This just really isn’t the same sub I started following when I joined Reddit a year ago. I used to believe in this sub. I used to think we were a movement and we could accomplish things. That sense of achievement evaporated after the Fox News incident, but I still thought we were on to something here.
Now though half the posts aren’t even about a job someone actually has, it’s a shitty sign, ridiculous application, Nazi executive on LinkedIn, or a screenshot of Twitter. Seeing every single sign that says “minimum wage, woke need not apply” they start to feel like shitposts.
The posts that actually are about someone’s job seem to be centered around the office. Workplace politics, emails, WFH, “Quiet quitting”, etc.
Those aren’t something I’ve ever identified with. I’ve never sent my boss an email. I work in a kitchen so my job can’t be done from home. You can’t quiet quit a job where you’re putting product out, you either did the job or not. Whether that’s a plate of food, a built fence, a paved road, whatever… you can’t quiet quit a job that has an end point.
I made a post several months ago about not identifying with the office worker types and I got a lot of responses about how dividing blue and white collar isn’t working class solidarity. Let me just say that when you regularly burn yourself on the job for $15/hr and then see someone who sits in a chair with AC complain that $80k is dog shit… that’s not working class solidarity either. Shit, if you actually get to sit down at work you’ve got it better than like half the jobs already (this is an America thing, I know).
To me it’s like the poor kid who gets socks for Christmas having to listen to the kid in the two story house complain that their new bike isn’t the color they wanted. But then when the poor kid speaks up the other says “oh but the rich kids who go to the private school have 10 bikes, so really we aren’t that different you and me”
“Working Class Solidarity” to me would be more along the lines of not exploiting each other. Not showing up to fast food 10 minutes before close. Not being an ass to cashiers. Not leaving your shit all over the place because it’s someone’s job to pick it up. That’s solidarity.
It’s really jarring to see people who aren’t being paid poverty wages say they can’t afford to live. My initial thought is “well you make like 3x what I do and I get by fine, what are you doing wrong?” But I don’t want to victim blame, so I try to put some perspective on it. I assume those posts are coming from people in New York or LA or somewhere similar, but instead of empathy that thought process bewilders me how those places are even considered the same country. It deepens my sense of division that places like that can take someone who is by all means rich at 80k in my area and make them essentially poorer than me. But I never see that explored here. No one wonders why my Mississippi $15 feels equal to six figures in San Francisco.
It’s always just “Pay me more”, but this is antiwork, where I thought the point was to not work under exploitation.I don’t feel that’s the sentiment anymore, the focus seems to be making life easier for the office worker, not really making work easier for everyone. I think a lot of people here would be just fine with exploitative work under capitalism if their boss was a little nicer and their check was a little fatter. That’s not antiwork, that’s capitalism with a cushy job, and it doesn’t help us.