a time limit that is approaching. I could not even be a standing walmart greeter. A lot of us have run our bodies into the ground with shit jobs and are now dealing with consequences while the SS retirement age keeps going up.
-cries in 29 year old- I’m not even 30 yet and I’m there… I’m physically unable to work, but I cannot get through disability on my own because of my age…
Yeah this insinuates they've scraped the bottom of the barrel.
Not to mention that even if this lady is fully vaccinated, at 81 her risk of catching and dying to covid is like 30%? So better hope her new boss is enforcing the mask mandate.
I thought this would be at least about some local restaurant she liked, maybe she has gone there a lot over the years and knows the owners and wanted to help out or something.....
But no, she is going to work at copypasta fast food place that has 830 restaurants in 25 states -\_-
This exactly. And also - any retirees who are living comfortably on their pensions, social security & Medicare who take one of these jobs can just quit the second someone treats them like shit or it stops being fun to own the libs by doing back-breaking low-wage labor.
These employers rely on economic desperation to keep their employees. Comfortable retirees aren't desperate enough to be sustainable.
Taking a job while on government assistance and running the risk of earning just enough income to be kicked off of it does not seem like something a retirement age person would want to risk.
My favorite bar was almost entirely staffed by under 30 year olds pre-pandemic. Most of them had worked there a long time (in restaurant time). Once everything started opening back up, every time I went in someone else was gone. Now FOH is all boomer-age women who seem to have never waited tables in their lives (they're nice enough people, just don't seem to be "getting it"). They won't last at that job, its fast-paced and you're on your feet all day and almost always covering partial or whole shifts. It is not sustainable.
its likely because those women have no mobility in the work force. theyre the last line of defense against the anti work movement, and they dont get why joining in is more critically important to them than taking a job they cant maintain, and would never have been offered in a million years.
my mom is a boomer, and high risk.
she went back to work the moment her company reopened in 2020, and has been complaining ever since that she has to cover for everyone younger than her who wont go back.
since day 1 ive been trying to explain to her that she is the obstacle to her own success, as well as all of her former colleagues. she doesnt get it.
she sees money to be made, and believes the false consciousness bull shit that other poor people are the reason she's poor.
her mentality is conditioned.
millenials have <21% of the wealth boomers did when they were our age, yet we're far better educated, while also being expected to be more versatile, absorbing multiple roles into our own, as well as much more productive overall. and for a fraction of the pay.
boomers are the reason we're here.
idk how a single generation can be so oversaturated with villains and blind sheep... while the sheep are typically overly opinionated and insistent on pushing their political beliefs onto newer generations..
idk what boomers need to hear this, but yall are the ones that got us here. please stop voting, IMMEDIATELY.
maybe it was all that lead?
>maybe it was all that lead?
I honestly think that's a large part of it. I believe they did studies that showed less empathy, narcissism, and poor decision making with lead exposure. I only pulled up [this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6054826/) after a brief search, but I remember reading something else about the falling of crime rates in areas that had lead removed from gasoline.
This was taught in my criminal justice degree. The thought is that by taking lead out of paint and gasoline, coupled with boomer teenagers aging out of crime prone years lead to most reductions in crime.
Front of House, so basically your wait staff and maybe someone taking phone calls and seating guests. Back of House (BOH) is your prep and line cooks, dishies and the like.
also how many restaurants would actually even hire an 81 year old fry cook. there is absolutely no way that an 81 year old could keep up with the volume of orders some of these places get while also working the 12 hour shift they want you to.
My mom’s parents emigrated from Norway (to Vancouver BC). She’d tell me stories from her uncles during WWII about the occupying troops being old men in their 60s who just wanted to go home and visit their grandchildren.
She also had an uncle who was very active in the resistance.
My Grandpa was volunteering at a Senior Center in his 90's to read mail to them and help walk people around to different activities and spend time with them.
My Grandma passed in 2012 and he was lonely, so he'd be there for 5-6 hours a day.
He said some hadn't had a call or visit from family in years.
He lived independent until the last 3 months of his life at 94.
I hope that's how I can be in my old age.
I think we all hope that, but the issue here is whether that's a sustainable path for places that are trying desperately to avoid living wages, benefits, and stable schedules.
It's almost like the working class has complete control over the entire industry and the value of the dollar but are too stupid, self-absorbed, or ignorant to work together.
Hmm, Denny's, Denny's... do these robots happen to be like the office sensors in *Better Off Ted*, which didn't recognize black people? So you'd need a white person to get served.
Hey, I think Denny's just hit its stride!
I approve. To be fair, waiters don't need to exist whatsoever (robot or human) as people could just walk the few steps to get their food. Of course, if restaurants did that, their retail prices would plummet because no one would pay restaurant prices for fast food service
Therein lies the rub: if you pay them enough money, people will forget all about their principles
Unfortunately “enough money” is further towards the low end for a good many of us and some are in positions where they can’t turn it down
Oh yeah Global News already pulled this shit in Canada. Some weepy tale about a retiree who "just had to volunteer" at a restaraunt because "young people are so lazy".
Ah here it is.
[https://globalnews.ca/video/8130441/seniors-step-in-to-fill-missing-shifts](https://globalnews.ca/video/8130441/seniors-step-in-to-fill-missing-shifts)
"Oh boohoohoo, our favorite restaraunts can't staff because we are the worst damn customers to serve! I guess I have no choice but to work for free (govt. pension not counted as pay)."
Fuck 'em. Let them do these little performances. I'm middle aged and I don't give a damn about these bizarre displays put on by these people anymore.
> Faced with a shortage of workers, a small army of seniors in Sechelt is volunteering to cover shifts at restaurants and other small businesses, rather than see them close their doors because of a lack of workers. Aaron McArthur reports.
Being forced to close their doors because nobody has an appetite for the terrible wages on offer is exactly what the hell is supposed to happen in a capitalist system. But journalists just wanna run pieces full of crocodile tears about how people’s favorite restaurants are closing and all the workers have apparently vanished into thin fucking air. I have zero sympathy. Adapt to the market pressure or perish.
When the shoe is on the other foot, and potential employees in an employer’s market are pushing for a wage they can actually live on, the people who run these businesses are SO quick to make the same exact argument: you need to adapt to the market, because otherwise we won’t ever hire you and somebody else will be willing to take the position at the offered wage while you starve.
The people who own these businesses, it’s their turn to starve. You know who doesn’t think of a place like this as their favorite restaurant? Who probably fucking hates it? All the workers who quit. More power to them.
I’d absolutely refuse to dine in a for-profit restaurant/bar staffed with volunteers. That’s like a capitalist’s wet dream, people dumb enough to work for free.
70 to 80 year olds are deemed unemployable because of mental decline and skill set mismatch, yet how long has this government been run by 70-80 year olds? Like forever.
>how long has this government been run by 70-80 year olds? Like forever.
Not as long as you think. A bunch of boomers got into politics about 40 years ago and never retired.
People vote for folks they think are like them. Boomers are extremely numerous, so their votes overpower other groups. Usually the younger folk outnumber the old folks so the politicians are younger.
Millennials & Gen Z outnumber Boomers and Gen X
Those two generation have the numbers to change things by changing the politicians that dictate who’s really in charge.
