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Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

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Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#111

Post by dan00 »

lastangryman wrote: post #100

How nice to read a long-from piece online, simply and clearly formatted, with no adverts, popups, affiliate links, or such nonsense. Just genuine writing. > The work was the only thing that kept me out of my anxiety. I know it's a trope for knowledge workers to romanticize physical work, but I find the opposite when programming. The work increases the mental anxiety.

Like in life itself, if you‘re trying to control your programming job too much, you will be just miserable and fuel your anxiety. The complexity and unpredictability of the future can‘t be completely controlled. IMHO the only solution is to believe in yourself, that whatever is thrown at you, you will find a way to cope with it. Otherwise you‘re only worrying the whole time what the future might bring.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#112

Post by badpun »

stavros wrote: post #110
cosmodisk wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming is part of my job, but I only have to do it every now and then. However, I'm considering pulling a plug on programming side gigs I do sometimes. It's so intense, the brain feels like it's going to explode+ there's that anxiety and that the whole thing will fail before I can even submit it. I'm not sure the money justifies every time.

It's interesting how different our experiences are. I love programming so much, I'll often forget about food or sleep if I'm building something that really interests me. It's easily the best high I've gotten.

Have you programmed as a full time job before?

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#113

Post by stavros »

badpun wrote: post #112
stavros wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how different our experiences are. I love programming so much, I'll often forget about food or sleep if I'm building something that really interests me. It's easily the best high I've gotten.

Have you programmed as a full time job before?

For 25 years now.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#114

Post by badpun »

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…

> Physical labor is great for the mind, as it leaves all kinds of time to consider the world.

Really depends on what kind of labor is it, not all of it is equal. I've had a new doors installed in my apartment yesterday, and the amount of troubleshooting and stress that the installers went through is not smaller than what I've faced in my programming job. But, I didn't have to do it while sweating from lifting 100 kg doors onto fourth floor, and later repeatedly trying to wrangle them into place.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#115

Post by petra »

quacked wrote: post #85
quickthrower2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got 10% through. Says more about me, or at least my mood. Clicking a HN link I al not sold on reading so much. But if this article was a book I purchased I would read it over a few days. The writing is good though at a micro level. I think it needs more structure and hooks. Chapters with interesting titles “The positive consequences of lying in my first interview” for example (I am not a writer so sure HN could do…

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain is this article, but about a thousand times more interesting. It's on my list of books I recommend to people about to enter the corporate world, even though it's about the life of a drug addict chef.

Why do you recommend it to people going to the corporate world?

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#116

Post by kubb »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #8

I gave up on this article about 1/3 of the way through. I could fill dozens of pages with my aimless years after I quit college, but I wouldn’t think to bore people with it.

Me too, because I wasn't captured by the story of that young woman, but the writing is so much better than on most of the blog posts that get to the top here every so often.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#117

Post by l33t233372 »

chongli wrote: post #44
toast0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following the algorithms for writing makes you neither a bad nor a good writer. If you learn and follow: tell them what you'll tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them; you writing will be formulaic and boring, but competent. If you do all the things, you'll be an ok writer.

Boring writing is bad writing. If you can't holder your reader's attention long enough for them to get what you're trying to say then you've failed to communicate. If you follow that formula, not only will your writing be boring but too long as well.

Step one, then, is to have something interesting to say.

Unfortunately it isn’t generally the case that people have something interesting to write at length about, and even more rarely do they have something interesting to say about the specific topic assigned.

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#119

Post by bstpierre »

badpun wrote: post #114
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…

> Physical labor is great for the mind, as it leaves all kinds of time to consider the world. Really depends on what kind of labor is it, not all of it is equal. I've had a new doors installed in my apartment yesterday, and the amount of troubleshooting and stress that the installers went through is not smaller than what I've faced in my programming job. But, I didn't have to do it while sweating from lifting 100 kg…

Right, that’s the “menial” in the previous sentence to your quote. Washing dishes, cleaning floors, routine stuff where the mind can wander. For me when I was younger this was driving a mower around and around and around — not really intense physical labor, just a rote mechanical job that doesn’t consume much mental capacity.

I’m not a door pro, but my experience with diying doors puts it definitely NOT in the category of mindless!

Re: Bad waitress: Dying on your feet

#120

Post by Tade0 »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #16
Scubabear68 wrote: post #8

I gave up on this article about 1/3 of the way through. I could fill dozens of pages with my aimless years after I quit college, but I wouldn’t think to bore people with it.

I read the whole thing in one sitting. I found it interesting in a slice-of-life way. Basically a journey to maturity and self-discovery. You might jot down your aimless years after college, for your own future reminiscences if nothing else. But everyone, I believe, has a story to tell, something of value. We tend not to tell our stories anymore, because we’re too busy and overstimulated and no longer need to fill up…

> We tend not to tell our stories anymore

I have to disagree. Social media is, essentially, people telling their stories 24/7.

> Basically a journey to maturity and self-discovery.

This is my gripe with this piece. There's no buildup at any point, nothing to keep the reader interested, to make the reader care about this person sharing her memories.

For comparison, I used to date a person who worked as a waitress and she had scores of interesting stories to tell.

Once she showed me her former workplace, which had a lot of souvenirs and odd furniture - this was no accident because the manager(owner?) attributed meaning to every piece, like the kayak hanging from the ceiling represented teamwork, because you can't swim in it alone, and you certainly wouldn' be able to put it up there single-handedly. 20+ pieces in total and everyone from the wait staff was quizzed regularly on them.

Or her first, very much illegal, summer work experience at age 13, where her first task as a waitress was to trim the lawn using pruning shears. She got an allergic reaction to whatever was in that grass and management had to backpedal on this child labour thing really quick.

All the crazy stuff that goes on in such places is only mentioned in passing and I think it doesn't do this line of work justice.

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