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Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

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Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#71

Post by quesera »

rootsudo wrote: post #66

"I leaned into the idea of serving as an identity. I joined all the Facebook groups, followed #serverlife and server memes on Instagram." I think this is one of the most toxic things in todays society, work becomes your identity and therefore you relate to it and it becomes you, or you settle to what that identity is. You are also surrounded by people in the same role, and depending on that you change to fit in with…

I agree. It's often toxic, but it fills a common need to belong.

The need can be healthy (or at least it is common in healthy people). The satisfaction of it can be toxic, and it takes a strong(?)/determined, or at least self-aware, person to escape the local maxima and reach for something approaching real fulfillment.

But I may be projecting. I would be dissatisfied if I still lived in the town/state/region I grew up in, for example. Some people are perfectly happy there and never even question their (lack of) path. And I'm not talking about people born in destination locations!

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#72

Post by m463 »

Freedom2 wrote: post #48
JohnFen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." Yeah, I don't buy that either. I know that the best software engineering work I've done in my entire life happened when I was working as a hotel housekeeper, before I was programming professionally. It was because cleaning hotel rooms is a purely physical, and highly repetitive job. Every day at work,…

Brandon Sanderson has a decent quote from Secret Project #1, that makes me think a bit. > That is one of the great mistakes people make: assuming that someone who does menial work does not like thinking. Physical labor is great for the mind, as it leaves all kinds of time to consider the world. Other work, like accounting or scribing, demands little of the body—but siphons energy from the mind. If you wish to become…

Well, there is lots of evidence that movement and exercise is excellent for your brain physiologically and psychologically.

https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-...

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#73

Post by matheusmoreira »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #7

That was excellent! > The life of the American worker is inherently undignified This is true, and even goes for highly-paid, high-status gigs. In fact, I think that sometimes, companies consider high pay, a license to humiliate.

It's not the work itself that's undignified, it's having to work. The only way to maintain your dignity is to have enough fuck you money to tell anyone who would strip you of it to fuck off.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#74

Post by JackFr »

JohnFen wrote: post #5
cafard wrote: post #2

I don't know. I never graduated to waiter, but I worked as a busboy a few times. I have much sympathy for wait staff. My recollection is that the waitresses were always decent to me. Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." One of my other low-paying jobs was as a copy editor, and I have seen how commonly schools have failed to teach PhDs to be…

> Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." Yeah, I don't buy that either. I know that the best software engineering work I've done in my entire life happened when I was working as a hotel housekeeper, before I was programming professionally. It was because cleaning hotel rooms is a purely physical, and highly repetitive job. Every day at work,…

Caitriona Lally won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature while working as a janitor at Trinity College. I believe she maintains that job today.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#75

Post by teddyh »

doodlesdev wrote: post #6
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School actively teaches people to be bad writers.

How so?

See Larry McEnerney’s lecture The Craft of Writing Effectively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM

Essentially, students are, from the time they start school until they graduate, taught to write to an audience – teachers – who are both:

1. Paid to read it, and have no real possibility to stop reading because they get bored (teachers will read anything from beginning to end).

2. Looking for, in the writing, evidence that the student has learned the information.

Neither of those two things are true of the rest of the world, when they are reading a book or an article by an aspiring professional writer. Therefore, writing to such an audience will require new skills which most people have never practiced.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#76

Post by emodendroket »

juliusgeo wrote: post #55
emodendroket wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This subthread starting off with a claim that high-wage workers were the most exploited. I don’t think there’s a vision of “solidarity” where everyone humors that delusion.

The top comment is this sub thread very clearly included the words “even” to imply that while most would not assume software engineers are not exploited because they’re relatively wealthy, they are still being exploited. This very clearly implies that SEs are less exploited—there was absolutely nothing in the original comment that supports your mischaracterization of their point.

That is, other than the second of its two sentences, which reads “In fact, I think that sometimes, companies consider high pay, a license to humiliate.” What do you suggest that means? It seems to me that if high pay is a “license to humiliate” that means that highly-paid workers are due for extra humiliation.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#77

Post by omginternets »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #9
cafard wrote: post #2

I don't know. I never graduated to waiter, but I worked as a busboy a few times. I have much sympathy for wait staff. My recollection is that the waitresses were always decent to me. Still I don't buy, "I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter." One of my other low-paying jobs was as a copy editor, and I have seen how commonly schools have failed to teach PhDs to be…

I believe the point is not that it's easy to teach people to write well but that it's easier than teaching people to work hard.

Every Ph.D I've met has been a very hard worker, on par with the people I worked with in the military.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#78

Post by KennyBlanken »

> The job at that bar was the best job I’ve ever had, in concert with the life I’d always wanted—publishing my writing, running a literary magazine, having several close circles of friends, living in the city I’d always dreamed of. I loved my apartment and I had the money to do things like get facials and use ClassPass. I took vacations and went to literary awards or friends’ book launches and plays and fancy dinners, and one night when I was sad I bought a pink suit, and then I felt better. Waiting tables gave me a life I didn’t think I’d be able to attain for myself.

Remember when a job such as being a waiter still meant you could in fact survive and have money left over for the occasional niceties in life like a bit of relaxation, or a frivolous purchase like (gasp) some clothing that isn't needed for a particular purpose?

All gone...because billionaires drowning in yachts, jets, vacation homes, and ultra-luxury, hyper-sports cars...aren't satisfied, and also want tax writeoffs they get because politicians tell us that if they don't give them a tax break, someone else will get the trickle-down economic benefits.

The greed is so extensive, they've gotten the USSC to rule that workers are now liable for damages to their employers, from striking...in what is almost certainly a response to the railroad strikes that scared the shit out of the 0.01%.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#79

Post by tomcam »

Author refers 3 times to 20-pound plates of potatoes. Is that really a thing? I’ve eaten at thousands of restaurants and don’t recall anything like that but I’m not the most observant person.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#80

Post by tropicalbeach »

Invictus0 wrote: post #69
Freedom2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brandon Sanderson has a decent quote from Secret Project #1, that makes me think a bit. > That is one of the great mistakes people make: assuming that someone who does menial work does not like thinking. Physical labor is great for the mind, as it leaves all kinds of time to consider the world. Other work, like accounting or scribing, demands little of the body—but siphons energy from the mind. If you wish to become…

I don't buy this either. I spend my 8 hours coding (yes, mostly coding) and still come home and study most nights. I don't feel any difference at night whether I spent the day doing yardwork or coding.

I suspect because you have not done manual labor. When you really get in a routine, it just has this feeling at the end of the day after being outside in the sun or snow. It is nothing like sitting in front of a computer.

I firmly believe that in our dna we were wired to be outside most of the time.

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