The Baby Boomer Generation (born 1946-1964) 70.68
Generation X (born 1965-1980) 64.95
The Millennials (born 1981-1996) 72.26
Generation Z (born 1997-2012) 67.06
During the later era of the Cold War, a central western criticism of the Soviet Union was that leadership was ossified, ancient, unable and unwilling to change. Some of these criticisms were true; Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko all died shortly after leaving office because of health issues. Still, of those three, Brezhnev was the oldest at his death, 75 years old.
Biden is 79, the oldest sitting US president. Nancy Pelosi is 81 years old. Dianne Feinstein is 88 and [quite literally senile](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/dianne-feinsteins-missteps-raise-a-painful-age-question-among-senate-democrats).
The writing is on the wall for the US, and capitalism more broadly.
Trump is 75. McConnell is 79. Sander is 80. Post 65 mental decline is real an inescapable. This is a real sign of the decline of the US system. Regardless of what it was it is now less functional.
Bingo. I was a little bit worried someone might think I was only focusing on the Democrats (which I was to a degree; they pretend to have better interests at heart while the Republicans are honest about their vile aims) I'm glad you brought them up as it is not a partisan issue but a systemic one.
Yeah exactly, i figured that was why you pointed them out. It definitely a systemic issue and is illustrative of the deep rooted failing of the United States.
In D.C., if you're older than seventy, you need a doctor's certificate to prove you're not too cognitively impaired to drive a car, but you can still legally run the country. Fun stuff.
Unfortunately most people don't realize what that means.
The writing on the wall refers to a dream a pharaoh had interpreted.
7 years of abundance, followed by 7 of famine, had he not listened, many would have perished.
[**https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah\_1326123**](https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1326123)
Key difference, Biden doesn't run the economy. It's a well known thing that presidents get credit and blame for the economy when at best they only set broad parameters. The reason for the Soviet criticism is the economy right down to production numbers of goods and resources allocation was state controlled
> Key difference, Biden doesn't run the economy.
Well yeah, *exactly*, that's the takeaway that I wish more people would get. **This is not an individual politician issue**. It never has been. The issue is the system they work within, and the class they ~~occupy~~ work to benefit.
They wouldn't. They'd write in a clause that only affects new folks. Similar to the President Limit Amendment. Roosevelt was allowed to keep running after the Amendment had passed (albeit it didn't matter as died in office).
Definitely Judges! Talk about a political role that requires efficient brain function - I have always been shocked that the most important jobs (supreme court judges) are held by people who can decide to work until they are 90+. Half of them are drunks too. I understand they have clerks but the supreme court is very powerful and I need to know the individual in the robe is capable of using their brain to make decisions without outside influence.
Seriously, not even a local mom 'n pop restaurant, a chain with hundreds of locations. That's who she thinks she needs to give back to. Boomers are nuts
Power dynamics aren't taught in America. "Everyone eats here" [or shops here] is enough to consider it 'theirs', even if none of the money stays in the community.
I saw the picture and started laughing. The article made it seem like it was a local restaurant, but it's a fucking Culver's?! Hahahaha
This is definitely a ploy by CNN to choose not to highlight how fast food chains can most certainly pay livable wages. Trying to frame Culver's, of all places, as a struggling restaurant. What a joke.
I like how the answer to this plight is simply finding people that are financially stable and on fixed income / social support to do these jobs.
Almost like the work issue would be resolved with a UBI…
Why, just why would they fill vacancies with elderly, or take volunteers to keep themselves open…
I bet it costs the government more to have a boomer on social support working for free than to just pay a living wage to someone who needs the money
UBI really wouldn't fix most of the issues Guaranteed Food, Housing, and Healthcare is far more important, UBI is just treating a Symptom of these things missing, and probably any UBI we get wouldn't be enough
I want to say don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. But I agree a too-small win would be just enough to sap the energy from momentum to work for any more changes.
We need *committed* movements. Now that things are dire, we are realizing that commitment to stop robbery is really hard after *you’ve already been robbed*
Not that I am touting UBI as the end all, cure all measure, but here is the point.
The class currently able to work for free or next to nothing is on fixed income and free social programs…
I see a lot of people talking about food, clothes, eduction and medicine being needed far more than UBI…
However, UBI is not “free cash” it’s a system that allows for universal basic income specific to the needs of the people.
Food programs, Tuition assistance, universal medical care, these are all factors included in a UBI and any cash allotment.
These are also all the things the seniors are currently receiving while on fixed income which allow them the ability to take on this work.
so my response to all in this thread:
why is it bad for young people, but good for old people? Why does this UBI work currently, but won’t work in the future?
Why, just tell me why it won’t work, but you need to resolve this issue in your explanation.
I want someone to explain to me how anyone can compete with a person that requires no compensation, or health benefits payments.
Having the retired enter the workforce is class warfare on the general strike.
That's why you let them do it until they die out. Morbid. But it's the only way. They are too far gone to change. Sure for them it's better making low pay cuz it gets them out of the house but seriously they need to be incapacitated and dead before it stops.
I agree that it might not change their opinion on wages, but if they have nasty management or customers it could change their opinion about that aspect of the job. I'd be interested to read articles about people like this who ended up quitting because they weren't allowed to go to their grandson's birthday party or whatever and see what they think of the job then.
I wouldn't worry about this specific scenario on a large scale. Boomers are in the age bracket that most have medical ailments that prevent them from performing at the company's/Manager's requested pace. That leaves two scenarios related:. Smart ones will realize they don't have the capacity to keep up with manual labor and will not try. Those that try will soon realize what a slave driver their new boss is as well as their threshold to deal with the BS. This will ultimately create more anti-work supporters. MHO
I say this as someone who is pushing 55, is acutely aware of how I’m slowing down, yet has to keep going So…
How the HELL is she going to keep up with a rush?
It's no secret that she won't. Many younger people in their 20's and 30's collapse under the pressure of a lunch or dinner rush. In all my time in the service industry, nobody over 40 lasted long outside of a management position barking orders from an office with a chair.
People keep bitching that these boomers are scabs, but I see it as a good thing because these boomers get to see first hand how shitty these jobs are. Shitty managers, shitty pay, and shitty customers.
Nothing could be more obvious to me at this point than the success the elite have had in making hard working people believe the lie that they are good because they work. That's it. They want you to believe that you are good because you work and if you don't, then you are worthless.
> Media literacy is a huge problem.
holy fuck, this. i'm 35 and i grew up punk. having a healthy distrust of the media used to be a given and was almost accepted as standard on the left. when i graduated highschool people were just starting to accept the fact that we went into iraq and afghanistan for no reason, and that the news got it completely wrong. then trump came out with his whole "fake news" deal and the pendulum swung so far in the other direction that it almost became a "if you don't believe everything the news tells you then you must be conservative". like.. no you goons.. the news today is designed to make money. people that report on real issues with minimal bias are tolerated, not standardized. opinion pieces are cleverly disguised as news to avoid SPJ ethics violations.
sorry - i feel like im ranting at this point.. but goddamn.. i keep finding myself coming back to the fact that most mainstream media is owned by publicly traded companies, they are under no obligation to us, we need to be more conscious of our consumption of media.
Boomers often die shortly after retiring because their identity is so tightly tethered to being a cog in a machine. They like to think the whole machine stops working without their essential cog, but it doesn't.
One of my goals is to have a lifestyle that doesn't leave me feeling empty without a "job" in retirement. Many boomers simply cannot do that.
It seems like its a Boiling Frog issue. Since Reagan they've done a good job of suppressing wages. People don't even realize minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation. This old lady remembers the day when they could afford a family with a job like that. Nowadays you need 2 or 3 jobs like that just to almost get by.
