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| At its peak in the 1930s, the Ford factory in Detroit employed 100,000 workers and used over 120 miles of conveyor belts in a sprawling mile-and-a-half wide, mile-long facility. Image: detail of "Detroit Industry" Murals (1932-33) by Mexican artist Diego Rivera |
Stop.
You are not a machine.
Your natural design does not tolerate 2-4 hours of travel per day, 8-12 hours of slave-labor 5-6 days per week, for whatever monetary compensation, on 5-6 hours of sleep, in a system built on penalistic principles and a life under judgmental surveillance.
Like it or not, you are human. Stress, harassment, constant financial worries, fear and sense of inadequacy destroys the health of any human. This is a scientific fact.
So why is it that we accept and tolerate a system that in actual reality demands that you erase your needs, and in effect commit a slow joyless suicide for someone else's profit?
You have a choice, stop pretending that you don’t.
- author unknown
- author unknown
I recently tried out a job and quit after 4 days. It was very hard, heavy, hot work in a commercial kitchen that involved cooking large quantities of food, serving it up nice and pretty and then cleaning the kitchen afterwards. We hauled rubber floor mats outside to hose them off, mopped the floors, did the dishes, etc. It was 9 hours straight and I got paid only $8.50 an hour. I'm in an area in the south where that's considered good pay. This shocked me as I was making $13 an hour up north for a much less demanding job, but I was in a union. These good, hard working people know they are underpaid but they accept it as the norm because there is nothing else available and they assured me that I would not find work in the area that paid more. This is America? I figured if I was going to work that hard for so little money, I could work for myself. I've tried ramping up my online sales, but it's difficult. I still need to know I have a regular paycheck coming in, so I'm looking for a "real" job once again. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteClamco, I read one of your posts about your job. It really put things into perspective for me about how the job world is these days. Something will have to change - our political parties (in Canada and the US, and most places the world over) have sold us out.
DeletePeople will only put up with so much shit and abuse. I am glad that you refused to be exploited. Good luck with your online sales and whatever comes next for you and your family.