This is a brilliant article. This is where the class element of intersectionality is lost on most white collar folks. They're happy to treat LGBTQ and POC communities as true equals - as long as...
This is a brilliant article.
This is where the class element of intersectionality is lost on most white collar folks. They're happy to treat LGBTQ and POC communities as true equals - as long as their economic and social status allow it. They are happy to protest about immigrant children at the border or gay wedding cakes in middle america, but Medicare-for-all and living wages are too much for our 401k accounts to bear.
The daily oppression of the service jobs that make up an increasing amount of economic opportunities available to the average worker forces them to destroy their bodies, endure verbal and physical threats from customers and management, and maybe even pick up a drug habit to cope.
Hopefully, the fact that the author is a lesbian will open some eyes - and the use of linesman's pliers and dyke in two adjacent sentences was genius to this former electrician.
I've lived at least some of this life as an on-call tech and in food service, including the bodily and mental wear-and-tear. Also including harassment and underpayment, as both a woman and a...
I've lived at least some of this life as an on-call tech and in food service, including the bodily and mental wear-and-tear. Also including harassment and underpayment, as both a woman and a queer. What's even more grotesque is that in John Scalzi's "difficulty" schema, neither I nor the author of the story are playing capitalism on the toughest levels. We both started white, middle-class, and educated.
I had a hard time not crying over the bitter parts I recognized from my own experience. Most of all the isolation and helplessness, the knowledge that I couldn't call on anyone for help, and the remedy was always going to be, "work harder". As in the article, it's ultimately meant that I've become the technical resource everyone else draws on when they can't be bothered to do their own homework.
If you do physical labor as a part of your job, you can expect the class hierarchy to be right in your face, even if it's highly skilled technical work. And some of it will be from your peer technical workers who don't have to touch equipment other than a keyboard. Bear in mind, your job may be automated out of existence, or your skills obsolesced someday, and you too could be scrabbling in the scorned hard labor depths of the service economy.
(Someday, I'll get around to posting something about the class warfare of Dev versus Ops, and the wisdom of moving everything to someone else's cloud, a/k/a hardware infrastructure thousands of miles away that you don't control.)
I know things are certainly tougher now in the industry, but i was a cable guy about 20 years ago. With a few exceptions, everyone was always happy to see me, and grateful for my efforts. I got...
I know things are certainly tougher now in the industry, but i was a cable guy about 20 years ago. With a few exceptions, everyone was always happy to see me, and grateful for my efforts. I got paid decently but I did work my butt off. Granted i was not a leabian in the dc suburbs.
Coincidentally it was my ankle also that got me out if the business.
Anyway, tradework can be rewarding on a lot of levels, but that nondays off (and nonsick leave) thing is no joke.
Um, it's nice to have options? I grew up in the midst of local economic collapse and multiple recessions. So I've done everything from planting trees in an orchard to stagehand work to technical...
Um, it's nice to have options? I grew up in the midst of local economic collapse and multiple recessions. So I've done everything from planting trees in an orchard to stagehand work to technical research/writing to testing toxic waste and lab tech to paralegal work to restaurant and bakery work to years of tech support or server/network, all to pay for school or make ends meet. There were times I would have taken cable tech work in a heartbeat, and goodness knows the pay was better than most of what I did.
I'd recommend reading Ben Hamper's Rivethead if you want an idea of the unromantic reality of blue collar labor at its best, when you could gain a middle-class lifestyle without trying too hard.
This is a brilliant article.
This is where the class element of intersectionality is lost on most white collar folks. They're happy to treat LGBTQ and POC communities as true equals - as long as their economic and social status allow it. They are happy to protest about immigrant children at the border or gay wedding cakes in middle america, but Medicare-for-all and living wages are too much for our 401k accounts to bear.
The daily oppression of the service jobs that make up an increasing amount of economic opportunities available to the average worker forces them to destroy their bodies, endure verbal and physical threats from customers and management, and maybe even pick up a drug habit to cope.
Hopefully, the fact that the author is a lesbian will open some eyes - and the use of linesman's pliers and dyke in two adjacent sentences was genius to this former electrician.
I've lived at least some of this life as an on-call tech and in food service, including the bodily and mental wear-and-tear. Also including harassment and underpayment, as both a woman and a queer. What's even more grotesque is that in John Scalzi's "difficulty" schema, neither I nor the author of the story are playing capitalism on the toughest levels. We both started white, middle-class, and educated.
I had a hard time not crying over the bitter parts I recognized from my own experience. Most of all the isolation and helplessness, the knowledge that I couldn't call on anyone for help, and the remedy was always going to be, "work harder". As in the article, it's ultimately meant that I've become the technical resource everyone else draws on when they can't be bothered to do their own homework.
If you do physical labor as a part of your job, you can expect the class hierarchy to be right in your face, even if it's highly skilled technical work. And some of it will be from your peer technical workers who don't have to touch equipment other than a keyboard. Bear in mind, your job may be automated out of existence, or your skills obsolesced someday, and you too could be scrabbling in the scorned hard labor depths of the service economy.
(Someday, I'll get around to posting something about the class warfare of Dev versus Ops, and the wisdom of moving everything to someone else's cloud, a/k/a hardware infrastructure thousands of miles away that you don't control.)
I'm going to pamper every cable tech (any traveling support worker, for that matter) I ever meet from now on. That's for sure.
I know things are certainly tougher now in the industry, but i was a cable guy about 20 years ago. With a few exceptions, everyone was always happy to see me, and grateful for my efforts. I got paid decently but I did work my butt off. Granted i was not a leabian in the dc suburbs.
Coincidentally it was my ankle also that got me out if the business.
Anyway, tradework can be rewarding on a lot of levels, but that nondays off (and nonsick leave) thing is no joke.
If you have trouble reading this on Firefox for Android, try this add-on.
I recommend using reading mode as an alternative fix. I use it on my desktop/laptop as well whenever a site supports it.
Right, I tend to forget that exists. :-)
The built-in reader mode worked great on my phone.
Um, it's nice to have options? I grew up in the midst of local economic collapse and multiple recessions. So I've done everything from planting trees in an orchard to stagehand work to technical research/writing to testing toxic waste and lab tech to paralegal work to restaurant and bakery work to years of tech support or server/network, all to pay for school or make ends meet. There were times I would have taken cable tech work in a heartbeat, and goodness knows the pay was better than most of what I did.
I'd recommend reading Ben Hamper's Rivethead if you want an idea of the unromantic reality of blue collar labor at its best, when you could gain a middle-class lifestyle without trying too hard.
Thanks for the post, OP. I'm ignorant to the blue collar world and appreciate these kinds of auto-biographical articles.
Jesus that was a great article.