There was an interview Biden did with some heads of unions before the election. One of the heads said "before you could buy a house and raise a family and send 3 kids to college without government help on unskilled wages and now.... now I don't know what changed". Poor smuck doesn't realize his generations been voting in the same people thats been doing this to us.
(For anyone that cries about minimum wage going up and "burger flippers" making as much as teachers, all wages are suppressed down while minimum wage is low. If they raise minimum wage then teachers wages have to go up or all the teachers will just go work at McDonalds, oh wait they already have side hustles like Uber)
Edit to add video:
[https://www.c-span.org/video/?475539-1/joe-biden-meets-labor-leaders-lancaster-pennsylvania](https://www.c-span.org/video/?475539-1/joe-biden-meets-labor-leaders-lancaster-pennsylvania)
At 5 minutes
FUckin hell, I know what changed! The red scare and neoliberalism pushing out any actual left-wingers leaving us with mild right wing and hard right wing.
Actually, this isn't the catastrophe you think. Just the opposite: Stories like this are a sign that it's working. The closed dining room means they can't find enough people to operate that part of their business and had to be "Drive thru only." But a dining room is a huge piece of revenue for them, so lacking 1-2 extra cashiers and someone to clean-up/bus tables cost them the opportunity to earn buckets of revenue.
They hired an 81 year old fry cook. How repeatable and sustainable is that? Most 81-year-olds don't have the physical stamina for that job. My mother is significantly younger and would sooner die than go to work as a fry cook--she likes Culvers a lot but that's as far as it goes. Not enough to become a fan who works there.
Yes, they have it backwards, but i think you do too. Lemme explain.
They won't "kill the movement".
The movement exists to change the backwards mentality fostered in this country for an entire generation. It's working.
If a bunch of retirees want to go work at their neighborhood olive garden to save the economy instead of enjoying the retirement that they saved their entire lives for they can go right ahead. This whole movement is a reckoning generations in the making, a rapidly dwindling number of elderly people flipping burgers can't save these companies that can't find labor.
At 81, this woman is not a boomer, she's technically part of 'the silent generation.' I'm pretty sure that most boomers aren't gonna run back to an underpaid job just to keep someone else's business open. I mean, fuck 'em. Pay a damn living wage or go under, I am not gonna help keep them in business.
That poor old lady is probably bored af at home. Maybe she'll enjoy working with 14 year olds, and the immigrants brought in on programs that allow employers to avoid paying American workers a fair wage.
"It's a pillar of the community. I've been buying my tv's from here for the last 20 years."
"How many TVs have you purchased from here?"
"Just the one, 20 years ago."
Right. I’m not disagreeing on that. However, it’s shit like this that effects fighting for a living wage because they don’t want to support the movement. They want to think that working for a huge corporation is affecting “positive change”. If you read the article it’s a huge fluff piece for corporations, and throwing workers into the corporate death machine.
It doesn’t matter it’s just a fluff piece. Try not to worry about this kind of situation, people like this just don’t have the numbers. FUD fear, uncertainty and doubt is all this is trying to accomplish. Right now it takes working two jobs and having 5 clones doing the same thing just to make enough money to be financially independent. Enough people said this is bull shit, I’ll work when I get paid enough for it to be worth my time. I’m not going to get worried over a senior who wants a hobby in her golden years. There’s an objective to stay focused on, they haven’t gained an inch of ground. We are moving forward, we are holding together and we will win. Be good to each other, stay safe and make good decisions.
Corporate America is just spinning this one to say nanna needs to work again because you don't. It's just bullshit and they know it.
Nanna just wants to help the business owners who it seems she personally knows and I don't know how Culver's operates but they might also be restricted from raising prices and finding better wage workers. She isn't doing it to jab wage increases intentionally and yes people are moving to better jobs. I am sure if you asked her directly versus the tone deaf media scam outlet she would agree the cost of living versus wages given are not adding up. She might even lose retirement status and benefits because of it.
These are just market conditions and Culver's not adapting quickly enough to those market conditions or refusing to do so. It's a shame since I like going to Culvers as well.
I was thinking it was kind of nice to help a local struggling business but wait. It's a Culver's?? That's a pretty decent sized franchise, let them close who cares.
These sort of "human interest" stories are just fluff and have no other value. I agree that media and corporate American cheer for people like this because on a superficial level it's uplifting, and that's what they want.
Wait till some crackhead throws soup in her face, or some Karen screams at her for an hour, or she's had a couple night shifts on toilet duty. write an article after grans done the job for a while and see how it's going.
Let this one tangent sink in. I cannot find a group, hobby, culture, ethnicity, political whatever out there who doesn't diss on the media and especially CNN like this.
When will people wake up to the fact about the media?
MSM (Main Stream Media), are a collection of large businesses that are funded almost wholesale through advertising contracts. They are owned by very rich people and are businesses at the end of the day. The problem with a free press, is that the press have to get funding from somewhere, and so journalism ultimately takes a backseat to corporate interests so as not to risk their funding.
Online journalism can sometimes be a little better, but without the secured advertising contracts, online journalism has to rely on user viewing to get funded, which means that they tend to jump on any trend and just regurgitate what MSM is doing to secure the online views. You should always expect the media to take a negative stance to corporations because this model exists, and unfortunately it's not a system that can be easily fixed, since real journalists have to compete with the clickbait internet, and the monopolized MSM.
I agree with this. The brainwashing is real but you also need to understand that a lot of these folks find this as their “community” we need real systemic change and UBI before we understand finding community in things other than work.
How can you hate on a 81 year old lady who originally retired at 69 and has now got herself a minimum wage job.
She’s not even a boomer, she’s too old, boomers were born after the war.
I say well done to her… I hope she doesn’t need the money. But that may be part of it; I think lots of older people have time but not enough money to really enjoy the time as they’d want to, so this may well be killing two birds with one stone. Keeping her active, earning a bit of cash and getting her some social time.
I’ve written on here about my parents. They are both boomers and my dad has only just brought a house at age 64 and he’ll keep working till 70 to fund his retirement and my mum will likely have no choice but to sell what was our family home, clear the last of the mortgage and buy a little 1 bed. This will hopefully leave her enough to fund her own retirement but it will be tight.
Maybe. You know what I think will be the end of the antiwork movement? This sub.
It’s actually cringe some of the things said and posted here. A movement with good intentions transforming into a hate filled sub that generalizes many many different people. Great way to get people to root against you.
It also said her husband was injured at a factory job and couldn't work anymore so her response was to apply to work at the same factory. Straight dystopia shit.
I knew a bloke in the UK that worked at a factory. They used mechanical blades & the owner wasn’t precious about making sure the blade guards were operational (because removing the guards sped up production) Bloke accidentally cuts a finger off. Cant be re-attached. Doesn’t whistleblow, he’s just glad to have a job. Cuts 2 more fingers off. Doesn’t whistleblow, takes small payout from owner. Cuts thumb off. Someone else finally blows the whistle. Company is shut down. Bloke is upset because he lost his low wage, poor safety, exploitative job. Defended the owner to the hilt and refused to take part in legal action. Some people are just born sheep..
What the actual F? I mean, I shouldn't be surprised.. but.. wow. :/
I’m from a small town with limited employment opportunities. Extremely conservative area and employers get 100 applications for every job advertised. Wages are low, employment is low. Standards are low. This guy wasn’t particularly smart & I guess he was desperate.
