Hard News: Is that it?
327 Responses
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Sacha, in reply to
I brought an intimate knowledge of the works of Bertrand Russell to every customer buying gas.
nice
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Rich Lock, in reply to
bet you're really good at spotting the best ones in a vege shop now.
I didn't eat one for three years after that.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
That seems a somewhat sad belief to me.
I find the alternative belief actually dangerous. You are welcome to find whatever meaning in the work that you do, but not to extend the idea to others ("there is no mindless work, and to imply that there is would be an insult to those who do it").
Which is another way of saying that work is not going to set you free. A humane society is one that values people, not their labour as an abstraction.
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Sacha, in reply to
I didn't eat one for three years after that.
me the same with watermelon and kiwifruit
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Che Tibby, in reply to
I’ve had more than one post-retirement age teacher who should have known when to quit.
sure. doesn't mean they need become "useless" though. grumpy old teachers must be able to do something useful.
scare preschoolers perhaps?
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John Armstrong, in reply to
would you kindly point me to the mindful part of cleaning toilets?
I'm not saying that their aren't shitty jobs. Gutting eels was no party, and the lifting involved wrecked my back to the extent that I couldn't go back to it now if I wanted to. But my point is that there is more to cleaning toilets than cleaning toilets. No one transports through time and space from loo to loo, or from one day to the next. In between you are dealing with people (bosses, co-workers, public), organising the gear and the transport, and attempting to maintain some kind of personal integrity by cleaning / gutting / picking the bloody thing properly. You might have a few laughs with the people you work with. You might even have interesting conversations. You might learn to value the parts of your life that don't involve being covered in shit to the elbows. You learn to justify your shitty job to yourself, and if you are lucky you might see that not all the justifications work and its time to get out. But even if you can't get out, or can only move sideways, dealing with the fact and getting on with it requires resolve, and possibly an even greater awareness of the value of things that happen after 5:00pm.
The idea that taking pride in shitty work is imposed on us in order to keep us in line is utter tosh. Doing a job properly, even a shitty one, is about basic self-respect.
PS, no, not the one from the Herald.
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Sacha, in reply to
You are welcome to find whatever meaning in the work that you do, but not to extend the idea to others
Saying you are welcome to find a *lack* of meaning in work, but not to extend that to others seems an equally deficient argument.
Not claiming that all work is deeply satisfying but most cultures valued occupation before capitalism came on the scene. Work brings us into a different sort of relationship with ourselves and others, and with our social and political context. That has value.
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Geoff Lealand, in reply to
PS, no, not the one from the Herald.
He has a really shitty job?
Greetings from a fellow Hamiltonian. That makes 4 of us, according to my count.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
Saying you are welcome to find a *lack* of meaning in work, but not to extend that to others seems an equally deficient argument.
I don't think so. It's important to recognise the dehumanising aspects of work, which - on this I agree with you - long predate capitalism. One of my mother's childhood memories that has made the most impression on me is her description of her best friend returning from rice picking, her face deformed and her stare made vacant by exhaustion. There may have been some social, communal aspects to rice picking that are easy enough to romanticise but are nonetheless true - which speaks to the point John makes above about what happens when you're not actually cleaning the toilets - but these were rescued, stolen from the work itself, not a consequence of work or in any meaningful way connected to the work. And then there is all the time, all the socialisation, all the life that my mum's friend was robbed of by that labour. You could say much the same of the teenage sharemilkers in Mum's village, many of whom contracted bovine TB. What work taught them was how to die young.
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John Armstrong, in reply to
A humane society is one that values people, not their labour as an abstraction.
I couldn't agree with this more. In fact I thought it was what I was arguing. I wonder if our difference comes from me taking a slightly wider view of 'labour'; one that extends beyond that physical movement of the toilet brush to include all the various thoughts, skills, and interactions that most jobs require. And this isn't the same thing as equating a person with the job they do. Its a rejection of the idea that a clear demarcation is possible; the two blur together in a whole range of ways.
I fail to see how the idea that your workplace pride is imposed on you by your betters could liberate anyone, either.
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John Armstrong, in reply to
Greetings from a fellow Hamiltonian. That makes 4 of us, according to my count.
I've been meaning to wander down the corridor one of these days to say hello but have yet to muster up the courage. It's bad enough disagreeing with Gio..