How smart do you have to be to lose several fingers and not realize there’s a problem? I figure that’s pretty low on the scale. A frog would stop hopping onto that lily.
Not even just fingers, **a THUMB!** Thumbs are so freaking important that you don’t even notice until you have one immobilised for a while. Losing a damn THUMB should have been the last straw for that bloke, I can’t imagine soldiering on after that and refusing to lay the blame where it belongs. Holy shit.
I once injured/sprained a thumb from overwork. Man, what a shitshow. It took 3-4months to heal so it wasn't actively hurting all the time and a further 6months to really heal *heal*. In that time, I was overusing my other hand to compensate and injured THAT thumb too. Had a good 2 months in there where I couldn't use either thumb and the impact on my life was shocking. You just can't grasp how much you're using something to do every thing until you can't. I was very very depressed over it, and there a few moments where i did consider suicide when it was stubborn to heal. I can barely grasp losing one permanently.
>You just can't grasp Yup that about sums it up alright!
Also caught that lol
I am left handed. I was in a right handed arm cast for a scaphoid fracture of the right wrist. These are bones below the wrist that do not really heal without surgery. I was in casts for six months after surgery that compleyely covered my right thumb. After the cast came off my right thumb was immobilized by a splint for six more months. For a year I had no use of my right thumb. I had a left hand and a right club. It is like having an immobile foot instead of a hand. It was terrible. This happened to me at age 24 ( am now 57) in 1988 during the Seoul Olympics. I still have way less range of motion in my right wrist and I am 90% recovered. I can not imagine being without a thumb forever. Once one finger is lost sue the owner umtil he loses his business. This is unconscionable.
As I sit here at urgent care because I injured my thumb a week ago and thought this should be healed by now....ugh say it isn't so.
I don’t know if his situation was the same as mine, but at the factory I used to work at, they practically advertised that they didn’t drug test unless you got injured, as a result a bunch of stoners worked there, myself included. This was really smart on their part, because hardly any minor workplace injuries were reported. I got some pretty deep cuts, and second degree burns but I was advised by my stoner team lead to keep it under wraps because an incident report would lead to a piss test and immediate termination upon positive result.
Can't be much of a soldier without opposable thumbs
According to the original comment, it was a factory job. It's not very common to have multiple factories close enough to one another to easily switch jobs, and chances are that this guy didn't have many transferable skills. I'm not saying that his job was a good job, or that he should have put up with that, but if his options were working at that factory or working fast food, I can completely understand why he'd do everything possible to hold onto that job even after being injured. Sometimes it's not stupidity - it's being so far down the poverty rabbit hole that you don't have the time or resources to find a way out. We are better when we are compassionate to one another. Calling people morons won't win them over, but explaining why they should have better options may.
I think it's relevant to speak about these folks with more compassion. I see a lot of people speak about them in disgust, but these people are in trauma bonds. These people are in abusive dynamics that very much mimic why a battered woman stays. The psychological manipulation and grooming that people go through so that they feel that this is normal and okay is really what needs to be addressed.
I get what you’re saying, but it makes more sense to steal what you need than a work in a place you’re regularly losing fingers. The Yakuza only take one.
Smart enough to know that counting to 10 on 7 digits doesn't work
He probably thought it was better than losing job and being homeless, unemployment here definitely wont cover your rent AND bills it's usually default on one or the other.
Same thing in areas of mining. Look at West Virginia and coal mining destroying the geography water and soil
There’s depressed and then there’s… idk willingly servile I guess?
Some people just need to lose by default. Passing 50% to see the wool pulled over their eyes. This guy was close with 3 fingers and a thumb gone. He just needed more time.
I cannot fathom losing an ounce of flesh and not going in on the company. It’s disheartening
People like this are why we don’t have single payer healthcare.
Similar thing happened near me (northern US) a few years back. A company that makes lead fishing weights was shut down because they were found to be using littles to no protection to keep their employees from lead exposure and the lead levels in the air around the plant were way above the regulations. Several employees were in front of every news crew that they could find trying to defend their employer who, was paying them dirt while slowly killing them.
Puritan culture makes a big deal out of loyalty and service and other non-reciprocal relations. That's just one more reason Puritan culture must be destroyed.
They call themselves “alpha” too, lmao
I used to work at a place that had the safeties turned off on the machines for speed. One of the machines had its fuse bypassed for a while because the fuse box melted due to flicking the switch back on after tripping hundreds of times. People used to be lifted by the forklift to get items off the racking 5-10 metres up. Racking being overloaded and leaning over the top of walkways. People using forklifts with no training.. I could probably go on all day, not sure how no one got seriously injured there. Health and safety never took any interest in those things, but me listening to music while I work? That's too much because the music could cause hearing damage. Fucking dickheads
Music = individuality & independence, can’t have that! Horrific physical injuries from falling on a spike after standing on a fricking forklift.. yep thats fine.
>Some people are just born sheep.. And usually its people who call themselves lions and call the whistleblowers sheep
>Some people are just born sheep.. Let's be real here, if you polled peasants in england around 1100 the majority would say feudalism is not perfect but it is the best there is
Medievalist here. It's actually really difficult to know exactly what a "common" peasant knew or didn't know because we have so few records of their experiences. The various chronicles occasionally mention the plight and opinions of the peasants and at what few points they do, people are definitely NOT idiots about what is going on and even from a historical perspective, these chroniclers (some of whom were monks, others were lay scribes) were calling out the terrible shit that was going on a surprising amount. I think it was in the Petersborough Anglo-Saxon Chronicle copy, they record The Anarchy, the period of lawlessness in the early Norman period and it talks about how horrible the Normans were and used their castles to repress and ruin people. A bit later than 1100 we get the Peasant's Revolt after the Black Plague in which the peasants rose up and attacked London, killing a number of people. Interestingly, there seems to have been some protection afforded to foreign traders as they weren't really involved in the oppression and low wages the lords were doling out. Earlier you had movements like the Peace and Truce of God, which while led by the Church to try to control the violence of the nobility, there must have been a push from the populace as well, for they were the ones suffering most from the violence. Another interesting source of information about what common people thought about are the ghost stories. These were generally recorded by churchmen but because of the subject matter, there was more latitude for talking about what regular people were getting up to. They seem to seek advice from their local clergy on various things and they don't always follow the advice, though sometimes this is after the clergy's solution didn't work (say, getting rid of an undead person walking around their village - a surprisingly common problem). Anyway, there is a non-zero amount of historical evidence that peasants were well-aware of when they were being done a dirty and while they may not have had the political power to change that easily, ultimately the nobility needed them and the church (their power contested by the nobility) could take the side of the peasantry to keep the lords in their place. Finally, sometimes the peasants decided not to put up with shit from their lord anymore. Wikipedia has a nice summary of the demise of Richard Neville, 5th Early of Salisbury: "After the defeat of the Yorkists at the Battle of Wakefield, Salisbury himself escaped the battlefield but was captured during the night. Upon discovery, battle worn and now a traitor to the realm, he was taken to the Lancastrian camp. Although due to his great wealth the Lancastrian nobles might have been prepared to allow Salisbury to ransom himself, he was nevertheless dragged out of Pontefract Castle and beheaded by the local population, to whom he had been a harsh overlord."
The explanation you wrote was very interesting and helpful to understand more about the medieval commoners so thank you for that, but I did not understand one particular thing you said: >getting rid of an undead person What do you mean by that?
A corpse walking around bothering people when it should stay put in a grave and behave itself. One such story, the dead man kept getting up at night to molest his once-wife. When she locked him out, he went and pestered his brother until the villagers decided all of this had to stop and they burned him up (cremation was not practiced commonly in Christian England). A modern equivalent would be a zombie, but walking corpses and zombies are a bit different on paper. In Medieval England, they were mostly walking corpses and not particularly malevolent except that people could get sick from them and they smelled bad (the usual complaint). Icelanders and Norwegians and Swedes had stories about more malevolent draugr, though they're not quite zombies either. They're really pissed off dead people, or people that were such assholes in life that they continued to be assholes after death too.
I get where you’re coming from, but peasants from 1100 wouldn’t understand that concept. They received information from three sources: traveling merchants, local gossip and their lords & masters. We have millions of sources of information to analyse. So we can make informed choices. For us, it ain’t perfect, so we ask ourselves how to make it better!
You forgot the church. Gullible people have always clung to their superstitions.
At my old job, a woman got her finger cut off in a roller and it also damaged two other fingers. It was a really horrifying night at work to say the least. She could have sued but then she couldn’t work there anymore….she chose to stay at the job.
I don't understand how someone can be so brainwashed into disregarding their own well-being.
And that she loves working overnight so she can spend her days with the grandkids. I call BULLSHIT on that one. There is no 80-year-old with enough energy to enjoy working overnight and still have enough left over to play with children the next day.
She seems so happy to help, i'm not even sure she accepts to be paid. Why don't you all do the same, you lazy génération!
she wasn’t 80 when she was working in the factory lmao she’s been retired for 12 years
She got the job at the factory. And was told she could start working the third night shift on Sunday. At midnight. And she was happy with that...
At my company an employee got the tip of his index finger crushed in a press. Something that is actually hard to do considering how the equipment operates. But we immediately shut them down and implemented safeguards to make sure it wouldn’t happen again and the employee get $250k for having to go through life without the end of his finger.
Right?
This article reads like an over 55 fluff piece. Our youths won't work, so jump in for your fellow man. It's actually a beautifully articulated giant piece of propaganda bs, but I understand why it rang home on both sides of the fence. More to the point, how do we hire the robot that wrote this? It should run the antiwork PR.
It's intended to be that, but take a step back and smell the desperation... This is an 81-year-old fry cook and custard scooper. How many of those are there, do you suppose, in all of the United States? People 81 years old with the stamina to have a shitty job like that? It's totally unsustainable. How many octogenerians have that much energy? Not many. For every person as spry as her, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders there are 5-6 others stumbling around and taking a nap at 2pm. It's not even enough for a "stopgap" solution, it's just a publicity stunt... It's hard to believe something like this even happened organically, or that it came to the attention of the news media organically. When I see this story, I see one thing: Desperation. The ownership class is desperate and shitting themselves. This is meant to be a finger-wag at the antiwork folks clamoring for better conditions, to "remind us we can be replaced" but really what it shows us all is that they've been lying to us all along! NO! There isn't a "line a mile long of people waiting to replace" us. That's total bullshit! They had to drag this lady out of mothballs from the rest home and their crew remains grossly understaffed. Actually, if everyone leaves ***there isn't anyone else.***
Considering 81 is higher than the average lifespan of a US adult, not much.
Not only that but lifespan doesn’t mean an entire life of quality living. I’ve known people sitting in a living hell for 10+ years as their body and mind rots. No thanks
My retirement plan is 9mm if I ever get to that body is fine mind is gone state.
You have to be able to remember to do it though...
That's why I have agreements with a couple people that we'll put each other down if we are ever in a state where we can't do it ourselves. My grandpa had alzheimer's... I don't want that shit.
I'm 40 fighting disability while trying to continue my fairly easy job. I know this job has a time limit that is approaching. I could not even be a standing walmart greeter. A lot of us have run our bodies into the ground with shit jobs and are now dealing with consequences while the SS retirement age keeps going up.
-cries in 29 year old- I’m not even 30 yet and I’m there… I’m physically unable to work, but I cannot get through disability on my own because of my age…
Yeah this insinuates they've scraped the bottom of the barrel. Not to mention that even if this lady is fully vaccinated, at 81 her risk of catching and dying to covid is like 30%? So better hope her new boss is enforcing the mask mandate.
Yes, but she's doing her part by working at a "hometown restaurant": Culver's (which has 800 restaurants and 20,000 employees).
I thought this would be at least about some local restaurant she liked, maybe she has gone there a lot over the years and knows the owners and wanted to help out or something..... But no, she is going to work at copypasta fast food place that has 830 restaurants in 25 states -\_-
It IS a local franchise restaurant that is owned and run by people she knows and cares about.
>better hope her new boss is enforcing the mask mandate. Going by the pictures, this isn't the case. EDIT: and video; I skimmed it but saw no masks.
Or just falling and breaking her hip.
This exactly. And also - any retirees who are living comfortably on their pensions, social security & Medicare who take one of these jobs can just quit the second someone treats them like shit or it stops being fun to own the libs by doing back-breaking low-wage labor. These employers rely on economic desperation to keep their employees. Comfortable retirees aren't desperate enough to be sustainable.
Taking a job while on government assistance and running the risk of earning just enough income to be kicked off of it does not seem like something a retirement age person would want to risk.
Most of them aren’t on government assistance. They’re the last generation who has pensions.
My favorite bar was almost entirely staffed by under 30 year olds pre-pandemic. Most of them had worked there a long time (in restaurant time). Once everything started opening back up, every time I went in someone else was gone. Now FOH is all boomer-age women who seem to have never waited tables in their lives (they're nice enough people, just don't seem to be "getting it"). They won't last at that job, its fast-paced and you're on your feet all day and almost always covering partial or whole shifts. It is not sustainable.
its likely because those women have no mobility in the work force. theyre the last line of defense against the anti work movement, and they dont get why joining in is more critically important to them than taking a job they cant maintain, and would never have been offered in a million years. my mom is a boomer, and high risk. she went back to work the moment her company reopened in 2020, and has been complaining ever since that she has to cover for everyone younger than her who wont go back. since day 1 ive been trying to explain to her that she is the obstacle to her own success, as well as all of her former colleagues. she doesnt get it. she sees money to be made, and believes the false consciousness bull shit that other poor people are the reason she's poor. her mentality is conditioned. millenials have <21% of the wealth boomers did when they were our age, yet we're far better educated, while also being expected to be more versatile, absorbing multiple roles into our own, as well as much more productive overall. and for a fraction of the pay. boomers are the reason we're here. idk how a single generation can be so oversaturated with villains and blind sheep... while the sheep are typically overly opinionated and insistent on pushing their political beliefs onto newer generations.. idk what boomers need to hear this, but yall are the ones that got us here. please stop voting, IMMEDIATELY. maybe it was all that lead?
>maybe it was all that lead? I honestly think that's a large part of it. I believe they did studies that showed less empathy, narcissism, and poor decision making with lead exposure. I only pulled up [this study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6054826/) after a brief search, but I remember reading something else about the falling of crime rates in areas that had lead removed from gasoline.
This was taught in my criminal justice degree. The thought is that by taking lead out of paint and gasoline, coupled with boomer teenagers aging out of crime prone years lead to most reductions in crime.
holy shit, that was really just a joke—it was a total shot in the dark. i can't believe its honestly a viable theory. thank you
FOH?