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Che Tibby, in reply to
i think work is also essential, and everyone must work (and i mean that as an imperative), even if that work is “sitting and having a wee think about things”.
to not work is unnatural, and frequently exploitative – absolute monarchy, anyone?
EDIT: actually... you could argue that monarchy is a job. and a pretty cushy one at that.
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BenWilson, in reply to
The idea that taking pride in shitty work is imposed on us in order to keep us in line is utter tosh. Doing a job properly, even a shitty one, is about basic self-respect.
I'm not so sure. I think the two points of view are not asking the same question, that both you and Gio are right, but there is a disconnect about the purpose.
I have certainly experienced many a time being told to take more pride in fucking dull work, usually by the boss who essentially wants me to work harder. Also by teachers who gave out tedious assignments, and would load me up with extra ones because I'd managed to do the other ones quickly. I have, since a young age, seen this as an attempt to build up false consciousness in me.
However, there is, of course, truth in what they say, that you can find satisfaction in dull work if you have to, and you really try. I have to do the dishes, so I've learned to enjoy doing the dishes, to do it properly (hey Gio, I even dry some of the dishes in the rack, however much I thought you might be attempting to develop false consciousness in me). It's a valuable skill to learn, to be able to force yourself through dull things.
The solution to the conundrum is that one is a personal ethic for your own benefit, the other is someone trying to impose this personal ethic for their benefit. If you fail, it's not because you're a failure. Some tasks actually just are boring/demeaning/unpleasant for some people. Most people would blanch at learning to program a computer, for instance. Some ways that you change people's work do rob them of their dignity - that's been one of the least pleasant things I've found from years of computer programming, just how often this is exactly what the product is meant to do, to take skilled work, and impose some horrible simplification on it, just to get rid of some staff. Then the job is done in a half arsed way, but cheaper (although usually the development time and the extraordinarily high cost of people to fix the system are conveniently swept under the carpet).
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Che Tibby, in reply to
but these were rescued, stolen from the work itself, not a consequence of work or in any meaningful way connected to the work.
i genuinely think you might be looking for an idyll that has not ever existed. there have always been these awful jobs - it's why we compete to not do them.
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John Armstrong, in reply to
It's important to recognise the dehumanising aspects of work
I agree with this too. I'm not arguing that the kinds of work we are talking about are to be preferred, and that we should not try to make things better. I just think that's its equally dangerous to 'extend to others' the idea that there is no value in shitty work. Getting up in the morning was bad enough circa 1995-2003 without that albatross around my neck.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
i genuinely think you might be looking for an idyll that has not ever existed. there have always been these awful jobs – it’s why we compete to not do them.
I have never suggested that it's a new state of affairs. However, what is relatively new (or rather has taken on new forms) is the ideological insistence that there is something inherently dignified and redemptive in the work itself. The idea that there is no work that is beneath people, and that if you suggest that there is you are disrespecting the least fortunate, is quite commonly held. What it does is in fact give political palatibility to punitive approaches to welfare, the imposition of awful, semi-slave labour (marginal rates in the order of $1 an hour) for its own sake, or more precisely to expiate the sin of not possessing a more marketable profile.
(Which is doubly nonsensical: firstly, because any hierarchy - even if it is impersonally determined by the market - is going to place some people at the bottom by definition, and would even if we all had doctorates in engineering; secondly, because neoliberal economies keep a reserve of unemployment in order to control inflation, so there are always going to be people who are jobless through no fault of their own whatsoever.)
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Senior management are often little more than courtiers.
this is so apposite I have to stop and doff my hat (or at least flick the remnants of hair out of my eyes :))
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Islander, in reply to
there have always been these awful jobs – it’s why we compete to not do them.
Having done more than my fair share of crap jobs, I agree with Gio.Some work is mind-numbing (try working in a woollen mill as a hearing person) and some is worker-exploitative & the employer/s deliberately seek to undermine your basic dignity
There are some jobs that shouldnt be given to humans. But humans get desperate when working for money – or food – or accomodation, is the only way they are going to survive. Worse: they and their families are going to survive.
Indonesian workers on brokendown old tubs utilising Maori fisheries quota* anyone?Being ill-fed, beaten up, and sexually-abused?
*I look forward to the results into the enquiry on that one. We Kai Tahu have been assurred that the tribe is no longer engaged in deepwater fisheries. But…eel-fishing (almost certainly elver-fishing) off Otago? Many eeenteresting
questions will be asked at the coming huiatau… -
BenWilson, in reply to
I fail to see how the idea that your workplace pride is imposed on you by your betters could liberate anyone, either.