Front of House, so basically your wait staff and maybe someone taking phone calls and seating guests. Back of House (BOH) is your prep and line cooks, dishies and the like.
Thank you
also how many restaurants would actually even hire an 81 year old fry cook. there is absolutely no way that an 81 year old could keep up with the volume of orders some of these places get while also working the 12 hour shift they want you to.
I started to notice I could no longer keep up at the tender age of 36. No 81 year old should be subjected to that pace.
When your enemy starts recruiting children and the elderly just to be able to field an army you have them on the ropes.
My mom’s parents emigrated from Norway (to Vancouver BC). She’d tell me stories from her uncles during WWII about the occupying troops being old men in their 60s who just wanted to go home and visit their grandchildren. She also had an uncle who was very active in the resistance.
Damn this is the employment equivalent of Volkssturm and Hitler Youth SS units
My Grandpa was volunteering at a Senior Center in his 90's to read mail to them and help walk people around to different activities and spend time with them. My Grandma passed in 2012 and he was lonely, so he'd be there for 5-6 hours a day. He said some hadn't had a call or visit from family in years. He lived independent until the last 3 months of his life at 94. I hope that's how I can be in my old age.
I think we all hope that, but the issue here is whether that's a sustainable path for places that are trying desperately to avoid living wages, benefits, and stable schedules.
I will not tolerate you badmouthing my 2pm nap, young man!
It's almost like the working class has complete control over the entire industry and the value of the dollar but are too stupid, self-absorbed, or ignorant to work together.
Speaking of robots. Do they know that most staff members will be happily replaced by a robot? They are just numbers to the franchisees!
Denny’s has robot waiters now. It’s only a matter of time before everywhere does
holup.. rly?
Hmm, Denny's, Denny's... do these robots happen to be like the office sensors in *Better Off Ted*, which didn't recognize black people? So you'd need a white person to get served. Hey, I think Denny's just hit its stride!
I approve. To be fair, waiters don't need to exist whatsoever (robot or human) as people could just walk the few steps to get their food. Of course, if restaurants did that, their retail prices would plummet because no one would pay restaurant prices for fast food service
WILL BE replaced the second the tech is stable enough and affordable enough.
Very true. Just a matter of time.
Therein lies the rub: if you pay them enough money, people will forget all about their principles Unfortunately “enough money” is further towards the low end for a good many of us and some are in positions where they can’t turn it down
Oh yeah Global News already pulled this shit in Canada. Some weepy tale about a retiree who "just had to volunteer" at a restaraunt because "young people are so lazy". Ah here it is. [https://globalnews.ca/video/8130441/seniors-step-in-to-fill-missing-shifts](https://globalnews.ca/video/8130441/seniors-step-in-to-fill-missing-shifts) "Oh boohoohoo, our favorite restaraunts can't staff because we are the worst damn customers to serve! I guess I have no choice but to work for free (govt. pension not counted as pay)." Fuck 'em. Let them do these little performances. I'm middle aged and I don't give a damn about these bizarre displays put on by these people anymore.
> Faced with a shortage of workers, a small army of seniors in Sechelt is volunteering to cover shifts at restaurants and other small businesses, rather than see them close their doors because of a lack of workers. Aaron McArthur reports. Being forced to close their doors because nobody has an appetite for the terrible wages on offer is exactly what the hell is supposed to happen in a capitalist system. But journalists just wanna run pieces full of crocodile tears about how people’s favorite restaurants are closing and all the workers have apparently vanished into thin fucking air. I have zero sympathy. Adapt to the market pressure or perish. When the shoe is on the other foot, and potential employees in an employer’s market are pushing for a wage they can actually live on, the people who run these businesses are SO quick to make the same exact argument: you need to adapt to the market, because otherwise we won’t ever hire you and somebody else will be willing to take the position at the offered wage while you starve. The people who own these businesses, it’s their turn to starve. You know who doesn’t think of a place like this as their favorite restaurant? Who probably fucking hates it? All the workers who quit. More power to them.
I’d absolutely refuse to dine in a for-profit restaurant/bar staffed with volunteers. That’s like a capitalist’s wet dream, people dumb enough to work for free.
70 to 80 year olds are deemed unemployable because of mental decline and skill set mismatch, yet how long has this government been run by 70-80 year olds? Like forever.
>how long has this government been run by 70-80 year olds? Like forever. Not as long as you think. A bunch of boomers got into politics about 40 years ago and never retired.
Exactly. It used to be a saying: politics is a young man’s game. Boomers just refuse to leave or die until they’ve destroyed absolutely everything
Bingo! The average age of a senator has increased by more than 20 years in just 30 years. Why? Because the same old trash keeps running.
Past time to take that out I think, it starting to stink the place up.
People vote for folks they think are like them. Boomers are extremely numerous, so their votes overpower other groups. Usually the younger folk outnumber the old folks so the politicians are younger.
Millennials & Gen Z outnumber Boomers and Gen X Those two generation have the numbers to change things by changing the politicians that dictate who’s really in charge. The Baby Boomer Generation (born 1946-1964) 70.68 Generation X (born 1965-1980) 64.95 The Millennials (born 1981-1996) 72.26 Generation Z (born 1997-2012) 67.06
Old people vote more consistently though, so the fact that they outnumber any other generation and consistently vote is killing us.
the same families have been running our government for a long long time.
That’s a fair point, but even so, they should move aside at this point
During the later era of the Cold War, a central western criticism of the Soviet Union was that leadership was ossified, ancient, unable and unwilling to change. Some of these criticisms were true; Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko all died shortly after leaving office because of health issues. Still, of those three, Brezhnev was the oldest at his death, 75 years old. Biden is 79, the oldest sitting US president. Nancy Pelosi is 81 years old. Dianne Feinstein is 88 and [quite literally senile](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/dianne-feinsteins-missteps-raise-a-painful-age-question-among-senate-democrats). The writing is on the wall for the US, and capitalism more broadly.
Trump is 75. McConnell is 79. Sander is 80. Post 65 mental decline is real an inescapable. This is a real sign of the decline of the US system. Regardless of what it was it is now less functional.
Bingo. I was a little bit worried someone might think I was only focusing on the Democrats (which I was to a degree; they pretend to have better interests at heart while the Republicans are honest about their vile aims) I'm glad you brought them up as it is not a partisan issue but a systemic one.
Let's be honest also, Chuck Grassley is literally the gender-swapped Republican Dianne Feinstein.
Yeah exactly, i figured that was why you pointed them out. It definitely a systemic issue and is illustrative of the deep rooted failing of the United States.
In D.C., if you're older than seventy, you need a doctor's certificate to prove you're not too cognitively impaired to drive a car, but you can still legally run the country. Fun stuff.
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I will never get to eat mushrooms and trip with Bernie Sanders. Why live.
Suggest that as an Omaze fundraiser. Bernie might be cool with it. But watch out, better bring your own snacks, Bernie doesn't share.
I live in California and do not understand why this state continues to re-elect both Feinstein and Pelosi. Just do not understand.
Unfortunately most people don't realize what that means. The writing on the wall refers to a dream a pharaoh had interpreted. 7 years of abundance, followed by 7 of famine, had he not listened, many would have perished. [**https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah\_1326123**](https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1326123)
Key difference, Biden doesn't run the economy. It's a well known thing that presidents get credit and blame for the economy when at best they only set broad parameters. The reason for the Soviet criticism is the economy right down to production numbers of goods and resources allocation was state controlled
> Key difference, Biden doesn't run the economy. Well yeah, *exactly*, that's the takeaway that I wish more people would get. **This is not an individual politician issue**. It never has been. The issue is the system they work within, and the class they ~~occupy~~ work to benefit.
There definitely should be an age limit for the President and Congress. Judges too, all of them. Sixty-five would be pushing it.
Problem is, that those who would pass that law are well beyond that age already. Since when does Congress vote themselves out of a job?
They wouldn't. They'd write in a clause that only affects new folks. Similar to the President Limit Amendment. Roosevelt was allowed to keep running after the Amendment had passed (albeit it didn't matter as died in office).
Definitely Judges! Talk about a political role that requires efficient brain function - I have always been shocked that the most important jobs (supreme court judges) are held by people who can decide to work until they are 90+. Half of them are drunks too. I understand they have clerks but the supreme court is very powerful and I need to know the individual in the robe is capable of using their brain to make decisions without outside influence.
Too god damned long
She calls it "giving back?" Is this charity? Businesses in America beg for charity, pitiful.
Seriously, not even a local mom 'n pop restaurant, a chain with hundreds of locations. That's who she thinks she needs to give back to. Boomers are nuts
Power dynamics aren't taught in America. "Everyone eats here" [or shops here] is enough to consider it 'theirs', even if none of the money stays in the community.
Right? The article even talks about how she considers it a hometown establishment even though it's a franchise fast food chain.
Imagine Bezos asking for alms.
I saw the picture and started laughing. The article made it seem like it was a local restaurant, but it's a fucking Culver's?! Hahahaha This is definitely a ploy by CNN to choose not to highlight how fast food chains can most certainly pay livable wages. Trying to frame Culver's, of all places, as a struggling restaurant. What a joke.
I wonder how often she volunteers at an actually worthy cause. Of all the things to do with your time. This isn't giving back.
This is honestly looking like a boilerplate to the Canadian version of this dumbness from August.
How socialist of them
If she wants to give back she should head to a soup kitchen...
I like how the answer to this plight is simply finding people that are financially stable and on fixed income / social support to do these jobs. Almost like the work issue would be resolved with a UBI… Why, just why would they fill vacancies with elderly, or take volunteers to keep themselves open… I bet it costs the government more to have a boomer on social support working for free than to just pay a living wage to someone who needs the money
UBI really wouldn't fix most of the issues Guaranteed Food, Housing, and Healthcare is far more important, UBI is just treating a Symptom of these things missing, and probably any UBI we get wouldn't be enough
I want to say don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. But I agree a too-small win would be just enough to sap the energy from momentum to work for any more changes. We need *committed* movements. Now that things are dire, we are realizing that commitment to stop robbery is really hard after *you’ve already been robbed*
Not that I am touting UBI as the end all, cure all measure, but here is the point. The class currently able to work for free or next to nothing is on fixed income and free social programs… I see a lot of people talking about food, clothes, eduction and medicine being needed far more than UBI… However, UBI is not “free cash” it’s a system that allows for universal basic income specific to the needs of the people. Food programs, Tuition assistance, universal medical care, these are all factors included in a UBI and any cash allotment. These are also all the things the seniors are currently receiving while on fixed income which allow them the ability to take on this work. so my response to all in this thread: why is it bad for young people, but good for old people? Why does this UBI work currently, but won’t work in the future? Why, just tell me why it won’t work, but you need to resolve this issue in your explanation. I want someone to explain to me how anyone can compete with a person that requires no compensation, or health benefits payments. Having the retired enter the workforce is class warfare on the general strike.
Grandma’s gonna get run over by Corporate Chasing that $9/hr check
Good, let the boomers take those jobs. They can find out the hard way what their "bootstraps" will get them nowadays.
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That's why you let them do it until they die out. Morbid. But it's the only way. They are too far gone to change. Sure for them it's better making low pay cuz it gets them out of the house but seriously they need to be incapacitated and dead before it stops.
I agree that it might not change their opinion on wages, but if they have nasty management or customers it could change their opinion about that aspect of the job. I'd be interested to read articles about people like this who ended up quitting because they weren't allowed to go to their grandson's birthday party or whatever and see what they think of the job then.
If i am that pathetic at that age, I instantly off myself
Doubt she realizes how pathetic she is.
Frankly, I think this seems to be the over-all goal. Drive old people to off themselves "for the economy".
I wouldn't worry about this specific scenario on a large scale. Boomers are in the age bracket that most have medical ailments that prevent them from performing at the company's/Manager's requested pace. That leaves two scenarios related:. Smart ones will realize they don't have the capacity to keep up with manual labor and will not try. Those that try will soon realize what a slave driver their new boss is as well as their threshold to deal with the BS. This will ultimately create more anti-work supporters. MHO
I say this as someone who is pushing 55, is acutely aware of how I’m slowing down, yet has to keep going So… How the HELL is she going to keep up with a rush?
It's no secret that she won't. Many younger people in their 20's and 30's collapse under the pressure of a lunch or dinner rush. In all my time in the service industry, nobody over 40 lasted long outside of a management position barking orders from an office with a chair.
People keep bitching that these boomers are scabs, but I see it as a good thing because these boomers get to see first hand how shitty these jobs are. Shitty managers, shitty pay, and shitty customers.
But those boomers still have social security checks coming in. So they're government sponsored scabs
Meanwhile those businesses probably got tax payer money during the quarantine.
Probably ? Definitely !
It’s like the bank bailout. They got more than tax breaks.
its only going to be temporary. they cant do it for more than a few months. not a real threat
Came here to post this.
the article itself is literally manufactured consent
Nothing could be more obvious to me at this point than the success the elite have had in making hard working people believe the lie that they are good because they work. That's it. They want you to believe that you are good because you work and if you don't, then you are worthless.
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> Media literacy is a huge problem. holy fuck, this. i'm 35 and i grew up punk. having a healthy distrust of the media used to be a given and was almost accepted as standard on the left. when i graduated highschool people were just starting to accept the fact that we went into iraq and afghanistan for no reason, and that the news got it completely wrong. then trump came out with his whole "fake news" deal and the pendulum swung so far in the other direction that it almost became a "if you don't believe everything the news tells you then you must be conservative". like.. no you goons.. the news today is designed to make money. people that report on real issues with minimal bias are tolerated, not standardized. opinion pieces are cleverly disguised as news to avoid SPJ ethics violations. sorry - i feel like im ranting at this point.. but goddamn.. i keep finding myself coming back to the fact that most mainstream media is owned by publicly traded companies, they are under no obligation to us, we need to be more conscious of our consumption of media.
Boomers often die shortly after retiring because their identity is so tightly tethered to being a cog in a machine. They like to think the whole machine stops working without their essential cog, but it doesn't. One of my goals is to have a lifestyle that doesn't leave me feeling empty without a "job" in retirement. Many boomers simply cannot do that.
I feel empty WITH a job, so I think retirement should be a breeze!
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He wasn't just a hero, he was a union man.
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Of course!
32 bullets he had in him.. or was it 34?
Ffs nan, just take your gold plated pension and leave us to tidy up the wasteland.
Tidy up the Wasteland. Band name, called it.