I don't. It's pretty obvious really. If you refuse to accept being told that something horrible is something you should like, you might learn the resolve to refuse to do it, to convince others to refuse, and to effect some actual change in the workplace.
Similarly, enjoying the dull or stupid can be a barrier to change. Sometimes lazy people are quite valuable in workplaces because they find ways to avoid the dull crap, and actually come up with innovations. I was unable to accept that burning my fingers whilst drying off meat patties at McDonalds was a good idea, and found a much better solution, to use a tool for the job. I was told not to do this by management who had developed massive callouses from years of burger flipping, and could do the job at the same speed as I could with the tool. The fact that I could not do it, that my burnt fingers were actually seeping my blood into the food, did not distract them from their righteous stupidity. Nor were they able to understand that I've found a way to man 3 stations simultaneously, just by changing the order that things were done. I was told off for it repeatedly whenever it was time to earn badges for knowing the checklists. They never complained when I was cranking out 30% more burgers during a rush though. In fact, they never noticed, but they did notice if the "pickles were crossed". They're fucking gherkins, you idiots.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
I just think that’s its equally dangerous to ‘extend to others’ the idea that there is no value in shitty work.
Well, let's examine that: you have talked about toilet cleaning, but it seems to me that the value you find in it is largely ancillary to the work itself - getting on with your workmates, establishing a discipline, having a reason, however shitty, for getting up in the morning. None of these things are materially connected to the toilet cleaning itself. What that is going to teach you are some very basic manual skills at best, and you'd master them pretty quickly. Beyond that, there is the pride in not depending on others, and I respect that and possibly even share it even though from a political point of view I think it is fundamentally misguided.
To make a less gruesome example, I used to work nights at the BNZ doing data entering, and I didn't mind it. Mostly I enjoyed my workmates very much - the bulk of them were Pacific Islanders, and as a recent immigrant I found them much easier to relate with socially than Pakeha - but I perversely derived some enjoyment from the work itself. However it was mindless, and I have absolutely no qualms saying it. It was so mindless in fact that eventually they closed our office down and outsourced it to a bunch of computers.
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Working at Southern Blues in Christchurch, I attached each leg of the inside-out jeans to the machine, hit the foot pedal, and it sucked the legs through. I then folded the inside-in jeans. 300 pairs an 8 hour day.
I guess I was cheaper than a robot. It would have been bearable had the prohibitionists not pushed up the price of Kronic, which had for a time been improving my perception of this “drudge” work.
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Geoff Lealand, in reply to
I've been meaning to wander down the corridor one of these days to say hello but have yet to muster up the courage. It's bad enough disagreeing with Gio
Gio is a pussy-cat. Do come by as I still pass colleagues in the halls and still don't know who they are---and I have been at this uni for quite some time. We could compare notes on shitty jobs we have had, and the good ones.
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Che Tibby, in reply to
Some work is mind-numbing
not quite sure where i indicated that there is work that is not.
i think gio arrived where i was with this statement:
the value you find in it is largely ancillary to the work itself – getting on with your workmates, establishing a discipline, having a reason, however shitty, for getting up in the morning.
we aren't our work. we are the people in our workplace though.
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BenWilson, in reply to
I feel like there's no debate going on here. This is people agreeing with each other angrily. Time to seize control of the means of discussion.
The reason I even brought up the rising number of elderly workers in shit work, in a thread about youth unemployment and welfare, is because I think there is a connection. The funny thing is, I actually agree with the kids, in a strange way. Some of them most assuredly do want to work, in whatever shit job they can get. Most of these kids do actually get a job, of some kind or other, often part time. But one thing about kids is that they haven't spent so long being inculcated in the righteous value of work, and actually see a shitty deal for what it really is. Doing hard work for less pay than some grandma doing exactly the same thing, when she actually collects a pension and owns a house, is bound to make you go fuck it.
ETA: I must confess to never having been this clever as a child. Or perhaps my privilege made me see the long game, certainly I was never seriously threatened with destitution, so taking work without pay was a gamble I could afford.
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Sacha, in reply to
None of these things are materially connected to the toilet cleaning itself.
We may have a different notion of 'materially connected'. Most work involves some manner of organisation and people in addition to tasks.
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