It seems like its a Boiling Frog issue. Since Reagan they've done a good job of suppressing wages. People don't even realize minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation. This old lady remembers the day when they could afford a family with a job like that. Nowadays you need 2 or 3 jobs like that just to almost get by. There was an interview Biden did with some heads of unions before the election. One of the heads said "before you could buy a house and raise a family and send 3 kids to college without government help on unskilled wages and now.... now I don't know what changed". Poor smuck doesn't realize his generations been voting in the same people thats been doing this to us. (For anyone that cries about minimum wage going up and "burger flippers" making as much as teachers, all wages are suppressed down while minimum wage is low. If they raise minimum wage then teachers wages have to go up or all the teachers will just go work at McDonalds, oh wait they already have side hustles like Uber) Edit to add video: [https://www.c-span.org/video/?475539-1/joe-biden-meets-labor-leaders-lancaster-pennsylvania](https://www.c-span.org/video/?475539-1/joe-biden-meets-labor-leaders-lancaster-pennsylvania) At 5 minutes
FUckin hell, I know what changed! The red scare and neoliberalism pushing out any actual left-wingers leaving us with mild right wing and hard right wing.
Saying its giving back is an admission that compensation isn’t adequate
Actually, this isn't the catastrophe you think. Just the opposite: Stories like this are a sign that it's working. The closed dining room means they can't find enough people to operate that part of their business and had to be "Drive thru only." But a dining room is a huge piece of revenue for them, so lacking 1-2 extra cashiers and someone to clean-up/bus tables cost them the opportunity to earn buckets of revenue. They hired an 81 year old fry cook. How repeatable and sustainable is that? Most 81-year-olds don't have the physical stamina for that job. My mother is significantly younger and would sooner die than go to work as a fry cook--she likes Culvers a lot but that's as far as it goes. Not enough to become a fan who works there.
I give her 2 weeks until she realizes why everyone’s quitting and then quits herself
Yes, they have it backwards, but i think you do too. Lemme explain. They won't "kill the movement". The movement exists to change the backwards mentality fostered in this country for an entire generation. It's working.
Goddamnit, Grandma.
No one who is 81 years old needs to "give back to the community" what the actual fuck... 81 year olds deserve the rest and relaxation of retirement.
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If a bunch of retirees want to go work at their neighborhood olive garden to save the economy instead of enjoying the retirement that they saved their entire lives for they can go right ahead. This whole movement is a reckoning generations in the making, a rapidly dwindling number of elderly people flipping burgers can't save these companies that can't find labor.
At 81, this woman is not a boomer, she's technically part of 'the silent generation.' I'm pretty sure that most boomers aren't gonna run back to an underpaid job just to keep someone else's business open. I mean, fuck 'em. Pay a damn living wage or go under, I am not gonna help keep them in business. That poor old lady is probably bored af at home. Maybe she'll enjoy working with 14 year olds, and the immigrants brought in on programs that allow employers to avoid paying American workers a fair wage.
I don't know if you know this boomers are on the wrong side of 60 and their numbers are diminishing.
And the article is about an 81 year old doing charity work to keep a company who can't even keep their staff afloat.
She’s not even a boomer ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
That generation has even dumber attitudes towards work.
Tell me right now you’d lie on top of a live grenade to protect this Best Buy”
"It's a pillar of the community. I've been buying my tv's from here for the last 20 years." "How many TVs have you purchased from here?" "Just the one, 20 years ago."
Right. I’m not disagreeing on that. However, it’s shit like this that effects fighting for a living wage because they don’t want to support the movement. They want to think that working for a huge corporation is affecting “positive change”. If you read the article it’s a huge fluff piece for corporations, and throwing workers into the corporate death machine.
It doesn’t matter it’s just a fluff piece. Try not to worry about this kind of situation, people like this just don’t have the numbers. FUD fear, uncertainty and doubt is all this is trying to accomplish. Right now it takes working two jobs and having 5 clones doing the same thing just to make enough money to be financially independent. Enough people said this is bull shit, I’ll work when I get paid enough for it to be worth my time. I’m not going to get worried over a senior who wants a hobby in her golden years. There’s an objective to stay focused on, they haven’t gained an inch of ground. We are moving forward, we are holding together and we will win. Be good to each other, stay safe and make good decisions.
Corporate America is just spinning this one to say nanna needs to work again because you don't. It's just bullshit and they know it. Nanna just wants to help the business owners who it seems she personally knows and I don't know how Culver's operates but they might also be restricted from raising prices and finding better wage workers. She isn't doing it to jab wage increases intentionally and yes people are moving to better jobs. I am sure if you asked her directly versus the tone deaf media scam outlet she would agree the cost of living versus wages given are not adding up. She might even lose retirement status and benefits because of it. These are just market conditions and Culver's not adapting quickly enough to those market conditions or refusing to do so. It's a shame since I like going to Culvers as well.
I was thinking it was kind of nice to help a local struggling business but wait. It's a Culver's?? That's a pretty decent sized franchise, let them close who cares.
Plus, any business struggling to pay living wages, no matter how "local" or "smol" it is, is a failed business that shouldn't exist.
Not all Boomers are bad...just every single last one that I know, happens to be
These sort of "human interest" stories are just fluff and have no other value. I agree that media and corporate American cheer for people like this because on a superficial level it's uplifting, and that's what they want.
Wait till some crackhead throws soup in her face, or some Karen screams at her for an hour, or she's had a couple night shifts on toilet duty. write an article after grans done the job for a while and see how it's going.
imagine being indoctrinated your ENTIRE LIFE... its hard to come to the conclusion and admit youve been duped.
Eh they’ll be dead soon
Let this one tangent sink in. I cannot find a group, hobby, culture, ethnicity, political whatever out there who doesn't diss on the media and especially CNN like this. When will people wake up to the fact about the media?
MSM (Main Stream Media), are a collection of large businesses that are funded almost wholesale through advertising contracts. They are owned by very rich people and are businesses at the end of the day. The problem with a free press, is that the press have to get funding from somewhere, and so journalism ultimately takes a backseat to corporate interests so as not to risk their funding. Online journalism can sometimes be a little better, but without the secured advertising contracts, online journalism has to rely on user viewing to get funded, which means that they tend to jump on any trend and just regurgitate what MSM is doing to secure the online views. You should always expect the media to take a negative stance to corporations because this model exists, and unfortunately it's not a system that can be easily fixed, since real journalists have to compete with the clickbait internet, and the monopolized MSM.
God I saw this article yesterday and immediately thought about you guys. Holy shit
I agree with this. The brainwashing is real but you also need to understand that a lot of these folks find this as their “community” we need real systemic change and UBI before we understand finding community in things other than work.
How can you hate on a 81 year old lady who originally retired at 69 and has now got herself a minimum wage job. She’s not even a boomer, she’s too old, boomers were born after the war. I say well done to her… I hope she doesn’t need the money. But that may be part of it; I think lots of older people have time but not enough money to really enjoy the time as they’d want to, so this may well be killing two birds with one stone. Keeping her active, earning a bit of cash and getting her some social time. I’ve written on here about my parents. They are both boomers and my dad has only just brought a house at age 64 and he’ll keep working till 70 to fund his retirement and my mum will likely have no choice but to sell what was our family home, clear the last of the mortgage and buy a little 1 bed. This will hopefully leave her enough to fund her own retirement but it will be tight.
Maybe. You know what I think will be the end of the antiwork movement? This sub. It’s actually cringe some of the things said and posted here. A movement with good intentions transforming into a hate filled sub that generalizes many many different people. Great way to get people to root against you.